Center for Health, Environment & Justice
Donate

Author: chejadmin

Categories
Backyard Talk

Superfund Under Attack

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy, chaired by Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), held a hearing this week on three legislative proposals that pose a serious danger to the Federal Superfund toxic waste site cleanup program.  Earthjustice, Sierra Club, CHEJ and others are sending a letter to the policymakers this week to express strong opposition to the “Federal and State Partnership for Environmental Protection Act of 2013,” which weakens the nation’s Superfund law  and places American communities at risk of increased toxic exposure. The bill will increase litigation that will cause delays in cleanups and establish roadblocks to listing new toxic waste sites. The amendments contained in the bill will place our communities and their environment in danger and increase the cost of hazardous waste cleanup for U.S. taxpayers. 

While the Republicans are attacking Superfund, they are also continuing to oppose refinancing the financially ailing program, which means hundreds of leaking toxic waste sites are not being cleaned up.  This is a travesty and a public health crisis. 


Categories
Backyard Talk

Trouble at Marathon: Detroit Residents Tormented by Tar Sands Refinery

A black plume of noxious gas enveloped adjacent neighborhoods after a fire broke out at the Marathon Detroit Refinery on April 27th. Residents of nearby Melvindale were evacuated by town officials after the fire was designated a Level 3 Hazard. However, residents of Detroit received no immediate warning nor a call for evacuation by the city of Detroit, sparking outrage by the affected, predominantly African American community.  Residents complained of a lingering “foul egg smell” as well as general irritation in breathing, a local Fox station reported.

“The Marathon oil refinery fire was ultimately not a Level 3 Hazardous Materials incident, although that was the initial declaration based on preliminary information,” Detroit Fire Commissioner Donald Austin told the Detroit News. Officials are still testing air quality post-explosion. An environmental justice organizer at the Michigan Sierra Club Chapter, Rhonda Anderson, worries about a potential misreading of the samples taken by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “The EPA did not arrive until after the fires had already been contained.” Anderson said by telephone, “This is the data the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality chose to go on”.

Since 2001, Marathon has racked up 13 air pollution violations by the MDEQ, including a nuisance violation for a continuing overpowering odor reported by community leaders. “We found terrible things. Carcinogens, carbon monoxide, benzene and toluene, which harm the nervous system, methyl ethyl ketone, which can cause blindness. A lot of really bad stuff,” local activist and cancer survivor Theresa Landrum reported.

In a 2011 study, Professor Paul Mohai from the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment investigated air pollution around Michigan schools and its potential impact on academic performance in children. The study concluded that schools located near areas of heavy industry faced an increased chance of children developing neurological damage — in turn affecting academic performance– after exposure to high levels of air pollutants common to the burning of fossil fuels.

Marathon specializes in processing a type of heavy crude from Canada known as tar sands, which a study by Forest Ethics found releases heavy quantities of sulfur dioxide, a chemical associated with respiratory illness. The study referenced a 2010 EPA investigation of the local sewer system adjacent to the refinery, “finding cancer-causing chemicals benzene, toluene, and hydrogen sulfide,” known byproducts of tar sands refining and the  source of complaints of respiratory problems by nearby residents.

In 2012, Marathon completed its Detroit Heavy Oil Upgrade Project, a $2.2 billion expansion of its refining capacity; raising its input of Canadian heavy crude to an additional four hundred barrels a day. Marathon has also taken it upon itself to buy out local homeowners to build “green spaces,” an effort some suspect was designed to placate locals furious over the expansion. The Detroit Free Press noted many residents have sharply criticized the program, claiming the “purchasing agreement would bar them from suing Marathon for any future health problems.”

Marathon’s torment of the community is not an issue unique to Detroit. Rather, it is part of a larger problem of poor regulation of refineries that continues to make the lives of low-income families a low priority. The looming decision on whether the Keystone XL pipeline will win approval by the President will decide the fate of many communities near refineries, because the pipeline would bring heavy crude from Canada through the Midwest to Texas.

Residents of Port Arthur, Texas, have long battled the Valero Refinery, which like Marathon processes heavy crude. Hilton Kelley, head of Community In-power and Development Association (CIDA) and a life-long resident, said more tar sands crude would lead to “a serious increase of sulfur dioxide in our community.”

“This is what happens when you roll back regulations on safety,” Kelley said by phone. “These people don’t really care about the welfare of our communities”.

Categories
Backyard Talk

New Coal “Report Card” Exposes Worst Offenders in Coal Financing

By Andrew Morris

The Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network and BankTrack last month released a list of the 10 worst offenders in coal financing.  It is no surprise that banks such as J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and Bank of America are on the list, given their copious lending to companies that operate coal-fired power plants and practice mountaintop-removal mining.

The 10 banks highlighted in the report loaned a combined $20 billion to coal companies. While this is a daunting figure, overall usage of coal-fired power has declined by 11 percent since 2011, potentially signaling a slow demise of the practice. Until then, coal-fired power plants continue to be among the more environmentally devastating forms of energy production, with proven links to groundwater and surface water contamination; climate change; and human health problems triggered by toxic levels of mercury and coal dust.

Coal production generates a half trillion dollars in externalized environmental and health costs each year, as noted in a 2011 Harvard School of Public Health study. The costs range from hospitalization for residents of coal communities – who have higher-than-average mortality rates and suffer disproportionately from cancer and other illnesses– to water pollution and toxic waste spills.

The “report card” released by the three groups this week gave the lowest grades to BNY Mellon for its financing of both mountaintop removal and coal-burning power plants; the bank was given “F’s” in both categories. Close behind was Goldman Sachs, which got two “D’s.”

“As the costs of climate disruption for our communities and future generations mount, U.S. banks continue to finance tens of billion dollars for companies that are mining and burning coal we can no longer afford to burn,” Ben Collins, research and policy campaigner for Rainforest Action Network’s Energy and Finance Program, said in a press release.

Categories
Backyard Talk

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/

Categories
Backyard Talk

Radioactive Guinea Pigs

“This is a public health policy only Dr. Strangelove could embrace,” said Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) Executive Director Jeff Ruch,  This week, the White House approved a radical radiation cleanup rollback that will threaten people near radioactive accidents. Cancer deaths are expected to skyrocket after radiological accidents with the harmful new “cleanup” standard.

“The White House has given final approval for dramatically raising permissible radioactive levels in drinking water and soil following “radiological incidents,” such as nuclear power-plant accidents and dirty bombs. The final version, slated for Federal Register publication is a win for the nuclear industry which seeks what its proponents call a “new normal” for radiation exposure among the U.S population, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

 Issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the radiation guides (called Protective Action Guides or PAGs) allow cleanup many times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These guides govern evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, food restrictions and other actions following a wide range of “radiological emergencies.” The Obama administration blocked a version of these PAGs from going into effect during its first days in office. The version given approval late last Friday is substantially similar to those proposed under Bush but duck some of the most controversial aspects:

 In soil, the PAGs allow long-term public exposure to radiation in amounts as high as 2,000 millirems. This would, in effect, increase a longstanding 1 in 10,000 person cancer rate to a rate of 1 in 23 persons exposed over a 30-year period;  In water, the PAGs punt on an exact new standard and EPA “continues to seek input on this.” But the thrust of the PAGs is to give on-site authorities much greater “flexibility” in setting aside established limits; and resolves an internal fight inside EPA between nuclear versus public health specialists in favor of the former. The PAGs are the product of Gina McCarthy, the assistant administrator for air and radiation whose nomination to serve as EPA Administrator is taken up this week by the Senate.

Despite the years-long internal fight, this is the first public official display of these guides. This takes place as Japan grapples with these same issues in the two years following its Fukushima nuclear disaster.

“This is a public health policy only Dr. Strangelove could embrace. If this typifies the environmental leadership we can expect from Ms. McCarthy, then EPA is in for a long, dirty slog,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the EPA package lacks a cogent rationale, is largely impenetrable and hinges on a series of euphemistic “weasel words.” “No compelling justification is offered for increasing the cancer deaths of Americans innocently exposed to corporate miscalculations several hundred-fold.”

 Reportedly, the PAGs had been approved last fall but their publication was held until after the presidential election. The rationale for timing their release right before McCarthy’s confirmation hearing is unclear. Since the PAGs guide agency decision-making and do not formally set standards or repeal statutory requirements, such as the Safe Drinking Water Act and Superfund, they will go into full effect following a short public comment period. Nonetheless, the PAGs will likely determine what actions take place on the ground in the days, weeks, months and, in some cases, years following a radiological emergency. “

 For more information, go to http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/2013/04/08/white-house-approves-radical-radiation-cleanup-rollback/


Categories
Backyard Talk

An Insider's View of The Toy Industry Association Flyering Event

My name is Tommy Mutell and I just started working at CHEJ’s New York City office as an intern last month. Last Tuesday I was given the opportunity to participate in a flyering event alongside about forty other people organized by the JustGreen Partnership to bring awareness to the nation-wide lobbying efforts of the Toy Industry Association (TIA) against the discontinuation of harmful chemicals such as BPA, phthalates, and mercury in toys.

TIA claims to have the best interests of its consumers as a primary mission to their association. However, what they say to consumers about toy safety and what they do regarding toy safety legislation and regulations are two different things. Our time at the Toy Fair, an event that attracted tens of thousands of visitors from 92 countries, was spent calling out TIA for their recent lobbying of continued usage of toxic chemicals in toys and other consumer products.

“The Toy Industry Association should stop toying around with our children’s health, and support state and federal efforts to protect children from toxic chemicals in children’s products,” said Mike Schade, Campaign Coordinator with the Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ).

The flyering event was really a great learning experience and I received a lot of satisfaction in helping to spread the word to the issues we are working to resolve. It felt like the few dozen of us accomplished the amount of work in about an hour that it would take me alone months to complete. I am learning that our collaborative efforts of flyering and raising awareness are really at the frontline of making an impact and bringing about change, and I am going to continue to work on the discontinuation of toxic chemicals in toys and consumer products in the months to come.  I also enjoyed meeting and working with other interns, staff, and volunteers at different environmental groups within the city, as well as members of NYPIRG, the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, and the Center for Environmental Health to name a few.

Categories
Backyard Talk

Naptime Nightmares

A California watchdog group is suing major manufacturers and retailers, including Target and Amazon.com, for selling baby nap mats made with a toxic flame retardant that is also a known carcinogen, according to the San Francisco Chronicle (2/21/13).

The lawsuit is the latest legal move for the group, which last year put the companies on notice for selling or making similarly contaminated changing pads, crib mattresses and other items. While some of the manufacturers and retailers say they’ve started to change their practices, the Center for Environmental Health says it wants the courts to require swift action.

Many foam nap mats, which are widely used at places like day care centers, are doused with flame retardants linked to obesity, hormone disruption and infertility, according to the lawsuit. One of those flame retardants is chlorinated Tris, a carcinogen that was banned more than 30 years ago from children’s pajamas, the group says. These chemicals are released into the air that infants and toddlers inhale as they doze on the mats, said Caroline Cox, the center’s research director. “Kids are sleeping on them with their nose practically right up against the mat,” she said.

According to a report released by the Center, a Duke University scientist found flame retardants in 22 out of 24 nap mats that researchers bought or borrowed in California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and other states. According to the lawsuit, the companies illegally failed to inform consumers that the products contain chlorinated Tris, which was banned from pajamas in 1979. That omission violates Proposition 65, the state’s consumer protection law, which requires warning labels on products with certain toxicants, the group said. The group said it can only sue sellers and makers of items with chlorinated Tris, because the other flame retardants found are not subject to Prop. 65.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Toxic-nap-mats-draw-suit-in-Oakland-4292200.php#ixzz2LZIds2z1

Categories
Backyard Talk

Toxic Flipper Dies

A polluted dolphin in Brooklyn was “killed by government incompetence,” wrote Andrea Peyser’s in her New York Post article, January 28, 2013.

“It broke the heart of the hardest New Yorker. Even mine. Just one living soul in this city was slain during the nine days ending Friday, during a bone-chilling cold snap that kept the guns still. The Gowanus Canal Dolphin. The marine mammal was a victim of another kind of homicide. The dolphin was killed by acute bureaucratic neglect and incompetence. There was no saving the poor, lost soul. Rest in peace.

The species is called the common dolphin. But there was nothing common about this gentle creature. The 6-foot miracle floated Friday morning to a spot near Union Street, in the revolting and polluted Brooklyn canal. It’s a 1.8-mile garbage dump stretching from Gowanus Bay to New York Harbor.

Like a long, filthy puddle, the canal is strewn with more than a century’s worth of foulness. Old tires, used syringes, grocery carts.

Pesticides. Metals. Cancer-causing PCBs. The Gowanus has long been bestowed with the reputation of being the spot where the mob disposes of bodies, which are meant to virtually dissolve in the putrid water.

In the late ’90s, a photographer I know found a corpse floating in the murky canal. Cops told him the dead man was probably killed by a prostitute. Nothing to see here.

And yet the rancid waterway sits between the multimillion-dollar houses of star-choked Park Slope (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Patrick Stewart) and fame-friendly Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Boerum Hill (Norah Jones, Michelle Williams). How authorities could allow the Gowanus to exist in its rank condition for a day, let alone 100-plus years, is a made-in-New York mystery. (The thing was built in the mid-19th century, and deteriorated as quickly as people could invent chemicals to dump.)

Maybe the dolphin, sick or hurt, sensed he was in friendly company. No one knows where the animal came from. The age is unknown. The beast was male, said biologists.

A crowd formed for hours as the dolphin, its dorsal fin bleeding, swam in circles, gasping for air. Clinging to life. I’m not what you would call an animal person. But the mesmerizing sight of the dolphin swimming in a nasty realm not known to support amoebas, let alone a magnificent creature, gave me hope.

Rescue workers arrived. People prayed. Shortly after 5 p.m., a lone man stepped into the ice-cold water, risking infection or disease. He stroked the dolphin, gently. The animal seemed to like it. The man did what rescue workers would not.

Police and experts from the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research decided against going in the cesspool of a canal. They waited instead for the tide to rise at about 7 p.m., allowing the animal to swim to safety without stressing out, or grossing out, workers.

“We’re concerned about the animal, but we’re concerned about our safety first,” biologist Julika Wocial told The Post. By 5:30 p.m., the dolphin stopped moving. Just after 6, Wocial said, it had breathed its last.

Yesterday, biologists planned to conduct a necropsy, or animal autopsy, to find out what happened Could the tragedy have been prevented? Maybe not. It took decade upon decade of dumping, paired with official sloth, to make the canal unsafe for rescue workers to enter. The animal was doomed from the start.

In 2010, the federal government declared the canal a Superfund site, angering Mayor Bloomberg, who wanted the city to clean it up. But nearly three years after the feds took over, nothing.

Just this week, the government got around to holding public hearings about cleaning up the canal, over 10 to 12 years, at a cost to taxpayers of $504 million.

What took so long? As the morons blathered, a dolphin died. Rest in peace, big guy. Sadly, you won’t be the last creature to suffer.”


Categories
Backyard Talk

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/

Categories
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.”