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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/

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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

Toxic Cloud of Vinyl Chloride

This morning near Philadelphia, PA there was a serious vinyl chloride train derailment, which sent a toxic cloud of vinyl chloride into the community.

View the slideshow of photos to see the vinyl chloride cloud at http://www.philly.com/philly/gallery/Train_derails_in_Paulsboro.html?viewGallery=y

According to Breaking News Desk (11/30/12),”a freight train derailed this morning in Paulsboro, Gloucester County, with some of the cars leaking hazardous vinyl chloride into the air and nearby waterways. A railroad bridge over Mantua Creek apparently collapsed, sending a couple of railcars into the the water, and toppling several others.

More than a dozen people at a local marine terminal reportedly had breathing problems, necessitating medical treatment, according to reports. ‘We have a half-mile area evacuated around the bridge,’ said a Coast Guard spokeswoman, who added that no fatalities had been reported. Paulsboro’s three schools were also in lockdown…

Short-term exposure to the hazardous, flammable gas, which has a sickly, sweet smell, can cause dizziness, drowsiness and headaches, according to the EPA. Long-term exposure has been linked to cancer.”

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Backyard Talk

Halloween's Toxic Troubles

This Halloween, Hurricane Sandy left behind toxic troubles from sewage and flooded hazardous waste sites in the New York City area. Huffington Post reported that, “Left in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the toxic stew may threaten the health of residents already dealing with more direct damages from the disaster. “Normally, sewer overflows are just discharged into waterways and humans that generate the sewage can avoid the consequences by avoiding the water,” said John Lipscomb of the clean water advocacy group Riverkeeper. “But in this case, that waste has come back into our communities.”

One particular concern is the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn, which abuts a 1.8 mile canal that was recently designated a Superfund cleanup site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency due to a legacy of industrial pollution and sewage discharges. While a storm surge of up to 11 feet had been predicted, the confluence of Sandy and a full-moon high tide exceeded expectations: Waters rose a record 13 feet in New York Harbor. Judith Enck, regional administrator for the EPA region that includes New York, told The Huffington Post that preparations for such a pollution event are difficult regardless of how accurate the weather forecast. “Little can be done in the hours or days in advance of major storms that were experienced last night,” said Enck. “Instead, multi-year improvements need to be made. The situation illustrated the need to clean up urban waters and the benefits of a comprehensive Superfund cleanup.” The best officials could do was urge residents to steer clear of the contaminated waters.

While a storm surge of up to 11 feet had been predicted, the confluence of Sandy and a full-moon high tide exceeded expectations: Waters rose a record 13 feet in New York Harbor. A similar post-Sandy scene played out at New York City’s other Superfund site, Newtown Creek, a waterway that forms the border between Brooklyn and Queens. Combined sewage overflows, so-called CSOs, are also nothing new for New York City. A number of older U.S. communities — including a number of East Coast cities affected by Sandy — sit atop antiquated plumbing that carries sewage, industrial wastewater and rainwater together to treatment plants. As little as a quarter-inch of rain can be enough to overburden the multi-use pipes in New York City and trigger a CSO, according to Riverkeeper. “What happened last night in terms of CSO releases is what happens chronically in wet weather events throughout the year,” said Lipscomb, pointing out that 27 billion gallons worth of the mix spills into New York Harbor every year. “You can think about this like an Exxon Valdez accident, but instead of there being one contaminant it’s a zillion contaminants — from floatables to dissolvables to containers of contaminants — and instead of one location, there’s a zillion point sources,” Lipscomb said. “This is a stunning pollution event. I don’t think the harbor has ever taken a hit like today.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/30/hurricane-sandy-sewage-toxic-_n_2046963.html

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Backyard Talk

Pioneering Green Carpeting Manufacturer Interface Ends its Defense of PVC

After years of defending PVC as an ecologically sustainable industrial material, Interface, one of the world’s largest carpet manufacturers and a pioneer in sustainable business, has announced that it will be eliminating virgin PVC from its entire product line by 2020.

The announcement comes as a welcome end to a long-standing conflict between the company and its core constituency of ecologically-minded consumers and businesses. In recent years, other major carpet manufacturers including Shaw and Milliken have phased PVC out of their product lines, but Interface had not followed suit. In a recent article in GreenBiz, the company’s sustainability team writes about the painful but productive process of incorporating vinyl’s full life-cycle impacts into its definition of sustainability.

Vinyl is the plastic environmentalists love to hate because of its life-cycle toxicity issues, which occur both upstream (emissions from plastic production) and downstream (if it gets burned under uncontrolled conditions). In addition, PVC always contains other chemical additives, some of which (e.g., heavy-metal stabilizers) may be quite toxic. While our Restricted Substances List adequately screens out toxic additives, it is not designed to account for these life-cycle toxicity issues.

As an early champion of lifecycle assessment (LCA), we were confident that we had a tool to account for the life-cycle of PVC. And while LCA has proven to be a reliable tool for more holistic decision-making, especially for considering carbon footprint or water impacts, it is notoriously weak at evaluating human health impacts like toxicity.

Even with robust life-cycle toxicity data (such as the chlorinated emissions from a PVC supplier), plotting it in a graph next to greenhouse gas emissions is scientifically meaningless and emotionally explosive, given that potential health impacts are far more personal and comprehensible.

Though it spent years defending PVC, in 2008 Interface began working more closely with its critics and adjusting its industrial criteria. The policy it has developed eliminates the use of virgin PVC by 2020, while reusing and diverting from the landfill millions of pounds of PVC carpet-backing currently in the waste-stream. It’s a major step forward for the carpeting industry, and we at CHEJ are glad to have Interface in our corner.

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image credit: iStockphoto

For me personally, first learning about Interface’s story was an “ah-ha” moment. I’d seen the movie “The Corporation,” in which Interface’s founder and long-time CEO, the late Ray Anderson, speaks dramatically of his conversion to an ecological approach to business. He realized that Interface’s extraction and production practices amounted to “the way of The Plunderer, plundering something that’s not mine, something that belongs to every creature on Earth.” I later read Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken and Amory and L. Hunter Lovins, and learned with great excitement about the ways in which ecological thinking had transformed not only the contents of Interface’s carpet, but their whole business model.

Anderson and his team realized that businesses don’t want to own carpet — they want the service of floor covering. They combined this insight with the fact that when standard broadloom carpet is replaced due to worn spots, traditionally once every ten years, huge amounts of perfectly good carpet gets torn out and landfilled. There is more carpeting in US landfills than almost any other product, much of it toxic.

In response to these two realities, the company fundamentally rethought their business approach. Interface created modular carpet tiles, allowing worn areas to be replaced individually; they then leased these tiles to businesses rather than selling them, taking the worn tiles back to the factory; and they developed a higher quality, less toxic, resilient carpet product called Solenium to cover the tiles, which could be completely remanufactured into itself, retaining the value of the materials and further reducing waste.

Reading about this type of holistic, innovative approach to industry was eye-opening. It was proof that businesses can make money by being smart and following their values, by protecting their customers’ health and the environment rather than endangering it. Interface is to be commended for finally incorporating PVC-elimination into its vision. I look forward to seeing where that vision it takes the company next.

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Backyard Talk

50 Years Later, Chemical Barrage Goes On

The  Boston Globe’s excellent editorial this week focused on the 50th anniversary of the book Silent Spring. “If Rachel Carson were alive to mark the 50th anniversary of her book “Silent Spring,” her head would spin in both wonder and anger. The evidence of her influence literally flies all around us today, because Carson documented how pesticides were polluting the environment and harming birds and other animals. She warned that a “chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life.”

Rachel Carson is seen at Woods Hole, Maine, in 1951, 11 years before she published “Silent Spring.”
Her reporting led to the eventual ban in the United States of DDT and other compounds that were originally hailed as miracle weapons against disease-bearing or crop-eating insects. That gave us back the bald eagle and the perigrine falcon and returned vibrant aquatic life to ponds and waterways.

But we never came close to stopping the chemical barrage. The evidence is abundantly clear that even as eagles soar above, Americans are poisoning themselves in unprecedented ways, with the net result being that my child’s generation may have a life expectancy less than mine. Every week seems to bring new information on how the chemicals we use for our own convenience are affecting our environment and our health — perhaps more profoundly than when Carson wrote in the early 1960s.

Just last month, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that high levels of the chemical BPA, which is used to strengthen plastic bottles and prevent corrosion in food cans, are associated with obesity. “Clearly bad diet and lack of exercise are the leading contributors to childhood obesity, but this study suggests a significant role for environmental, particularly chemical factors in that epidemic,” lead author Leonardo Trasande of New York University’s medical school told ABC News.” 

To see the rest of the editorial go to http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2012/10/03/years-after-rachel-carson-silent-spring-chemical-barrage-goes/O9frrHU1JHQzTxVVwulLiK/story.html


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Backyard Talk

Barry Commoner Dies, National Environmental Leader

Barry Commoner, a national enviromental leader, died this week.  He was 95 years old.  Commoner, a professor of Queens College in New York City, and author of many books, was well-known for his precedent-setting studies on dioxin in the environment, incineration and other environmental issues.  CHEJ honored Commoner at a reception two years ago.  He will be sorely missed, but his environmental legacy lives on.

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Backyard Talk

Petrochemical America: Picturing Cancer Alley

Last month, when news outlets around the country covered our press event revealing toxic phthalates in children’s Back To School supplies, we were proud of the work we’d done. Tens of thousands of Americans had been educated about how to avoid real risks to their children’s health.

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Abandoned trailer, Mississippi River, Near Dow Chemical Plant, Plaquemine, LA, 1998. From Petrochemical America, photographs by Richard Misrach, Ecological Atlas by Kate Orff (Aperture 2012).

But as so often happens, absent from the coverage were the stories of the people who live near the chemical plants that produce the vinyl, whose land, air, and water has been harmed for decades by some of the most profitable companies in the world.

This month, CHEJ is proud to help present those stories in a way they have never been presented before.

Petrochemical America: Picturing Cancer Alley is a groundbreaking new collaboration by photographer Richard Misrach and landscape architect Kate Orff, debuting at Aperture Gallery and Bookstore in NYC tonight. Through haunting photographs and innovative composite images employing ecological and sociological data, gathered over the course of 14 years on the banks of the Mississippi river in Louisiana, the book and gallery exhibition provide a moving and deeply informed portrait of the American “sacrifice zones” upon which our use of plastics, oil, and gas depends. Read more about Plaquemine, LA, pictured above.


For those in New York City, we invite you to attend two free, upcoming gallery events:

  • Tuesday, Sept. 25th, at 6:30pm: A panel discussion with our own Mike Schade, joined by Ms. Orff and Wilma Subra of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.
  • Tuesday, Oct. 2nd, at 6:30 pm: A talk and screening of the excellent and darkly comic film Blue Vinyl, with author David Rosner and landscape designer Gena Wirth.

Both events are free and include access to the exhibit. They will take place at Aperture Gallery and Bookstore, 547 West 27th Street, New York, NY.



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Human mismanagement is turning lush cypress trees into ghostly poles, jeopardizing Louisiana’s bayou ecologies, local economies, and cultures. Requiem for a Bayou. From Petrochemical America, photographs by Richard Misrach, Ecological Atlas by Kate Orff (Aperture 2012).


For our supporters around the country, we encourage you to explore the content of the book and consider purchasing a copy. Aperture Foundation is nonprofit, and book sales help sustain its exhibitions, books, and magazine.

As we continue to advocate in New York City to get PVC out of new construction, renovation, and school supplies in our public schools, projects like Petrochemical America help us and our supporters keep in mind the full scale of what’s at stake in shifting to a safer, more sane, and more just material economy.

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Backyard Talk

Health Study at Huge Toxic Spill

After forty years, the NYS Department of Health is finally launching a health study of people who lived in an area affected by a huge toxic chemical spill south of Rochester, NY. About 35,000 gallons of trichloroethene, or TCE, was released during a 1970 train derailment in Le Roy, Genesee County, creating a 4 ½-square-mile plume of contaminated groundwater.

People in several dozen homes drank and bathed in private well water containing TCE for two decades until officials finally provided public water. Others inhaled indoor air containing trace amounts of the solvent until recent action to alleviate that problem.

Two state health surveys done years ago found nothing out of the ordinary. But public attention has re-focused on the derailment spill site in recent months, and some residents have asserted that people who lived above the plume did suffer a higher-than-normal rate of cancer. The study will examine the Le Roy-area site and eight other lightly populated locations around the state where TCE have been found. Data for the nine sites will aggregated, so the sample size being analyzed is larger and thus more statistically meaningful.

The other locations are in Cayuga, Cattaraugus, Dutchess, Greene, Rensselaer, Ulster and Washington counties. The study will look at cancer incidence and also at birth weight, birth defects and pre-term births among people living at those sites as far back as the early 1980s. (Source, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, 9/8/12)

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Backyard Talk

"The Story of Change," Climate Change, and PVC-Free Schools

Two great new pieces of activist reporting came out last week, and both dovetail perfectly with our work to get PVC, the poison plastic (a k a vinyl), out of NYC schools. Check them out!

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More than half of the United States is currently in drought

“Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” a feature article in Rolling Stone by Bill McKibben, lays out three numbers that may well define the future of our planet: how much warmer we can “safely” allow the climate to get; how much carbon we can burn without going over; and how much carbon is currently planning to be burned by the oil and gas industry. (Hint: that last one is about five times larger than the second one.)

McKibben’s frightening conclusion is that unless the international community (i.e. we) demands that Exxon, Chesapeake, and the other oil, gas, and coal giants keep about 80% of their current reserves in the ground, unused, uncontrollable climate destabilization is inevitable. Problem is, that would mean about $20 trillion in losses for these companies, giving them roughly unlimited financial (if not human) incentive to block legislation forcing them to do it.

In short, we have our work cut out for us. Enter the latest installment from Story of Stuff Project:

 

Story of Change

The animated web-comic “The Story of Change” by Annie Leonard and her team takes viewers through a six-and-a-half minute tour of how citizens can bring about the environmentally sustainable, people-centered, non-toxic, socially equitable economy that we want.

Her prescription? [/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][Big idea] + [people] + [action] = CHANGE. It’s a convincing argument, and one that we’ll need to take to heart if we’re going to keep the fossil fuel industry’s equation from stealing the future.

 

So what’s the connection to PVC-free schools for New York City?

Dow Chemicals Vinyl Plant in Freeport, TX.Photo: Greenpeace USA 2011

First, it can save energy.

The vinyl 3-ring binders, floor tiles, and examination gloves found throughout the NYC school system don’t just release harmful toxins into the air. They also take enormous amounts of energy to produce. PVC plastic is made up of about 40% chlorine, and chlorine production is one of the most energy intensive (not to mention dangerous) industrial processes in the world. According to Joe Thornton, PhD, of the Healthy Building Network, “Chlorine production for PVC consumes an estimated 47 billion kilowatt hours per year — equivalent to the annual total output of eight medium-sized nuclear power plants.”

By spending its multi-million dollar purchasing budget on safer, cost-effective alternatives to PVC, the NYC school system can better protect its students, teachers, and staff, and help drive producers away from this costly, energy-intensive material.

Second, we’re using a big idea, building people power, and taking action!

We’re bringing together parents, teachers, students, doctors, environmental justice activists, labor unions, and more to stand behind a clear message: PVC is the wrong choice for NYC school supplies and construction materials. Click here to join the effort!

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