Notorious banned chemicals appear in products: Toxic Substances Control Act's secret loophole

7/2/13

Regular readers of this blog are already outraged that chemical companies can dream up new chemicals and market them to Americans without first making sure that they are safe. What’s even more disturbing is that our current laws can’t even get rid of chemicals that we know are toxic, even long after they have been “banned.”

That’s the case with PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls. These notorious toxic compounds have been banned under our federal law on chemicals -- the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) -- since the 1970s.  But a little known fact is that TSCA has a big loophole: PCBs are allowed in consumer products as long as their production is unintentional. Oftentimes, PCBs are by-products of chemical processes.

One process that generates a lot of PCBs is the production of pigments, which are used in paints and printing inks. Researchers at the University of Iowa tested batches of paint pigments and found a wide range of PCBs in them. My students here at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, have been testing consumer products that have printing inks in them, including newspapers, magazines, napkins, plastic bags, and even clothing, and finding PCBs in them. That’s right, there are PCBs in your children’s clothing, food packaging, and napkins!

The TSCA rules say that if PCBs are present in a product inadvertently, then the product has to be tested, the PCB levels have to be less than 50 ppm (parts per million) at all times, and the average concentration can’t be greater than 25 ppm. The European Union has similar regulations. The problem is that the manufacturers don’t have to report the results of the tests, and in many cases it is not clear that the tests are even being performed. Clearly the current system is not working.

Like everything else these days, the market for pigments is global.  If you look at the Toxics Release Inventory, you find that the number of facilities making these pigments in the U.S. has dwindled from 14 in 1988 to only one in 2011.

The production has moved overseas, mostly to China and India. This makes it harder to enforce the regulations, even though the U.S. EPA applies exactly the same limits and requirements to imported substances as to things produced in the U.S. The government of Japan recently tested several batches of pigments and found concentrations of PCBs up to 2,000 ppm, or 40 times higher than the legal limit.

This highlights yet another big problem with how we regulate chemicals in this country: the conflict between TSCA and other laws such as the Clean Water Act, which covers the water quality standards.

Although the limit set by TSCA is 50 ppm, the federal water quality standard for PCBs is just 64 ppq (parts per quadrillion!), which is about 1,000,000,000 times lower that the TSCA standard. This highlights yet another big problem with how we regulate chemicals in this country: the conflict between TSCA and other laws such as the Clean Water Act, which covers the water quality standards.

The Clean Water Act says that water quality standards have to protect human health and the environment. The TSCA standards also have to consider economic impact, but where they got a number of 50 ppm is something of a mystery.

Think about this from the point of view of a recycled paper mill. The ink in the paper they want to recycle can have up to 1,000,000,000 times higher PCB levels than the concentrations the Clean Water Act allows them to emit to our rivers and streams.
How can they possibly comply? Some recycled paper mills may be forced to go out of business if they can’t meet their effluent standards. That means we lose jobs here in the U.S. because of pigments produced overseas. Why not just eliminate the pollution at the source by using only pigments that don’t contain PCBs?

Right now, EPA has put out an Advance Notice of Public Rule Making regarding the use authorizations for PCBs.  The Environmental Council of States has issued a resolution saying that EPA should work with industries to find safer alternatives to the PCB-laden pigments. At the very least, EPA should enforce the rules on the books and make sure that importers test all of their pigments and report the results before these pigments can come into the country!

At the end of the day there is no simple solution to addressing PCBs, but a good place to start is to reform the out-of-date TSCA. You can make a difference and take action today.

Regular readers of this blog are already outraged that chemical companies can dream up new chemicals and market them to Americans without first making sure that they are safe. What’s even more disturbing is that our current laws can’t even get rid of chemicals that we know are toxic, even long after they have been “banned.”

That’s the case with PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls. These notorious toxic compounds have been banned under our federal law on chemicals -- the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) -- since the 1970s.  But a little known fact is that TSCA has a big loophole: PCBs are allowed in consumer products as long as their production is unintentional. Oftentimes, PCBs are by-products of chemical processes.

One process that generates a lot of PCBs is the production of pigments, which are used in paints and printing inks. Researchers at the University of Iowa tested batches of paint pigments and found a wide range of PCBs in them. My students here at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, have been testing consumer products that have printing inks in them, including newspapers, magazines, napkins, plastic bags, and even clothing, and finding PCBs in them. That’s right, there are PCBs in your children’s clothing, food packaging, and napkins!

The TSCA rules say that if PCBs are present in a product inadvertently, then the product has to be tested, the PCB levels have to be less than 50 ppm (parts per million) at all times, and the average concentration can’t be greater than 25 ppm. The European Union has similar regulations. The problem is that the manufacturers don’t have to report the results of the tests, and in many cases it is not clear that the tests are even being performed. Clearly the current system is not working.

Like everything else these days, the market for pigments is global.  If you look at the Toxics Release Inventory, you find that the number of facilities making these pigments in the U.S. has dwindled from 14 in 1988 to only one in 2011.

The production has moved overseas, mostly to China and India. This makes it harder to enforce the regulations, even though the U.S. EPA applies exactly the same limits and requirements to imported substances as to things produced in the U.S. The government of Japan recently tested several batches of pigments and found concentrations of PCBs up to 2,000 ppm, or 40 times higher than the legal limit.

This highlights yet another big problem with how we regulate chemicals in this country: the conflict between TSCA and other laws such as the Clean Water Act, which covers the water quality standards.

Although the limit set by TSCA is 50 ppm, the federal water quality standard for PCBs is just 64 ppq (parts per quadrillion!), which is about 1,000,000,000 times lower that the TSCA standard. This highlights yet another big problem with how we regulate chemicals in this country: the conflict between TSCA and other laws such as the Clean Water Act, which covers the water quality standards.

The Clean Water Act says that water quality standards have to protect human health and the environment. The TSCA standards also have to consider economic impact, but where they got a number of 50 ppm is something of a mystery.

Think about this from the point of view of a recycled paper mill. The ink in the paper they want to recycle can have up to 1,000,000,000 times higher PCB levels than the concentrations the Clean Water Act allows them to emit to our rivers and streams.
How can they possibly comply? Some recycled paper mills may be forced to go out of business if they can’t meet their effluent standards. That means we lose jobs here in the U.S. because of pigments produced overseas. Why not just eliminate the pollution at the source by using only pigments that don’t contain PCBs?

Right now, EPA has put out an Advance Notice of Public Rule Making regarding the use authorizations for PCBs.  The Environmental Council of States has issued a resolution saying that EPA should work with industries to find safer alternatives to the PCB-laden pigments. At the very least, EPA should enforce the rules on the books and make sure that importers test all of their pigments and report the results before these pigments can come into the country!

At the end of the day there is no simple solution to addressing PCBs, but a good place to start is to reform the out-of-date TSCA. You can make a difference and take action today.

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7/3/13

Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro (D-North Coast), chair of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee, today thanked Gov. Jerry Brown for quickly signing AB 277, a tribal gaming compact that ensures a casino won’t be built on environmentally sensitive lands next to Humboldt Bay. Under the legislation, the 650-member Wiyot Tribe, which has 88 acres of tribal land abutting the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, will share in the gaming revenues from a casino that will be built by the North Fork Rancheria Band of Mono Indians in Madera County.

“I want to thank the governor for recognizing that this compact is good for California’s coastline, good for the Wiyot people and good for the Humboldt community,” Chesbro said. “The Wiyot People have lived in the Humboldt Bay region for thousands of years. They have survived disease, slavery, massacres, death marches and expulsion from their ancestral lands. The Tribe has been very patient, negotiating for years with different governors over a gaming compact. Under this agreement the Tribe gives up its right to build a casino on its land, in exchange for sharing in the revenue of a casino that will be built on land in Madera County that is not as environmentally sensitive.”

“We are very excited that Governor Brown has signed AB 277,” said Ted Hernandez, Wiyot Tribal Chairman. “Now the Wiyot Tribe as a whole can move forward in being able to sustain ourselves.”

Humboldt Baykeeper also supported AB 277 through the legislative process.

“The Wiyot People always have placed a high value on protecting not only their lands but the natural environment of the entire Humboldt Bay region,” Chesbro added. “The Tribe already operates a comprehensive environmental program on limited resources. Revenue from the gaming compact will make this program stronger, in addition to helping lift tribal members out of poverty, funding health clinics, spurring economic development and preserving ancestral lands.”

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6/29/13 





Millions of krill — a tiny shrimp­like animal at the center of the ocean food web — have been washing up on beaches from Clam Beach, Redwood National Park and Crescent Beach to Southern Oregon for the past few weeks.



Scientists are not sure why.



“We’re still looking into it. We got reports locally a couple days after the mass strandings,” said Joe Tyburczy, Humboldt County coastal specialist with California Sea Grant Extension in Eureka. Most local sightings of the event happened between June 16 and June 18, and were reported mostly by beach goers, he said.



National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oceanographer Bill Peterson says the krill may have been blown into the surf by strong winds while mating near the surface, and then been dashed on the beach.



The species is Thysanoessa spinifera. They are about an inch long, and live in shallower water along the Continental Shelf. They have been seen in swaths 5 feet wide, stretching for miles on beach­es from Eureka to Newport, Ore. Some were still alive.



“It’s pretty significant. We’re working with other agencies to gather informa­tion on this event,” Tyburczy said. Cal Sea Grant is trying to get observations from people who have observed the mass strandings. “Luckily, some people had the presence to collect samples and send them to NOAA,” he added.

“There has definitely been something going on,” Peterson said from Newport. “People have sent us specimens. In both cases, the females had just been fertil­ized. That suggests they were involved, maybe, in a mating swarm. But we’ve had a lot of onshore wind the last two weeks. If they were on the surface for some reason, and the wind blows them toward the beach, and they are trapped in the surf, that is the end of them.” Or they may have fallen victim to low levels of oxygen in the water, said Tyburczy. A recent ocean survey showed lower than normal oxygen lev­els in some locations. If the krill went to the surface to get oxygen, they could have been blown onshore, he said.



For some reason, people did not see gulls and other sea birds eating them, he added.



Peterson said low oxygen conditions, known as hypoxia, are a less likely explanation because they normally occur later in the summer.



Tyburczy added that washed up krill were seen June 21 as far south as Bodega Bay.



The mass strandings are unusual, but not unheard of, Peterson added. There is no way to tell yet whether this repre­sents a significant threat to a source of food for salmon, rockfish, ling cod and even whales.

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6-26-13

The reactor of the former nuclear power plant on Humboldt Bay is almost completely dismantled and the next phase of decommissioning will see the installation of a rubberized concrete wall around the reactor site.

A team of experts from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) was at Eureka’s Wharfinger Building on June 19 to update the community on the long-shuttered nuclear facility’s decommissioning.

Components of the reactor are being cut apart in a 26-foot-deep pool of water that also holds the last batch of the reactor’s spent fuel rods. The pool is encased by a steel liner and the spent rods are in a cask made of steel covered with concrete.

Bill Barley, a PG&E decommissioning manager, said the destinations of the radioactive materials vary and the “lesser activated materials” will be stored in liners for transfer to a burial site in Utah. The “mid-range” of the radioactive components can’t be accepted at the Utah site but can go to a site in Texas, he continued.

There is no waste disposal site that will accept the most highly activated materials – the spent fuel – so the cask that contains it will join others that are encased in an on-site storage facility.

Barley said the spent fuel casks will “stay on-site until such time as the Federal Government comes up with a place where that can go to – right now there is none.”

Once the spent fuel cask is moved and the reactor’s internal components are shipped out for disposal, the pool will be removed and enclosed around a concrete wall. Then the pool site will be filled with clean sand and soil.

Completion of work and the termination of the plant’s license are expected sometime in 2019.

The nuclear plant was built in 1963 and was shut down in 1976 after seismic faults were discovered near the reactor. The plan was to retrofit and refuel it but changes in nuclear regulatory standards made reopening financially infeasible.

PG&E got a license to store nuclear fuel onsite in 1988 and the company has been working on decommissioning the plant since.
Brittany McKannay, PG&E’s regional representative, said that much of the facility has been dismantled and now that the Humboldt Bay Generating Station is operating, “We can really put all of our efforts into taking down the structures on the remaining sections of the site.”

She added, “If you looked at the site now compared to a year ago you would see it looks much different – there’s a lot changing year to year.”

A variety of local, state and federal agencies are overseeing the work and McKannay said the goal is to bring the site to safe soil and well-water standards. A coastal trail and environmental habitat uses are being considered for the post-clean up.

The open house’s intent was to update the community on the decommissioning work and to detail effects like traffic impacts, said McKannay. “More importantly, we want to make sure community members have access to our experts,” she continued.

The two-hour event drew strong attendance that included Jen Kalt, the policy manager for Humboldt Baykeeper. She was asked how confident she is about the safety of the storage and disposal process.

“Not very confident at all but there’s a lot of good people involved trying to do the best they can,” she responded.

Kalt said she’s been on a tour of the plant and realized that “this power plant was never designed to be dismantled – these people are doing an amazing thing, trying to figure out where all the rebar and concrete is.”

She described the significantly-dismantled plant as a “bizarre” sight. “It’s like walking into the middle of Doctor Strangelove,” said Kalt, referring to film director Stanley Kubrick’s fanciful but relevant exploration of atomic age culture.

Kalt highlighted the exponential gap between the plant’s cost and the cost of getting rid of it. The nuclear facility cost about $22 million to build and PG&E Decommissioning Manager Kerry Rod said $382 million has been spent on decommissioning as of last May.

He said $950 million is expected to be spent by the time the work’s done.

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