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Tag: toxics

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A Toxic Kiss?

Are you giving a toxic kiss with leaded lipstick? 

“Testing of 32 commonly sold lipsticks and lip glosses found they contain lead, cadmium, chromium, aluminum and five other metals — some at potentially toxic levels, according to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley’s School of Public Health,” per a USA Today article.  (5/2/13)

“Prior research has also found lead in lipstick, including a December 2011 survey of 400 varieties by the Food and Drug Administration that found low levels the agency said pose no safety concerns. This UC study looked at more metals and estimated health risks based on their concentrations and typical lipstick use.

“Just finding these metals isn’t the issue.It’s the levels that matter,” says co-author S. Katharine Hammond, professor of environmental health. She says some of the toxic metals are occurring at levels that could pose health problems in the long run. “This study is saying, ‘FDA, wake up and pay attention,’ ” she says.” 

For more information, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/02/toxic-chemicals-lipstick/2125325/

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Backyard Talk

Celebrating 35 years of Success

What a night it was! Long-time and new friends joined Lois Gibbs in New York City to commemorate the 35th anniversary of Love Canal. The event also honored and celebrated Lois for her legacy and leadership as the founder of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ).
It was a truly celebratory evening. You could feel real energy in the room as everyone enjoyed the warm company and delicious food. It was a night to recognize how far we’ve come since the days of Love Canal and to reflect on the elements that have powered change in the past three decades.
In line with the celebratory theme, there were no lectures or speeches; a brief clip of the Love Canal segment in the documentary A Fierce Green Fire, The Battle for A Living Planet was shown. There was giggling at some scenes; boos at those that showed anti-environmental attacks, like when Ronald Reagan alleged that “the environmentalist won’t be happy until they turn the Whitehouse into a bird’s nest.” And of course, there was a lot of applause when Lois challenged President Carter and the U.S. government by taking the EPA representatives hostage. It was a fun fifteen minutes of viewing.
CHEJ and Lois certainly felt proud to be recognized and introduced by our special guests Chevy and Jayni Chase. The evening was also a successful fundraiser for CHEJ, bringing new critical resources to support the work of CHEJ’s Leadership Training Academy. The event is the first in a series that will be held this year across the country, commemorating the Love Canal anniversary and raising funds to train and mentor the next generation of grassroots leaders through the Academy.
A big thanks goes out to our host committee for their planning and support, especially to our co-chairs Sarah Stranahan and Cara McCaffrey. Their hard work has set a very high bar. Thank you to all who came and to our sponsors. Your support and involvement will have a lasting positive impact in the communities in which we serve.

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35 Years of Progress Since Love Canal

This year marks a very significant date – the 35th anniversary of the Love Canal crisis. It is hard to believe it has been that long and in recognizing this fact of life, I realize that entire generations have been born since who may know little or nothing about Love Canal and how the environmental health and justice movement began.

History is important and we need to find ways to tell the story so that we don’t repeat our mistakes and we can reap the benefits of lessons learned through oral histories. One key lesson from Love Canal is that a blue collar community with next to no resources was able to win its fight for justice and open the eyes of the nation and the world to the serious problems of environmental chemicals and their effects on public health.

Thanks to Mark Kitchell, an Oscar nominated and well known filmmaker (Berkeley in the Sixties), there’s now a compelling and thought provoking film that can be used as a tool in educating younger generations about Love Canal and the history of the environmental movement and engaging them and re-engaging the rest of us in the fight for a healthy planet. What is exciting about A Fierce Green Fire is that this film, which includes a prominent segment on Love Canal, demonstrates in real footage that change happens when people get involved.

“The main difference between my film and a lot of other environmental films is that instead of it being focused on the issues, ours is focused on the movement and activism,” said Mark Kitchell in an interview. “I feel that telling stories of activists, taking up the battle and fighting, is the best way to explicate the issues. And that was my main handle on the environmental subject, doing the movement story,” adds Kitchell. The film, narrated by such notables as Robert Redford, Meryl Streep and Ashley Judd among others, received great reviews at Sundance.

As CHEJ moves forward this coming year, we are partnering with groups across the country who would like to show the film in a theater setting, at small group gatherings or house events and have a conversation about how change happens and what they might do differently in their efforts to win on environmental and environmental health and justice issues. Partnering with groups, we hope to also bring media attention to their local issues and raise funds for their group and CHEJ. It’s a plan that’s hard to pass up.

If your group is interested in hosting a local viewing, please contact CHEJ. Together we can inspire people to take action to protect health and our planet.

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Information is Power: True or False?


I often ask this question when speaking publicly about what I do at CHEJ. I’m trained as a scientist and I provide technical assistance to grassroots community groups.  People send me testing data to review,  whether it’s the chemicals found in their drinking water, the air behind their child’s school, or the soil in the park where their children play. They ask me to do this primarily because they want to know what the test results mean. But they also believe that if they gather enough information – the right information, especially- and get it into the hands of the decision makers, that everything will fall into place.

So what do you think? True or false? Is information power?  Can you solve your environmental problem by gathering information and then getting it into the hands of the decision makers?  No, you cannot.  The answer is false, information is not power.  It’s not the information by itself but rather what you do with it that can make all the difference in the world. Just gathering data and sharing it no matter how important or impactful will not likely change a bureaucrat’s or a politician’s mind.  But if you use the information to educate your community and then go the bureaucrats and politicians with a set of demands that meet the needs of your community, you have a much greater chance to be successful.

At CHEJ, we work directly with community leaders to help them become knowledgeable and proficient in understanding the technical, health, statistical and scientific aspects of chemical exposures. We also work with community leaders to help them understand how to use technical information to achieve their goals and win what their community needs to resolve its environmental problem(s). What we do includes reviewing testing data; cleanup plans; technologies for treating/disposing of hazardous waste and household garbage; reviewing plans to build new facilities; defining a community-based testing plan that includes where to test, what to test (soil, air, water), what to look for; evaluating a health study completed by a government agency or other entity; and so much more.  CHEJ also has more than 60 guidebooks and fact-packs on a wide range of topics that you can use to focus your group on what it needs to be successful.

So don’t get trapped into believing you can win over the bureaucrats or your politicians by gathering information, or become frozen into inaction until you gather just a little bit more information.  What really matters is what you do with the information you have and how it fits strategically into your organizing plan. To learn more about CHEJ’s technical assistance services, see our website at http://chej.org/assistance/technical-assistance/

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Drill Deeper on Fracking NY

“Drill deeper,
New York” said the Albany Times-Union in a recent 1/15/13 editorial, saying, “with our health and environment on the line, New York still has many issues to address before moving forward on fracking.”

“Perhaps more than any other place in New York, the Capital Region knows that science matters. An unswimmable Hudson and a half-billion dollar PCB dredging project just up the river from Albany are costly proof of what happens when we make decisions on incomplete knowledge. It’s a good time to remember this as New York winds down its review of high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing — popularly known as fracking. There are disturbing signs that, even after more than four years, we don’t have the knowledge to make a fully-informed decision….

The question is simply this: What’s the risk to human health and the environment? We’re not convinced the state Department of Environmental Conservation knows — especially when some scientists and physicians are saying they aren’t sure… Scientists warn that there are many things they don’t yet know about the fracking process. They’re still learning about the effect on human health of constant noise and light from activities like gas drilling. Geologists are looking at a marked rise in earthquakes in some parts of the country where there has been an increase in fracking or deep well drilling for fracking fluid disposal. And some wonder if, when the entire production process is considered, natural gas is as clean as its proponents say.

And then there’s a potentially key document — a health study on fracking that’s being done by the state Department of Health — that has yet to be finished or made public. The state has engaged a group of scientists to review the Health Department study, but that review is secret, too. The DEC says it will consider whether the findings of the Health Department raise any significant issues.

In other words, the public, after getting less than all the information it needed to comment on fracking, could well be shut out of further comment even when that information is revealed. Under the latest timetable, the entire review could wrap up by late February. That timetable is quite simply unfair and inappropriate, given what we now know, and what we don’t.

…Any fair current analysis must return, time and again, to fracking’s still uncertain cost, not just in dollars and cents, but in terms of human health, safe drinking water, and a clean environment. When the stakes are that high, everything we don’t know should be a red flag.

http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion/drill-deeper-%e2%80%a8new-york/23705/

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SANDRA STEINGRABER CALLS YOU TO ALBANY ON JANUARY 9, 2013

Dear fellow New Yorkers and anyone else.
For weeks now, I’ve been trying to finish a letter to you, but interruptions have been frequent. Here’s what I’ve got.
Dec. 7, 8:00 pm
After days of wild, record-breaking weather, our village winter festival was cancelled because of rain and flood warnings. When I told Elijah the bad news on the walk home from school, he began to cry. I told him I was sorry and that I knew how much he was looking forward to the festival.
He said, I’m not upset about the festival. I’m upset because the planet’s dying. I know this is all because of global warming. Just like the hurricane.
And this is what I heard myself say: Mom is on the job. I’m working on it. I’m working on it really hard, and I promise I won’t quit.
Now you are all my witnesses.
Dec. 26, 5:00 pm
These words are being written in a cinema bathroom. I’m the chaperone for my 14-year-old daughter and her friends—the movie is rated R—but I’ve snuck out of the theater to read the proposed revised draft regulations for fracking. There are 328 pages of them, and we’ve been given only 30 days to offer public comments—right in the middle of the holiday. Pretty much all I’ve done since December 12 is read regs and help people create comments. To that end, I’ve dreamed up an Advent calendar project called Thirty Days of Fracking Regs.
It’s tough sledding. None of us has access to the previous draft of the regulations—which was removed from the DEC website—so we can’t judge how it’s been revised. We don’t have access to the environmental impact statement that’s supposed to serve as the scientific basis for the regulations. That study is not even finished yet. But, as a last-minute maneuver to avoid blowing a deadline, the Department of Environmental Conservation released a huge batch of regulations anyway. They are hastily drawn and full of glaring errors. They are legal placeholders in the march toward fracking in New York State, which makes the whole exercise of submitting comments absurd and maddening.
But this I know: silence is consent.
It’s Day 15 in the regs comment calendar. I need to finish tomorrow’s post (Section 560.6, on the use of diesel fuel in fracking fluid) before the movie ends. Happily, it’sAnna Karenina. I can only hope that Leo Tolstoy and Tom Stoppard are keeping the sex and violence quotient under control.
Am I a terrible mother?
Dec. 27, noon
The deadline for finalizing the regulations is exactly two months from today: February 27.
It’s weird to see people shopping, heading out for the gym, and meeting for lunch as though life were normal. As though an army were not massing on the border with plans for occupation. Is that a crazy thought? But that’s how the gas industry talks: The shale army has arrived. Resistance is futile. Those were the actual words of Bill Gwozd, vice president of gas services for the Ziff Energy group.
I choose not to believe the second half of that statement.
The shale army is an accident-prone, carcinogen-dependent industry with no boundaries. The shale army seeks to use our land as its beachhead, our water as its battering ram, and our air as its receptacle for its toxic fumes. The proposed regs for New York are no defense. They do not prohibit flare stacks, open pits, or indefinite venting of toxic gases.
My son has a history of asthma. The land all around us is leased.
My daughter will be learning to drive soon. By that time, our rural roads could be filled with fleets of eighteen-wheelers hauling hazardous materials. Data from other states show that the arrival of drilling and fracking operations brings sharp upticks in traffic fatalities.
Resistance is not only necessary, it feels like a fundamental responsibility of parenthood.
This is what I tell my kids: Until further notice, mom is on anti-fracking detail. That’s where all our money is going. That’s where all my time is going. You’ll have to pack your own lunch. We’re on wartime footing now.
Am I a terrible Quaker?
Dec. 31, 11:00 pm
New Year’s Eve with the regs. It’s quiet. I’m working on Section 750.3 tonight. As I type, I see my father’s hands. He was an amazing typist. When I was a girl, he let me practice on his prized Selectric, and he challenged me with typing drills: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Over and over I typed those words. Faster and faster.
My father was a life-long Republican. He believed that the words “conservative” and “conservation” shared more than etymology. So do I.
Jan. 3, 2:00 am
I was about to go to bed when a story broke: someone just leaked a document from the NY Department of Public Health. It’s an eight-page analysis—drafted last February—that looks to be the beginnings of the health study that is being carried out in complete secrecy. If so, it confirms the worst fears of Concerned Health Professionals of New York. In letters to the Governor, in policy papers, and at press conferences, we’ve been calling for a transparent Heath Impact Assessment with public participation. This document repudiates that request.
In fact, this document repudiates the power of science altogether. In a series of assertions unencumbered by data, it seems to say that the health effects of fracking are both unknown and unknowable. A Health Impact Assessment is unnecessary because the uncertainties are too great to analyze, therefore the risks can be safely mitigated.
That’s not a scientifically sound line of reasoning.
Meanwhile, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are reporting an alarming 9 percent leakage rate from drilling and fracking operations. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas—way more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat. Methane leaks like that, if typical, would mean shale gas is a worse enemy to our climate than coal.
What role will science play in Governor Cuomo’s decision on fracking in New York, which grows ever nearer?
Jan 5, 1:00 pm
This is what I want to tell you:
Please come to Albany on Wednesday. The Governor is giving his annual State of the State speech, and the New Yorkers Against Fracking coalition is calling all New Yorkers to a rally outside the auditorium where he will be speaking. Buses are coming from all over our state. In those buses will be farmers, students, faith leaders, elected officials, scientists, doctors, nurses, parents, teachers, children, grandparents.
I want you on the bus. With all your friends. With signs and banners. With love and fierce resolve. Change all your plans and come.
There is nothing more important. Not your kid’s soccer practice. Not your yoga class. Not your career. We still have a chance here—in the still unfractured state of New York—to stop a brutal and extreme form of fossil fuel extraction, to show the world how to build a green energy economy, and to help Governor Cuomo keep his promise to lead on climate change. All that necessitates saying NO to fracking. Our children’s lives depend on our success.
To paraphrase my friend, Derek Jensen: The New Yorkers who come after us will not care how busy we were, nor how much we worried or grieved about their future. They are only going to care whether they can breathe the air and drink the water. They’re going to care whether the land is healthy enough to support them.
The Marcellus Shale is our Greensboro lunch counter. It’s our Stonewall riot. It’s our Seneca Falls Convention. This is our moment, and it hangs in the balance.
Love,
Sandra

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Backyard Talk

Poisoned Wells

Federal officials have given energy and mining companies permission to pollute aquifers in more than 1,500 places across the country, releasing toxic material into underground reservoirs that help supply more than half of the nation’s drinking water, according to a ProPublica 12/12/12 article.

“In many cases, the Environmental Protection Agency has granted these so-called aquifer exemptions in Western states now stricken by drought and increasingly desperate for water. EPA records show that portions of at least 100 drinking water aquifers have been written off because exemptions have allowed them to be used as dumping grounds.

“You are sacrificing these aquifers,” said Mark Williams, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado and a member of a National Science Foundation team studying the effects of energy development on the environment. “By definition, you are putting pollution into them. … If you are looking 50 to 100 years down the road, this is not a good way to go.”

As part of an investigation into the threat to water supplies from underground injection of waste, ProPublica set out to identify which aquifers have been polluted. We found the EPA has not even kept track of exactly how many exemptions it has issued, where they are, or whom they might affect…

The EPA is only supposed to issue exemptions if aquifers are too remote, too dirty, or too deep to supply affordable drinking water. Applicants must persuade the government that the water is not being used as drinking water and that it never will be. Sometimes, however, the agency has issued permits for portions of reservoirs that are in use, assuming contaminants will stay within the finite area exempted.

In Wyoming, people are drawing on the same water source for drinking, irrigation and livestock that, about a mile away, is being fouled with federal permission. In Texas, EPA officials are evaluating an exemption for a uranium mine — already approved by the state — even though numerous homes draw water from just outside the underground boundaries outlined in the mining company’s application.

The EPA declined repeated requests for interviews for this story, but sent a written response saying exemptions have been issued responsibly, under a process that ensures contaminants remain confined…

“What they don’t often consider is whether that waste will flow outside that zone of influence over time, and there is no doubt that it will,” said Mike Wireman, a senior hydrologist with the EPA who has worked with the World Bank on global water supply issues. “Over decades, that water could discharge into a stream. It could seep into a well. If you are a rancher out there and you want to put a well in, it’s difficult to find out if there is an exempted aquifer underneath your property.”


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Backyard Talk

Ohio Grassroots Call Out Lies of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association

During recent testimony on Ohio Governor Kasich so called “energy bill”, Tom Stewart, vice-president of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association testified that Ohio has the highest quality crude oil known to be produced in the world.  He testified that the crude is highly paraffinic and that they skim off the paraffin at the refineries to make candy out of it and also use it for coating on items like Advil and M&M’s.

Members of Frack Free Ohio sent Mr. Stewart some personalize M&M’s that read “Don’t Frac Ohio, Complements of Frack Free Ohio” and also posted on Mar’s Facebook page demanding to know if it is true that paraffin from crude oil is used to make the coating on M&M’s.  This morning a member of Frack Free Ohio received this from the company;

M&M’s U.S.A.
“Only high quality ingredients that meet or exceed all federal standards are used to manufacture M&M’S® Chocolate Candies. Only materials made from natural plant sources are used to coat the outside of the candies. Any information to the contrary is inaccurate.”

People should go to M&M’s Facebook and ask the company to either admit to using well paraffinic from oil and gas wells or to request a public apology and retraction from Tom Stewart. Here is M&M’s Facebook link http://www.facebook.com/mms

Here’s summary of the transcript of Tom Stewarts testimony:

Let me give you a good example. If you have a gas well, that flows naturally, but it produces some water, and if you don’t maintain that well, in such a way, the water will build up and creates hydrostatic weight in the formation and the well will stop producing.

You got a couple ways you can solve that problem. You can go into the well and swab it out, you can try putting pump equipment and get it to pump out, or you can try to get the well to flow again. Here’s how a producer gets it to flow again, he goes to the grocery store and he buys, Tide, and he puts it down the backside of the well which causes it to bubble up and foam up, lighten the fluid and the well flows.

So to ask the question, what do you want me, as a producer, to give you the CAS number of… Tide? ‘Cuz it’s something that’s put down the well and it’s stripped and brought back.

You’re pumping the well (unintelligible) with pump jacks, they’re actuated by separate rods connected to a bottom hole pump where the bottom of the tube is four thousand feet deep in the ground. You’re pumping that well, over time, scale builds up on the balls and seats that actuate the pump. . . You can put scale remover down the, uh, back side of that well, pump it up through the tubing, it eliminates the scale you don’t have to pull the well or the tubing for it pump. Ohio produces, probably the highest quality crude oil known to be produced in the world, it’s Penngrade 38 degree oil.  It’s highly paraffinic, they actually skim the paraffin off in refineries and make candy out of it, they also make, the coatings on Advil and M&M’s, so when you’re eating your next box of M&M’s, you’re eating crude oil.

And here is the You Tube link to word for word testimony.  Click here: Tom Stewart Testifies at Ohio Statehouse – YouTube

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Backyard Talk

Autism and Environmental Chemicals

CHEJ has been talking about the dangers of PCB’s in school lighting fixtures and how the chemical can affect children’s health. Last month, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported that autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 of every 88 American children — a 23% increase from 2006 and a 78% increase from 2002. CDC also reported that ADHD now affects 14% of American children.

As these disorders continue to affect more children across the U.S., researchers are asking what is causing these dramatic increases. Some of the explanation is greater awareness and more accurate diagnosis. But clearly, there is more to the story than simply genetics, as the increases are far too rapid to be of purely genetic origin.

The National Academy of Sciences reports that 3% of all neurobehavioral disorders in children are caused by toxic exposures in the environment and that another 25% are caused by interactions between environmental factors and genetics. But the precise environmental causes are not yet known.

To guide a research strategy to discover potentially preventable environmental causes, a list of ten chemicals found in consumer products that are suspected to contribute to autism and learning disabilities.

This list was published today in Environmental Health Perspectives in an editorial written by Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, director of the CEHC, Dr. Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and Dr. Luca Lambertini, also of the CEHC.

The top ten chemicals are:
1. Lead
2. Methylmercury
3. PCBs
4. Organophosphate pesticides
5. Organochlorine pesticides
6. Endocrine disruptors
7. Automotive exhaust
8. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
9. Brominated flame retardants
10. Perfluorinated compounds

The editorial was published alongside four other papers — each suggesting a link between toxic chemicals and autism.

There are things we can do as parents as concerned taxpayer and citizens. First, is to remove chemicals in areas that children frequent. As you may know CHEJ’s Children Environmental Health Program has been working on identifying and the removal PCBs in school lighting fixtures as well as removing other environmental chemicals from children environment such as emissions near schools.

As a humane society we cannot allow this devastating neurological problem to continue to rise in our children. It is time to speak up and out about environmental chemicals and children’s health. It is time to ask our health authorities to explore where children may be being exposed and eliminate that source of exposure. This is especially true in the case of PCBs and school lighting(schools built before 1980 and had no retrofitting) since this is a win win situation. The school district can remove exposure and save money on the energy efficiency of new lighting fixture.

Our children are our future. Let’s protect them . . . our future depends on their leadership.

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Backyard Talk

EPA Caving To The Chemical Industry-Election Year Posturing?

I can’t help but wonder if President Obama is posturing for re-elections trying to appease the all powerful oil, gas and chemical industries. It’s been over two years since the USEPA released their preliminary clean up goals for dioxin. These are clean up goals or levels that can be left in soil, and were based upon scientific studies that looked at non cancer effects. Health effects like birth defects, learning disabilities, miscarriages and more.

After EPA published the clean up goals they went to the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) where they sat for nearly two years. I had the opportunity to meet with OMB staff working on the dioxin goals and walked away angry and frustrated. I rename the agency the Office of Mannequin Bodies because no one would say anything–literally.

Today, EPA announced that they have withdrawn the clean up goals from OMB and will essentially abandoning them. This means that every state will use the scientific report, released in February of non-cancer dioxin effects to set their own guideline. Unbelievable, since today EPA has the scientific report (released in February) to support their proposed clean up goals. What this means is in each state the corporations will come to the table ready to play Monty Hall’s “Let’s Make A Deal!”

So states with big corporations ruling the governance will deal a whole lot different than those with stricter regulations and public support. Some sites could be cleaned up to protective levels, and others well . . . who knows.

In the simplest format of Let’s Make A Deal, a trader is given a prize of medium value (such as a television set or in this case a almost good clean up), and the host offers them the opportunity to trade for another prize. But a poorer state with little money and political influence could get “Zonked” an unwanted booby prizes, which could be anything, fake money, fake trips or something outlandish like a fake clean up.

Communities deserve equal protection from dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals on the planet. We know the chemical industry has invested significant resources lobbying against EPA’s proposed cleanup levels. Is EPA caving into the chemical industry during an election year? What is going on here? All of a sudden EPA has withdrawn them from OMB review, without any public notice or participation.

We call on EPA Administrator Jackson to move swiftly to finalize and release final dioxin cleanup guidelines once and for all, especially now that the non-cancer health assessment is complete. Infants and young children are already being exposed to dioxin levels higher than what EPA considers acceptable.