Toxic Waste

Study Shows Pollution Closes Record Number of U.S. Beaches
August 08, 2007 — By Reuters

WASHINGTON -- The number of U.S. beaches declared unsafe for swimming reached a record last year, with more than 25,000 cases where shorelines were closed or prompted health advisories, an environmental group reported Tuesday.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, which compiled the report from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data, said the likely culprit was sewage and contaminated runoff from water treatment systems.
"Aging and poorly designed sewage and storm water systems hold much of the blame for beach water pollution," the group said in a statement. "The problem was compounded by record rainfall, which added to the strain on already overloaded infrastructure."
Other factors include urban sprawl in coastal areas, which destroys wetlands and other natural buffers like dunes and beach grass that could otherwise filter out pollution, the group said.
In its 17th annual report on beach water quality, the group found the number of no-swim days at 3,500 U.S. beaches doubled from 2005 to 2006 along the oceans, bays and Great Lakes.
The beaches at highest risk are those that are most popular, close to pollution sources or both. Of those high-risk beaches, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Rhode Island and Minnesota ranked lowest for failing to meet national health standards.
The report is available online here at the NRDC website..
Source: Reuters

American Electronic Waste Contaminates China and India

August 17, 2005 — By Terence Chea, Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — Waste from computers, televisions and other devices used in the United States is polluting the environment and exposing workers to toxic chemicals in regions of China and India where discarded electronics are dismantled, according to a study released Wednesday.

Researchers detected high levels of toxic metals in more than 70 samples collected in March from industrial waste, river sediment, soil and groundwater around the southern Chinese city of Guiyu and the suburbs of New Delhi, according to the report by Greenpeace International. Dust from dismantling workshops contained the highest levels of contaminants.

"The extent of the contamination is even worse than we had feared. The levels analyzed are really scary and very concerning," said Ted Smith, the founder of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition who chairs the Computer TakeBack Campaign, which promotes responsible electronics recycling.

Most of the electronics collected in the United States for recycling are shipped to China, India and other Asian countries where worker protections and environmental safety standards are weak, Smith said.

The researchers chose to collect samples from Guiyu in China's Guangdong Province and the Mayapuri and Buradi districts of New Delhi because the two regions are known to dismantle discarded American electronics to recover valuable metals such as gold, platinum and silver.

The samples collected from those areas contained elevated levels of heavy metals used to make electronics including lead, tin, copper, cadmium and antimony. Researchers also detected the presence of polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, a type of flame retardant; as well as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a class of chemicals used in insulating fluids.

The heavy metals and organic contaminants have been linked to a variety of health problems, ranging from cancer to nervous system damage.

"The high level of contamination caused by unsafe electronics disposal is a potentially serious threat to workers and to public health," said Arnold Schecter, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Texas School of Public Health. "I think we're fooling ourselves. We think we're doing the right thing by recycling, but we're harming people in less developed countries."

Public health advocates said the study demonstrated the need to conduct larger studies of the impact of electronics recycling on the environment and people's health.

They called on U.S. lawmakers to pass legislation that would ban the export of electronic waste to developing countries and require electronics manufacturers to safely recycle their products after they become obsolete. The European Union, and several U.S. states including California, have passed similar "producer takeback" bills.

"The U.S. must step up to the plate and meet our global responsibility and stop this pollution in other parts of the world," Smith said.

Source: Associated Press

Tell your senators to reduce mercury pollution from power plants
Mercury pollution in our air and water threatens the health of millions of Americans. Mercury is a neurotoxin that affects people's brains, hearts and immune systems, and is particularly harmful to children and developing fetuses. Even low-level exposure can cause learning disabilities, developmental delays and other problems.

Despite the significance of this public health threat, the Environmental Protection Agency recently issued new regulations that fail to crack down on the biggest industrial source of mercury pollution: coal-fired power plants. Rather than requiring plants to reduce their emissions of mercury and other toxins as much as possible in the next few years, the EPA instead issued rules that permit facilities to undertake weaker cleanup efforts and then delay those steps for more than a decade. In addition, the rules allow plants to buy and sell mercury emissions "credits," so some plants won't have to reduce their mercury pollution at all, and some might even increase it.

NRDC and a coalition of states, local governments, Native Americans and environmental and public health groups are challenging the EPA's rules in federal court, but the case could take more than a year to decide. In the meantime, Senator Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Collins (R-ME) have introduced a bipartisan resolution that would effectively nullify the EPA's dangerous rules and require the agency to write new ones that comply with the law and protect public health.

== What to do ==
Urge your senators to help reduce toxic mercury pollution by voting Yes for the Leahy-Collins resolution.

Senators Challenge Bush Administration's New Mercury Rule

In an effort to re-focus public awareness of the Bush Adminstration's weak new EPA rule regulating mercury emissions, Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) a formal discharge petition this week, aiming to force a floor vote that would require EPA to draft new mercury regulations. [1] Backed by a group of 31 senators, including Maine Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, the resolution has garnered enough support to bypass the jurisdiction of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, chaired by Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe, an ardent opponent of environmental and public health regulations.

In order to pass, the resolution will have to gain a simple majority in both chambers of Congress plus the President's signature. Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Tom Allen (D-ME), Marty Meehan (D-MA), and Henry Waxman (D-CA), have introduced a similar resolution in the House. The sponsors recognize that passage is highly unlikely. But they are hopeful that the effort will at least help to expose the flaws in the new EPA mercury rule, and call further attention to the toxin's harmful affects on human health.

Filed under the Congressional Review Act, the resolution provides Congress a seldom-used opportunity to disapprove a federal agency's rule. If successful, the motion would not only send EPA back to the drawing board, it would also prevent the development of a similar rule in the future. If the President vetoes the resolution, Congress could potentially override it.

The administration's new EPA rule exempts power plants from the list of polluting sources subject to strict mercury controls. Yet power plants are the largest man-made source of mercury emissions in the U.S., contributing 41 percent of the annual total. By taking power plants off the list, the "delisting rule" led to the establishment of a cap-and-trade program that would limit mercury emissions from 48 tons a year to 38 tons in 2010 and 15 tons in 2018.

The "delisting rule" rescinded a 2000 EPA finding that "it is necessary and appropriate" for all power plants to install "maximum achievable control technology" (MACT) to reduce mercury and other hazardous emissions. A MACT standard under the existing Clean Air Act would have required power plants to reduce their mercury emissions by about 90 percent by 2008, a decade earlier than the administration's timetable.

Critics of the current mercury rule charge that it violates the Clean Air Act, because the EPA removed power plants from the source list without first proving that power plants do not emit hazardous air pollutants at levels that damage human health.

Citing the illegal nature of the current mercury rules, Senator Leahy said in a press release, "By revoking the earlier EPA finding and deciding instead to coddle the biggest mercury polluters, the Administration is saying it is no longer necessary or appropriate to adequately control mercury emissions."

EPA's mercury rules have drawn lawsuits from 14 states, including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin. The rules have also triggered strong opposition from a broad spectrum of environmental and public health groups, as well as government agencies such as the General Accountability Office, and the EPA's own Inspector General.

Mercury is an extremely harmful neurotoxin, yielding serious health consequences for developing fetuses and children. Even low-level exposure has been linked to learning disabilities, lowered IQ, attention and memory damage, and delayed onset of walking and talking abilities. One in six women have levels of mercury in their blood that EPA classifies as unsafe.

New EPA Mercury Rule Called Illegal
With the long-awaited release yesterday of its new rules for reducing mercury pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency set off a firestorm of protest and controversy that is certain to wind up in the courts.
As expected, EPA announced new rules that would reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants 20 percent by 2010, with a goal of 70 percent reduction by 2018. Environmental health and other groups assert that greater reductions could be achieved much more rapidly, and that EPA's decision will endanger the health of hundreds of thousands of newborn babies.
Mercury is known to harm the brain and nervous system, especially in infants. It can cause learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder and mental retardation. One in six U.S. women of child-bearing age is reported to have enough mercury in her blood to put a developing fetus at risk. The primary means of exposure is through consumption of certain species of deep ocean fish, such as tuna and pollock.
The Bush Administration is proposing a "cap and trade" system, whereby a national limit on mercury emissions would be set, but in which individual power plants could trade emissions credits. This would mean some states would achieve reductions in mercury pollution while others would actually experience an increase.
John Walke, director of the air pollution program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said this would result in enormous increases in mercury emissions in certain states. For example, an increase of 841% in California; 176% in Colorado; 241% in New Hampshire; and 56% in New Jersey.
Martha Keating, a former mercury expert at EPA who is now a senior scientist at the Clean Air Task Force, joined others in saying that proper enforcement of the current Clean Air Act would be far more effective than the new mercury rule. "If the Clean Air Act was implemented as it should be, we would get significant reductions of mercury, upwards of 90 percent," she said on National Public Radio. "So [the new rule] in our mind is a rollback."
"It is unconscionable EPA is allowing power companies to trade in a powerful neurotoxin--it is unprecedented and illegal," said William S. Becker, executive director of the bipartisan State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators. Becker also heads the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials.
Recent criticism both by the EPA's own inspector general and by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office alleged that EPA ignored scientific evidence in developing its mercury rule, and called for further analyses. A Washington Post article said Agency staff charged that Bush Administration political operatives set the framework of the rule in advance, to support industry's claim that installing the newest air pollution control technology would be too expensive.
Because mercury pollution of the oceans is a global problem, the UN Environmental Programme held an international meeting in Nairobi last month in an attempt to set in motion a plan to reduce the trade, mining and emission of mercury. The European Union has already decided to phase out mercury-cell chlorine production and close the largest mercury mine in Europe (located in Spain).
But U.S. officials blocked any concrete actions, instead calling for self-regulation, more studies, more discussion. Noting that the EPA has defended its new rule by saying mercury pollution is a global problem and therefore tighter controls on U.S. coal-fired power plants wouldn't solve it, Michael Bender of the Ban Mercury Working Group--a coalition of 27 public interest groups from several nations--said "The Administration is talking out of both sides of its mouth. Today they are saying the only way to solve the U.S. mercury problem is through international action. Yet three weeks ago they hijacked the process and blocked development of a global strategy."