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Month: January 2015

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Backyard Talk

Ohio Govenor Kills Green Energy & NYS Invests

It was only a short while ago when the Ohio Legislature essential killed all efforts to bring clean green energy and energy use reduction to the state. Ohio Gov. John Kasich dashed the hopes of environmentalists, leading manufacturers and renewable-energy businesses in June when he signed a bill shelving requirements for utilities to ramp up the use of renewable energy and energy efficiency. Kasich welcomes fracking and other nasty industrial processes to his state while other states are taking a more proactive and protective direction.

Recently, New York Governor Cuomo announced a ban on fracking in NY sighting the many unknown health issues that  have not been addressed and the potential impacts are too great to allow fracking to proceed in the state at this time.

Acting Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said that in other states where fracking is already happening, he found that state health commissioners “weren’t even at the table” when decisions about the process were made.

Zucker add “I cannot support high-volume hydraulic fracturing in the great state of New York,” also noting that he would not live in a community that allows fracking and would not want his children to play in the soil in such a place.

We give the Governor of NY an A+ for his due diligence in protecting the citizens of NY and the Governor of Ohio a big fat red letter F for his lack of caring or concern for the residents of his state.


This January 2015 NYS Governor began pushing for investments in clean green energy.

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For BPA, Does the Dose Make the Poison?

For those who keep up with environmental health research and chemical regulations, it is no surprise to come across conflicting reports on the safety or risk of various compounds. This week, in the case of the compound bisphenol A (BPA), these conflicting reports happened to emerge almost simultaneously. On January 21st, the European Food Safety Authority declared that BPA “poses no health risk to consumers of any age group…at current exposure levels.” The next day, a study published in the journal PLoS Genetics showed that even low and short-term exposures to BPA and other hormone-mimicking compounds could alter stem cells and lead to lower sperm counts.

BPA is a common ingredient in plastics used for food and drink containers. Its hormone-like properties allow it to disrupt the endocrine system, with potential health effects ranging from reproductive issues to cancer. Though BPA has been banned in baby bottles in the U.S., and BPA-free products have become widely available since concerns about the compound were first raised in 2008, it remains in products from water bottles to the inside coatings of cans.

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David McNew via Getty Images

‘The dose makes the poison’ is a well-known adage in toxicology, implying that even hazardous chemicals can be harmless at low enough concentrations. However, decades of research have shown this to be an overly simplistic way of analyzing toxic exposures.  Dr. Theo Colborn, who passed away on December 14th, 2014, was a pioneering researcher in the field of endocrine disruption and a tireless advocate for precautionary chemical regulation. Her research on endocrine disruption demonstrated that even very low concentrations of harmful chemicals could result in changes to the reproductive system, particularly in developing babies and children who have less of a tolerance for exposure than adults. She also demonstrated that not all effects of toxic chemicals are immediately apparent, but can occur decades and even generations later.

The study published last week focused on both questions of concentration and timing. The researchers tested estrogenic compounds including BPA on mice, and found that they alter the stem cells, or undifferentiated cells, which are responsible for sperm production later in life. Patricia Hunt, the researcher who led the study, told Environmental Health News that exposure to even low doses of estrogens “is not simply affecting sperm being produced now, but impacting the stem cell population, and that will affect sperm produced throughout the lifetime.”

Uncertainties remain in the wake of this study. For instance, the researchers are still investigating whether the changes observed can cross generations, or whether the same changes can occur in human reproductive stem cells. The EFSA also recognized uncertainties in non-dietary sources of BPA, and they are still conducting long-term studies in rats. While scientists and regulators continue to chase answers, this past week shines a spotlight on the complicated realm of environmental health risk assessment, and shows the continued relevance of Dr. Theo Colborn’s work and legacy. Dose is indeed important in making a poison, but so is timing of exposure, and time itself in revealing the chronic and transgenerational effects of chemicals.

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Demand What You Want-Not What’s “Feasible”

Truer words have never been spoken. In CHEJ’s recent training on Lessons Learned from New York State, which recently banned fracking until it can be proven safe, Eric Weltman from Food and Water Watch told the group to demand what you want not what is feasible.

I find it frustrating and a bit troubling when I visit communities who are struggling to protect their health and environment from environmental threats and they ask for less than they deserve and need. When I ask leaders, “why short change themselves,” they often respond saying they don’t want to sound unreasonable or worse because their opponents said it’s too expensive. Leaders and community members are often bullied into believing that they must take less or they won’t get anything. This is just not true.

At Love Canal in 1978, our community was told that government does not evacuate families and purchase homes because of toxic pollution. If we didn’t stick to our goal we would never had been evacuated. When the environmental health and justice movement demanded that no more commercial landfills be built, we were all told it must go somewhere. Several years later up until today no new commercial hazardous wastes landfills have been built, although it is still legal to do so.

In one of CHEJ’s consumer campaigns around a multinational corporation, we were demanding they take certain products off their shelves. The corporations response was, we won’t be bullied by radical environmental group. Yet a short time later they did exactly what we and consumers across the country asked.

No one should ask or accept as the final decision, what is not right and fair. However, winning the big ask is more difficult and demands serious discipline. Everyone needs to be on the same page and demand the same goal. Yes, there are always those few who will say out loud and even in the media that they would be wiling to accept less. Yet if the loud vocal people, the base of the majority, the framers of the campaign stick with their larger goal for justice, they will dominate the campaign. Those with smaller goals will be essential drowned out by the voices and actions of this  larger group.

This was the case in New York State around fracking. There were good people who would have accepted better regulations or only drilling in certain parts of the state. In every issue those working from various groups often have different goals. Sometimes their efforts help build toward the larger goal and other times they may be an irritation. The key to win it all is to build larger stronger, more visible opposition and demand for the larger goals. In this way you can win your goals without publicly fighting with others.

As Eric told us, “we were relentless. With op-eds, press events, using the public participation/comment period to submit a hundred thousands of “comments” that said Ban Fracking Now –not detailed line by line comments about regulations that were proposed. Hundreds of groups participated in bird dogging the governor who couldn’t go anywhere without a group, small or large in his face demanding he ban fracking.”

Secondly, Eric was clear that you need a single target, in NYS it was the governor. “You need to find the person who has the power to give you what you are demanding,” he said. I would add that it always needs to be a person not an entity, like regulatory agency or corporation. You need a human face on your opponent and your messengers to make it all work.

This is a time tested strategy and if you follow it you are more likely to receive a higher level of justice not a compromising solution.

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President Obama Holds the Power to Protect America from Keystone

In the first week of 2015, President Obama sent a clear message to the new Republican congress that he intends to stand firm in his commitment to uphold the health of environment and the American public. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said on January 6 in a public statement that president Obama would veto any effort to move forward with the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline Act. Now, after the Keystone Act was passed in the House and is scheduled for a vote in the Senate, we hope that the President will stand firm by his promise.

This Keystone XL Pipeline Act is an effort that pushes for the completion of a pipeline that would transport oil tar sands from the Canadian province of Alberta, through Montana and South Dakota, and into Nebraska. Republican leads have been pushing for the Keystone pipeline since 2008, with a virtually identical bill failing to make it through the Senate as recently as last November. However, with the newly shaped senate in place and an already approved vote of 266-153 in the House of Representatives, the President faces a tough task in keeping the pipeline from harming the health of millions of Americans.

The concerns surrounding the Keystone pipeline are staggering. Firstly, the type of oil being mined and moved, oil sand tar, produces as much as 22% more carbon emissions than other fuels according to a Stanford University study commissioned by the EU in 2011. Secondly, the potential for a spill is highly likely, as is evidenced by the previous A tar sand spill in Mayflower AR, and could contaminate drinking water and agricultural land with toxic chemicals as the Environmental Working Group’s Poisons in the Pipeline investigation revealed.

Now that the Keystone Act is in the Senate floor and multiple amendments that would mitigate the pipeline’s destructive effects are being shot down by the Republican majority, the President’s resolution will be tested to its fullest. Although the Act has every chance of making it through the Senate, the president still hold the ultimate say. His veto power may be the only thing that stands to protect the American public from the unthinkable harms that the Keystone Pipeline would bring.

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Commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. left many legacies – as a crusader for civil rights, voting rights, religious harmony, peace and economic justice. As we reflect on his legacy, I was struck by a story written by Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post that talked about how “timeless” King’s economic message was (“to our society’s great shame”) and how much further we still have to go.

In the weeks before his death, King was preparing for a march on Washington as part of the Poor People’s Campaign, and he formulated a speech called “The Other America.” Although not as well known as King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, there’s much that still rings true in this speech five decade later. Robinson quotes King’s speech given in New York City in March 1968:

“One America is flowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of equality. That America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies, culture and education for their minds, freedom and human dignity for their spirits … But as we assemble here tonight, I’m sure that each of us is painfully aware of the fact that there is another America, and that other America has daily ugliness about it that transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair. In that other America millions of people find themselves forced to live in inadequate substandard housing, and often dilapidated housing conditions…

“In this other America, thousands of young people are deprived of an opportunity to get an adequate education … because the schools are so inadequate, so over-crowded, so devoid of quality, so segregated if you will, that the best in these minds can never come out.

According to Robinson, the problem was structural as he quoted King further: “This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.”

Robinson states that King continued this theme eight days later when he addressed striking sanitation workers in Memphis: “Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day? They are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. These are the facts which must be seen, and it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and full-time job getting part-time income.”

According to Robinson, King explained the shift in his focus:

“Now our struggle is for genuine economic equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?“

Robinson concludes with “What King saw in 1968 – and what we all should recognize today – is that it is useless to try to address race without also taking on the larger issue of inequality.”

To read the Robinson’s article in full, go to

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-mlks-call-for-economic-justice/2015/01/15/3599cb70-9cfe-11e4-96cc-e858eba91ced_story.html

To read King’s Other America speech in full, go to http://www.gphistorical.org/mlk/mlkspeech/mlk-gp-speech.pdf


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Former DNR Official Issues Open Letter About Handling of Burning Bridgeton Landfill

A former official with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources writes a sizzling farewell letter about the burning Bridgeton landfill. He has issued an open letter claiming politics – not science – is dominating the state’s handling of the landfill crisis. Norris says within the DNR, scientists are “losing their minds because they are fighting their own management structure,” which seems more concerned with politics than public safety. He says there is “an overall cozy relationship between the landfill owner and the DNR.” Read more.

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DuPont Chemical potentially facing charges and Keystone XL on the ropes again

One of the most leading chemical companies in the United States, Dupont, is in legal crosshairs for allegedly exposing workers at a Houston area Pesticide plant with dangerous fumes  for numerous years. This comes in the wake of the death of four employees who died on Nov. 15th of last year from exposure to the chemical methyl mercaptan.

Acording to the Washington Post, “Based on state records and the company’s own disclosures, the newspaper concluded that workers could have been exposed to the gas far above the levels deemed acceptable by OHSA since 2008. As much as 600 parts per million of the gas an hour could have filled a poorly ventilated room, but federal guidelines say workers shouldn’t be exposed to more than an average of 10 ppm per day of the gas, which is used to manufacture insecticide and fungicide.”

DuPont, as of now, has declined to comment on the news.

Meanwhile Keystone XL is potential facing a lawsuit from Nebraska farmers. Ranchers in Nebraska whose property lies in the path of the pipeline have come out in a video declaration on Youtube from lawyers representing landowners.

According to the Gaurdian, “The threat of a new lawsuit, delivered in a video ultimatum from the ranchers’ lawyers, is almost certain to extend the saga of the Keystone XL in Nebraska – and in Washington, where open debate was scheduled to begin in the Senate on Monday afternoon ahead of an expected veto threat from Barack Obama.”

Its seems the winds have changed in regards to Keystone since the past few years when it seemed its construction was almost certain, now it’s fighting for a mere chance.

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Citizen Science: Tracking The Air We Breathe

Smartphone apps and portable gadgets have made it possible for individuals to get up-to-the-minute information on their own vital signs and activity levels. What if we could just as easily monitor environmental impacts on our health, tracking real-time data on pollution exposures? Development of portable sensing devices is making this individualized approach to air quality monitoring a possibility for people worldwide, and is fueling citizen science initiatives to more comprehensively track pollution on a global scale.

The Air Quality Egg, the Smart Citizen Kit, and the DustDuino are just a few examples of this new type of gadget, which can measure levels of particulate matter and other pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide. Nature has dubbed these devices “Sensors for the People.”  Data from these devices may be able to fill in the gaps left by official monitoring networks, whose sensors are, according to Nature, “sophisticated but sparsely distributed.”

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Graphic from Nature.com

While data from official monitoring networks is important from a regulatory standpoint, it holds little relevance for individuals’ health. In fact, fixed sensors are generally inadequate for predicting environmental exposures, because people pass through so many different microenvironments throughout their days. A study at Columbia University fitted students with portable sensors and found that the majority of their exposure to airborne metals came from riding on the subway, rather than from breathing the air in their homes. Data from portable sensors can provide more pertinent information on individual exposures in the home, in transit, and in the workplace than the values obtained at the nearest monitoring station.

According to Nature, these approaches are “part of an effort to democratize air-quality monitoring so that it no longer remains solely in the domain of governments and academic researchers.” This may be a powerful shift in monitoring, particularly for areas facing both air pollution and a lack of readily-available data . Wired recently reported on David Lu, a UC Berkeley student from Shanghai who has collaborated with other students to develop a sensor and launch a startup for monitoring air quality in China, where reports have surfaced that some governments are blocking pollution data from being publicly available.

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Clarity Sensor (Image from Wired)

These portable sensors allow people to collect air quality data on their own personal environments, but data can also be aggregated to create more accurate pollution maps. That is the next phase of Lu and his fellow students’ project; essentially, they will be crowdsourcing data from China and other highly polluted areas to make air pollution mapping easier.

While research is taking off at some institutions and public enthusiasm is growing, the atmospheric science community has had a more tempered response to these devices. “Monitoring air-pollution levels is far more involved than the manufacturers and suppliers of cheap sensors suggest,” Ben Barratt, a British Air Quality Scientist said to Nature, citing differences in temperature and humidity as some of the complicating factors that make it difficult to cross-compare results between devices. Part of the reason why there are few official monitoring sites is because they take a lot of maintenance and care to ensure the data is accurate.

Though the data generated from these sensors does not currently hold up under sufficient scientific scrutiny for use in a regulatory context, citizen sensing projects are still in their early stages, and future technical developments may give crowdsourced pollution readings more clout. In the meantime, citizen scientists are developing the frameworks necessary for widespread monitoring of one of the biggest environmental health threats of our time.

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Guest Blog: Fracking Impacts Without Drilling

Guest blog by Ann M. Nau, Vice President, Myersville Citizens for a Rural Community

In talking about ‘fracking’, oftentimes the industry tries to limit the discussion to the actual process of injecting liquid at high pressure into rock formations to extract gas. However, there is a broad network of infrastructure that is required to support that process, including storage facilities, compressor stations, metering stations, processing facilities, gathering lines, and intrastate and interstate pipelines. And regulatory oversight of those components falls to various local and federal agencies, if it is regulated at all. Very generally speaking, activities related to drilling fall under state authority while the federal government has oversight of interstate pipelines and associated facilities.  And what that means for towns like Myersville is that while there is currently no fracking in Maryland, the natural gas boom has already negatively affected our community.

Myersville is a picturesque rural community of approximately 1,600, nestled in the Middletown Valley of Frederick County, MD about 40 miles north of Washington, DC. It is a place where families have lived for generations and where newcomers have settled, seeking the serenity and closeness a small town offers.

And it is here, approximately 1 mile from our only elementary school that Dominion Transmission (DTI), a subsidiary of Virginia-based power giant Dominion, sought to build and operate a 16 thousand horsepower natural gas compressor station to move gas along its interstate pipeline. This station would annually release 23.5 tons per year of Nitrogen Oxides in addition to particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, and green houses gases.

The citizens of Myersville were overwhelming opposed to this plan. We held rallies, wrote over 600 opposition letters, hired an attorney, and formed a community group.

In August of 2012, the Town Council unanimously voted against Dominion’s application to amend the Town Master Plan, finding among others things that the project posed a risk to the citizens.  And by doing so, the Town denied Dominion the necessary local zoning approval required by Maryland Department of the Environment to issue an air permit.  Despite all of this, in December of 2012, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or FERC authorized the project.  Armed with that certificate, DTI sued both the Town of Myersville and MDE, using the power of federal preemption granted in the Natural Gas Act to override local and state zoning.

FERC is an independent regulatory agency within the US Department of Energy with jurisdiction over interstate electricity sales, natural gas pricing, and oil pipeline rates.  It also reviews and authorizes liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, interstate natural gas pipelines and hydropower projects. The   Commission is composed of five embers, or Commissioners, who are appointed by the President and

In spite of our best efforts, as you enter Myersville, you are greeted by Dominion’s toxic-emission spewing gas compressor station. And while Myersville may be one of the first communities in Maryland impacted by build out from fracking, I can assure you it will not be the last. Already, our friends in Cove Point, MD are battling the LNG export plant and Williams Transco seeks approval to increase compression capabilities in Howard County. In fact, an industry group states that to support natural gas drilling nationally, they will need PER YEAR for the next 25 years1:

•           850 miles of new natural gas transmission mainlines,

•           Over 800 miles of new laterals to and from power plants, processing facilities and storage fields

•           14,000 miles of new gas gathering lines

•           More than 580,000 hp for pipelines and gathering compression

To put that into perspective, here is a 2008 map of natural gas pipelines and compressor stations.



So when we discuss fracking, we need to consider all the impacts associated with it– from drilling rigs, compressor stations, pipelines, processing plants, storage facilities and export plants.  We must not allow separate regulatory schemes to divide and conquer us.  Because what happens to our neighbors in West Virginia, in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, in Western MD, in Myersville, in Howard County, in Lusby, affects all us.

1http://www.ingaa.org/file.aspx?id=21498

Ann M. Nau is the Vice President of the Myersville Citizens for a Rural Community, http://mcrcmd.org/.

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Grassroots Activism Makes the Difference in New York

Right before Christmas, the Washington Post ran an interesting article you may have missed. It laid out the conundrum of two states coming to very different conclusions about fracking within its boundaries. Both states, New York and Maryland, had moratoriums in place and were evaluating pretty much the same technical and scientific information, yet they came to very different conclusions.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo chose to ban the practice of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” in New York State. Fracking is the process of injecting a chemical/water mixture under extreme pressure deep into the earth in order to “fracture” rock and release natural gas (or oil). Cuomo’s decision followed a report from the New York Department of Health that found “significant public health risks” associated with fracking including concerns about water contamination and air pollution. In a press statement, the state health commissioner stated that there was “insufficient scientific evidence to affirm the safety of fracking.”

On the other hand, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley decided to allow fracking go forward in the western part of the state. This decision was based on a joint report from  the Maryland Departments of the Environment and Natural Resources, which concluded that with adequate regulation, “the risks of Marcellus Shale development can be managed to an acceptable level.” Both reports acknowledged that there are risks from fracking, due primarily to groundwater and air contamination, but also that there is a great deal that is not known about the extent of these risks, or the long term effects.

The articles concludes “that these two decisions on fracking, while draped in scientific language, were — in fact — probably not really scientific decisions at all.” Thank you Washington Post for pointing out what grassroots activists have known for years – that most decisions about environmental risks are based on political, economic and other factors, and not on available science, no matter what anyone tells you.

The article goes on to attribute the different decisions to four factors – politics, who did the studies for each state, the amount of land affected and the use of the precautionary principle by one state (NY) and not the other. All these factors liked came into play, but there‘s another factor not mentioned that likely played an even larger role, and that is the role of grassroots activism. In New York, grassroots activists were overwhelmingly opposed to fracking and this position was repeatedly made known to Cuomo and other state decision-makers. Since being elected in 2010 Cuomo could not go anywhere in the state without seeing signs asking him to ban fracking. This message was delivered time after time by numerous groups in New York as well as by celebrities, scientists and others.

The lesson here isn’t that reasonable agencies and state governors came to different decisions based on different evidence and information. It’s that the grassroots activism in New York made a huge difference and helped convince Cuomo and other decision makers in the state that there was enough known about the risks posed by fracking not to move forward and that the unknown risks were too serious to ignore.