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Author: Stephen Lester

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CHEJ’s Green Flag Schools Program for Environmental Leadership

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For years, the Center for Health, Environment & Justice has been mentoring a movement, empowering people and preventing harm   to  human health caused by exposure to environmental threats.

Included in this work is CHEJ’s Green Flag Schools Program for Environmental Leadership. Started in 2002, this program targets  students in schools and provides a framework for students to become environmental leaders and contribute to positive change in their  school community.

The Green Flag program gives students from kindergarten to twelfth grade the opportunity to learn environmental concepts, investigate environmental practices in their school and identify solutions to make their school safer and healthier. Working as a team, students begin by conducting an environmental audit using a comprehensive form provided by CHEJ to assess their school’s environmental practices. The team then selects an area they want to focus on that will make an impact at their school. The four target areas are non-toxic pest management, indoor air quality, least toxic cleaning products, and reuse, reduce, recycling. Students learn practical life skills such as problem solving, teamwork and public speaking. With each positive step, students are presented with an award culminating in the Green Flag Award for Environmental Leadership.
Earlier this year the Green Flag Team at the Saklan School in Moraga, CA satisfactorily completed Level 3 of the Green Flag School Program for Indoor Air and was awarded an Indoor Air Quality patch for their Green Flag. These middle school students were quite excited about achieving their award which is their second Green Flag award. They are planning to move on to acquire a third patch this fall. The Roots & Shoots Club at the Tom McCall Upper Elementary School in Forest Grove, OR also participated in the Green Flag Schools program this past year. Their Green Flag team satisfactorily completed Level One and was awarded a Green Flag this past spring. They plan to select one of the four project issue areas this fall so that they can acquire a patch to place on their flag.
The Green Flag start-up kit provides all the information you need to get started on earning environmental awards including facts sheets on school environmental issues and an environmental survey tool. More information can be found at http://chej.org/take-action/help/green-flags/.
We hope you will consider adopting this program at your school.
 

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The New Lead – Perfluorinated Compounds (PFCs)

It’s bad enough that lead is making headlines everywhere, but now a new group of chemicals is showing up in drinking water across the country – in Portsmouth, NH, Hoosick falls, NY, Scottsdale, AZ, Colorado Springs, CO, Decatur, AL, Bucks County, PA, Cape Cod, MA to name a few places. These chemicals are called perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs and they first generated headlines in the 1990s when they contaminated the drinking water for 70,000 people of Parkersburg, WV where a DuPont plant made teflon and related products for decades. Exposure to these chemicals is linked to developmental delays in children, decreased fertility, increased cholesterol, changes in the immune system, and cancer (prostate, kidney and testicular).
PFCs are quickly becoming the “hot” chemical to look for in drinking water as it seems to be showing up everywhere including places such as the Pease International Tradeport Business and Industrial Center in Portsmouth, NH. In the summer of 2014, the City of Portsmouth reported that two unusual chemicals were found in all three wells that serve the business center as well as the NH Air National Guard Base on the site of the old Pease Air Force Base. The concentration of one of these chemicals – perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) – exceeded the USEPA Provisional Health Advisory (PHA) causing the city to immediately shut down the well. PFOS and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) are part of the class of chemicals known as perfluorinated compounds, and they are starting to show up in drinking water wells throughout the country.
PFCs are common in many consumer products, including teflon pans, fabric protectors, pizza boxes and ski wax and it is used to make carpets, clothing, fabrics for furniture. They are also used to fight fires and in a number of industrial processes. At the Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, the water became contaminated when firefighters practiced putting out fires on abandoned portions of the airbase using firefighting foams that contained PFCs.
PFOA and PFOS contamination in drinking water is thought to stem from two main sources: factories that formerly manufactured or used the chemicals, and locations, including military bases, where they were used in firefighting foams. According to the EPA, both PFOA and PFOS are found at very low levels in the blood of the general population across the U.S.
Although no one lives at the Tradeport Center, more than 10,000 people work there and there are two day care centers. The people who use the daycare centers immediately formed a Facebook page called “Testing for Pease” and began asking for blood testing for the children. Soon more than 500 adults and children had their blood tested for PFCs and many had levels that were higher than the general population. More blood testing is now underway as the community struggles to make sense of the results and what it means for their future. The health effects of PFCs are not well understood but studies in communities with similar exposures found associations with kidney cancer and testicular cancer. Other concerns includes high cholesterol, immune damage and possible reproductive effects.
In May of this year, the EPA finalized its Health Advisory for PFOA and PFOS lowing its advisory value from 400 and 200 respectively to 70 parts per trillion (ppt) for both compounds combined. This level was based on a lifetime exposure to total PFCs. This change followed criticism from researchers at the Harvard University School of Public Health that the original PHA was not adequately protective of the public.  This health advisory is based on long term exposure to PFOA and PFOS in drinking water.
CHEJ has prepared fact sheets on the toxicity of these chemicals and on the how to interpret blood levels. Both were prepared as part of our work with the local residents in Portsmouth, NH.
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about PFCs including how to interpret test results.

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What We Don’t Know about Toxic Chemicals

So often people believe that the solution to their problem lies in science and technical information. How often have you heard some company spokesperson speak to the need for sound science. At CHEJ, we have have learned many lessons about science and how it is used. Science and technical information is important and has a role in helping to achieve your community goals. Identifying this role and learning how to use scientific and technical information is critical to the success of your group.
The most important lesson is that science and technical information alone will not solve your problem(s). It’s reasonable to think that if you hire the best scientists and engineers and make solid technical arguments, the government will do the right thing. Those of you who have been there know it doesn’t work that way.
When the government discovers a problem, it’s reluctant to determine the full extent of the problem. This is because if the government documents contamination that threatens people’s health, it then has to do something about it—like evacuate people or clean up the contamination. This costs money that government doesn’t have or want to spend. Such action might also set a precedent by establishing cleanup standards or unsafe exposures levels that would mean spending more money at other sites
Deciding what action to take is complicated by the fact that there are few answers to the many scientific questions raised by exposures to toxic chemicals. Scientists actually know little about the adverse health effects that result from exposure to combinations of chemicals at low levels. As a result, when politicians and bureaucrats look for answers, the scientists don’t have them. They have their opinions but no clear answers.
Most scientists however, are reluctant to admit they don’t know the answer to a question. Instead they introduce the concept of “risk” and begin a debate over what’s “acceptable.” This process hides the fact that scientists don’t know what happens to people who are exposed to low levels of a mixture of toxic chemicals. This uncertainty gets lost in the search for what’s “acceptable.”
Because of the lack of scientific clarity, bureaucrats and politicians use science cloaked in uncertainty, not facts, to justify their decisions which at best are based scientific opinion, but more likely driven by the political and economic pressures they face. Whether this is right or not is not a scientific question but an ethical and moral question. It is foolish to think that in this setting, science can be anything but a tool used by politicians and corporations to get what they want.
While science and scientific information have failed to provide clear answers and solutions to the hard questions about the health and environmental impact of the chemicals we use, we cannot abandon science. Science and scientific information can be a powerful tool for community groups, but only if you recognize what it can tell you and what it can’t, and only if you learn how to use the information and not just collect it. The right information used in the right way at the right time can be very powerful. Learning how to use scientific and technical information strategically is an organizing skill. Contact CHEJ to continue this conversation.
 
 

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The Water in Flint is Not Safe to Drink

I suspect that many of you watched in amazement as President Barack Obama drank a sip of tap water while visiting Flint, MI earlier this month and told everyone that it’s OK. Sorry, Mr. President, but all’s not well in Flint. This publicity stunt is a slap in the face to so many people. Not only have thousands of people including young children and infants already been exposed to toxic levels of lead and other contaminants that will affect their health for years, but thousands of people in Flint are still drinking and using contaminated water.
Dr. Marc Edwards, a professor of engineering at Virginia Tech who has done an enormous amount of water testing in Flint released the latest testing results in April several weeks before Obama’s visit. These results showed lower levels of lead in the water, but lead levels were still above the action level set by Obama’s EPA. In a press release, Edwards stated that “People have to continue using bottled water and filters until further notice.” Furthermore, no one is testing the water for volatile organic compounds like trihalomethanes (THM), contaminants that result from adding chlorine to kill bacteria. Early in the Flint crisis, THMs and bacteria levels were found to be high, but once elevated lead was found in the water, testing for THMs and bacteria stopped.
Be clear, Obama’s publicity stunt was not about public health. It was not about good science or testing results that show that the water is safe to drink. Instead, it was about reassuring the public that all is well in Flint and that the government has everything under control. It was about avoiding taking responsibility and not holding those at the highest levels of government accountable for the mistakes that led to the disaster in Flint. It was about controlling the media and trying to convince the media to move on to the next hot button issue. If this succeeds, then we can expect to see more Flints in the future, because we will not have learned anything from this public health disaster.

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EPA Switches Stance on Testing Lead in Drinking Water

The fiasco in Flint, MI has forced an important change in EPA’s recommended protocols for testing lead in drinking water. In a memo to state health and water administrators issued February 29, 2016, the US EPA reversed its prior recommendations on how to sample drinking water targeted for lead testing. The new protocols are as follows:

  • Do not remove or clean faucet aerators prior to collecting samples
  • Do not pre-flush prior to sampling
  • Use wide mouth sample bottles to allow water flow to enter at a rate similar to what consumers might use when pouring a glass of water to drink

In the past, EPA‘s advice was to pre-clean the aerator, flush pipes prior to sampling, and open the tap slowly and sample at low flow. Using these guidelines results in less particulate lead getting into the sample and thus finding lower lead concentrations in the water. Removing or cleaning an aerator prior to testing masks the added contribution of lead at the tap that results from the lead in the aerator. Flushing the pipe prior to sampling eliminates the lead that has built up overnight or since the last time the faucet was used. Pouring the water slowly, whether by using a narrow container or by just opening the tap slowly, also reduces particulate lead that gets into the water by not disturbing lead present in the pipe as much as a normal flush would. These inaccurate procedures were called to task by Dr. Marc Edwards from Virginia Tech University who found high levels of lead in the drinking water in Flint, MI.
Despite the fact that this is not what people typically do when they pour a glass of water from the sink to drink, these are the sampling procedures that EPA has been advocating for years and what water companies have been using for years to measure lead in drinking water. By using these procedures, water companies everywhere, not just in Flint, are not accurately measuring the lead concentration in drinking water, and they are potentially missing a significant portion of the lead actually in the drinking water systems. Doing this provides a false sense of security that seriously endangers public health.
Although EPA has issued these new guidelines, there’s no guarantee that water companies around the country have switched to the new sampling procedures. If you’re concerned about the lead levels in your water, find out what sampling procedures are being used because it makes a huge difference. While we can thank the public attention given to the disaster in Flint for this critically important change, now we need to make sure that testing agencies across the country follow this new protocol. Contact CHEJ at info@chej.org to obtain a copy of this important memo.
 

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Flint, MI: A Clear Case of Environmental Injustice

An independent panel appointed last October by Michigan Governor Rick Synder to investigate why things went so wrong in Flint released its findings last week. The Flint Water Advisory Task Force report blasted the state’s handling of the crisis and painted a picture of “government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and environmental injustice.”

While there was plenty of blame to go around, the five member panel singled out the state-appointed emergency managers who were trying to save money, the state departments of Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services for their role in handling Flint’s water issues, and Snyder and his staff for their lack of oversight. According to the report, “Neither the governor nor the governor’s office took steps to reverse poor decisions by MDEQ and state-appointed emergency managers until October 2015, in spite of mounting problems and suggestions to do so by senior staff members in the governor’s office, in part because of continued reassurances from MDEQ that the water was safe.”

The report also concluded that, “The facts of the Flint water crisis lead us to the inescapable conclusion that this is a case of environmental injustice.” The New York Times reported that the panel’s report “put a spotlight on a long-running civil rights issue: whether minorities and the poor are treated differently when it comes to environmental matters, relegating them to some of the most dangerous places in the country: flood prone areas of New Orleans that were devastated after Hurricane Katrina; highly polluted parts of Detroit and the Bronx; and ‘Cancer Alley’ in Louisiana, where residents who live near factories suffer disproportionately from disease.”

According to the Times story, the report concluded that “Flint residents, who are majority black or African-American and among the most impoverished of any metropolitan area in the United States, did not enjoy the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards as that provided to other communities.”

The Task Force also singled out the activism of local residents and credited the “critical role played by engaged Flint citizens, by individuals both inside and outside of government who had the expertise and willingness to question and challenge government leadership,” along with “members of a free press who used the tools that enable investigative journalism.”

The Task Force report does a good job of unpacking the numerous failures especially at the state level that led to the crisis in Flint and how things got so out of control. But what underlies everything is the patented disregard for the people who live in this predominately African American city. The case for environmental injustice was never so clear.

Read the full 116-page report of the Flint Water Advisory Task Force and its 44 recommendations here

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Holding Polluters Accountable

CHEJ founder Lois Gibbs, considered the mother of the federal Superfund program, said it was “about time polluters were held accountable” when she heard that the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to stop letting polluters off the financial hook for the contamination they cause. At the end of January, the court directed EPA to finalize its “financial assurance” regulations that have been more than 30 years in the making. The Superfund law has teeth to hold corporate polluters accountable and this is an important step towards making that happen.

The financial assurance provision of the Superfund law – officially known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) – ensures that responsible parties, and not the public, bear the financial burden of completing Superfund cleanups. This provision requires corporate polluters to demonstrate that adequate financial resources are available to complete required cleanup work. One of the main tenets of this law is to prevent companies who created toxic sites from declaring bankruptcy and walking away, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for cleanup, often causing long delays before these dangerous sites are cleaned up.

The court recognized that “Although CERCLA requires operators to pay to clean up hazardous releases, many avoid payment by restructuring their operations so they never have to pay. It is a common practice for operators to avoid paying environmental liabilities by declaring bankruptcy or otherwise sheltering assets.”

For 35 years since the law was passed in 1980, EPA has failed to issue regulations that describe how it would implement and enforce this provision of the Superfund law. As a result, company after company found ways to pass the cost of environmental disasters on to taxpayers. With this new ruling EPA has no choice but to finally issue these financial assurance regulations which will require polluting companies to pay up front, or place funds aside to cover the costs of cleaning up contaminated sites. It will also provide an incentive for polluters to reduce their pollution and thus reduce their liability.

As the nation’s leading source of toxic pollution (nearly 2 billion pounds per year), the mining industry was targeted to be the first in line for the new regulations. The court has ordered the EPA to complete the draft regulations by December 1, 2016, and finalize the regulations by Dec. 1, 2017. EPA must also establish regulations for three other industries, including coal ash ponds, chemical manufacturing facilities and petroleum and oil refineries by Dec. 1, 2016.

The lawsuit was filed Earth Justice on behalf of Earthworks and several coalition partners. For more information, see https://www.earthworksaction.org/media/detail/court_orders_environmental_protection_agency_to_finalize_rules_so_polluters/04270#.Vs4bj-btiwZ

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People or Pollution – Which Came First?

Researchers at the University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment published a paper last month that examines an important question about environmental disparities: Which came first – The people or the pollution? More specifically, are present-day disparities around hazardous sites the result of a pattern of placing hazardous waste sites, polluting industrial facilities, and other locally unwanted land uses disproportionately where poor people and people of color live? Or are they the result of demographic changes that occur after the facilities have been sited? Their answer published in the December issue of the journal Environment Research Letters points to a clear pattern of disproportionately placing hazardous waste facilities in people of color communities at the time of siting.

The authors used a national database of commercial hazardous waste facilities sited from 1966 to 1995 and examined the demographic composition of host neighborhoods at the time of siting and demographic changes that occurred after siting. They found strong evidence of disparate siting for facilities sited in all time periods, though they did find some evidence of post-siting demographic changes. According to the authors, these changes “were mostly a continuation of changes that occurred in the decade or two prior to siting, suggesting that neighborhood transition serves to attract noxious facilities rather than the facilities themselves attracting people of color and low income populations. Our findings help resolve inconsistencies among the longitudinal studies and builds on the evidence from other subnational studies that used distance-based methods. We conclude that racial discrimination and sociopolitical explanations (i.e., the proposition that siting decisions follow the ‘path of least resistance’) best explain present-day inequities.”

This study examined the processes by which racial and socioeconomic disparities in the location of polluting industrial facilities can occur. According to the authors, “prior studies have had mixed results … principally because of methodological differences, that is, the use of the unit-hazard coincidence method as compared to distance-based methods.” This is the first national-level environmental justice study to conduct longitudinal analyses using distance-based methods.

The authors came to conclude that “Our findings show that rather than hazardous waste TSDFs ‘attracting’ people of color, neighborhoods with already disproportionate and growing concentrations of people of color appear to ‘attract’ new facility siting. The body of distance-based research suggests that government policies, industry practices and community empowerment measures are needed to ensure fairness in the siting process and to address disparities in risks associated with existing facilities. In addition, more studies that use reliable methods to assess such racial and socioeconomic disparities in the location of other types of environmental hazards could also improve our understanding of the processes and factors that contribute to environmentally unjust conditions in the United States and around the world.”

The authors also published a review paper in the same issue of this journal that summarized previous environmental justice studies that demonstrated the existence of racial and socioeconomic disparities in relation to a wide range of environmental hazards.



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Styrofoam Ban in our Nation’s Capital

On January 1, 2016 a ban on the use of Styrofoam containers went into effect in the city of Washington, DC.  This new law will prohibit restaurants and local business from using single use Styrofoam (technically speaking, expanded polystyrene foam products) containers to package food and drinks, typically used for take-out orders or to take home leftovers. According to one estimate in a private blog, there are similar bans in effect in more than 70 cities including New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.  In New York City alone, 28,500 tons of expanded Styrofoam was collected in 2012. About 90% of this material was from food and drink related containers.

I couldn’t help but smile when I read this story as a remembered back in the late 1980s when CHEJ (then CCHW) kicked off a national campaign against McDonald’s to get the mega food giant to stop using Styrofoam clam shells for all its food packaging. We called this the “McToxics Campaign” and groups all over the country participated including grassroots environmental health activists, students, churches, annual rights activists and advocates of healthy food. These groups, individually and in coalition, picketed local restaurants, fought for local ordinances banning Styrofoam, launched boycotts and engaged in send-it-back campaigns to send the message to McDonalds that they wanted the company to be a corporate leader for positive change, rather than a symbol of our throw-away society.  And it worked!  After a little over 3 years, McDonalds caved in, marking one of the biggest victories of the grassroots environmental health movement. On November 1, 1990, McDonalds’ announced it would end nearly all Styrofoam packaging use in U.S. restaurants within 60 days.

As anticipated, when McDonalds made its announcement, other companies would follow its lead. Jack-In-the-Box followed suit almost immediately, and soon most other fast food restaurants also stopped using Styrofoam.  Although many small restaurants and local businesses continued to use Styrofoam, the message continues to grow that this toxic plastic has no place in our society. The many toxic substances generated and released during production, the formation of toxic chemicals when it is burned and the difficulties in recycling and disposal of this material is what drove this campaign and continue to be an issue today as restaurants and businesses search for options to deliver food and drinks.

Fortunately there are better options and better alternatives that don’t cause the public health and environmental risks that this plastic does. Cheers to the growing list of cities, towns and municipalities that are deciding one jurisdiction at a time, to move away from this toxic plastic.  May there be many more in the coming years.

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Study Finds Fracking Increases Reproductive Risks

The enormous growth of unconventional natural gas fracturing (also known as fracking) in recent years has come at the expense of knowing little if anything about the health risks associated with this practice. As production as slowed due to dropping gas prices in the past year or so, several studies have come out that raise serious questions about the health impact of this process. A study published earlier this month by a group of researchers at the John Hopkin’s School of Public Health concluded that “expectant mothers who live near active natural gas wells operated by the fracking industry in Pennsylvania are at an increased risk of giving birth prematurely and for having high risk pregnancies.” This paper was published in the journal Epidemiology.

In this paper, the authors examined more than 9,000 births in 40 counties in northern and central Pennsylvania between January 2009 and January 2013. They compared electronic birth outcome data with information that estimated the cumulative exposure to fracking activity in the region. This information included how close wells were to homes where the mothers lived, what stage of drilling the wells were in, the depth of the wells, and how much gas was generated from the well during the mother’s pregnancy. This information was used to generate a cumulative index of how active each of the wells were and how close they were to the women.

They found that living in the most active area of drilling and production activity was associated with a 40 percent increase in the likelihood of a woman giving birth before 37 weeks of gestation (considered pre-term) and a 30 percent increase in “high risk” pregnancies, a designation that can include elevated blood pressure and excessive weight gain during pregnancy. In total, 11 % of the pregnancies were born preterm, with 79% born between 32 and 36 weeks.

Other research in recent years has also shown a connection between fracking wells and low birth weight. “There are now four studies that have looked at various aspects of reproductive health in relation to this industry and all have found something,” Brian Schwartz, the lead author of the Hopkins study, said in an interview. In one of these studies, researchers found an increased risk of congenital heart and neural tube defects in babies whose mothers lived within 10 miles of a natural gas well in rural Colorado.

In a media statement released with the study, the authors made clear that the study can’t pinpoint the specific reason why pregnant women living near the most active wells had the worst pregnancy outcomes. But Schwartz pointed out that every step of the drilling process has an environmental impact. “When the well pads are created, diesel equipment is used to clear acres of land, transport equipment and drill the wells themselves. Drilling down thousands of feet and then horizontally many more thousands of feet requires heavy equipment to break up the shale where the gas sits. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) then involves injecting millions of liters of water mixed with chemicals and sand to fracture the shale. The fluids are then pumped back to the surface. The gas itself also releases pollutants.” Schwartz also noted that living near fracking well results in increased noise, road traffic and other changes that can increase maternal stress levels.

“Now that we know this is happening we’d like to figure out why,” Schwartz says. “Is it air quality? Is it the stress? They’re the two leading candidates in our minds at this point.”

As with many other environmental and public health risks, the more we look, the more we find. We already know that fracking contributes to the impact of climate change because of the large amount of methane that’s released. It’s beginning to look more and more like it also has serious effects on the health of the people who live nearby.