Image: epa.gov

As a new climate and energy bill winds its way through the U.S. Senate, opponents and watchdog groups are voicing concerns that the proposed legislation could strip power away from the Environmental Protection Agency and individual states.

According to multiple reports, a draft in progress from Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) would call for greenhouse gas curbs across multiple economic sectors, with a target of reducing emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. Power plant emissions would be regulated in 2012, with other major industrial sources phased in starting in 2016.

The three met with industry leaders on March 17 to discuss features of the bill. Among the potentially controversial items: Restricting the EPA’s powers to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and curbing states’ climate laws and regulations.

“It wasn’t in our earlier bills, but in terms of getting this energy independence, job-creating carbon pollution bill going, this gives the business community the predictability that they need. It’s very important to them,” Lieberman said.

Industries generally are eager to consolidate new climate rules under one federal program rather than deal with regulation on a case-by-case or state-by-state basis. Any weakening of the Clean Air Act, however, is likely to encounter stiff resistance from environmental groups.

Center for Biological Diversity Executive Director Kieran Suckling was quick to go on the attack.

“If correctly reported, the Kerry, Lieberman, Graham approach is unacceptable. It won’t stop global warming, and by attacking the Clean Air Act, it will remove the only tool we currently have that can do so,” he said in a statement released by the organization.

“Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham appear to be taking Congress to a new low in its long-term failure to rise to the challenge of stopping global warming.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the subcommittee that oversees the EPA budget, also voiced skepticism about the proposed changes.

“I don’t think it should pre-empt EPA from anything,” she said.

Bill Becker, executive director of National Association of Clean Air Agencies (which represents state and local air pollution control agencies) added his concerns.

“Climate change is such a monumental problem that action at all levels — local, state and federal — is essential if we are serious about achieving our ultimate goals,” he said. “Future climate legislation should build upon this successful partnership, not supplant it, and preserve the rights of state and local governments to take more stringent actions where needed.”

Kerry later told reporters that a full draft should be ready by next week, but was unsure when it might be released.

Even after monumental clean-ups that rescued the Great Lakes from acid rain and industrial dumping in the 20th Century, these national water resources continue to suffer environmental assaults.

Sewage overflows into the lakes — some 25 billion gallons of untreated sewage from 20 cities in 2008 — have resulted in waters that periodically test positive for dangerous levels of E coli in 2008, according to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Asian Carp (Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service.)

Lately, too, the lakes are under threat from the large and destructive Asian carp, an invasive species that has been making its way up rivers to Lake Michigan, where scientists say it could annihilate whole populations of native fish, creating havoc in the Great Lakes, and depleting food and fishing jobs. (The carp were imported decades ago by catfish farmers to clean their stock ponds; they escaped during Midwestern floods.)

Today, the EPA officially unveiled a five-year plan to help restore the Great Lakes, which supply 30 million people with water and support billions in fishing and recreational businesses.

“We have an historic opportunity to restore and protect these waters. This action plan outlines our strategy to protect the environmental, human health, and economic interests of the millions of people who rely on the Great Lakes,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “We’re committed to creating a new standard of care that will leave the Great Lakes better for the next generation.”

State governors were, predictably, pleased. Said Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, co-chair of the Council of Great Lakes Governors, “Wisconsin is defined by the Great Lakes, and one of our greatest responsibilities is to preserve this important freshwater resource for future generations. This action plan sets a strong course of action as we confront tremendous challenges to not only protect, but also restore the Great Lakes.”

“We must protect and preserve our lakes for our families and outdoors enthusiasts, as well as the industries that rely on the waterways to transport their goods around the world,” added CGLC co-chair  Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, in the same news release.

The five-year action plan was developed by 16 federal groups on an inter-agency task force headed by Jackson. It will have five areas of focus, according to an EPA news release:

• Protection and cleanup of the most polluted areas in the lakes: The task force will work with state and municipal partners to clean up toxic hotspots so that critical “working waterways” are reclaimed for healthy fishing and recreation.

• Combating invasive species: The plan will take a “zero tolerance” approach toward invasive species, such as the Asian Carp, to keep them out of the lakes.

• Protection of high priority watersheds and reduced runoff from urban, suburban and, agricultural sources: Reducing runoff and pollution to help clean up Great Lakes beaches.

• Restoration of wetlands and other habitats: Restoration work will begin with an assessment of the entire 530,000 acre Great Lakes coastal wetland, which has never been done before, to help the task force identify and restore affected areas for healthier wildlife and habitats.

• Implementation of accountability measures, learning initiatives, outreach and strategic partnerships: The task force will work closely with the Great Lakes states, non-profits, stakeholder groups and Canada to protect and restore the lakes.

The initiative is slated to be funded with $475 million for a Great Lakes Restoration Initiative proposed this month by President Barak Obama. If approved, it would be the most significant investment in the Great Lakes in two decades, according to the EPA.

For more than a decade the energy industry has steadfastly argued before courts, Congress and the public that the federal law protecting drinking water should not be applied to hydraulic fracturing [2], the industrial process that is essential to extracting the nation’s vast natural gas reserves. In 2005 Congress, persuaded, passed a law prohibiting such regulation.

Now an important part of that argument — that most of the millions of gallons of toxic chemicals that drillers inject underground are removed for safe disposal, and are not permanently discarded inside the earth — does not apply to drilling in many of the nation’s booming new gas fields.

Three company spokesmen and a regulatory official said in separate interviews with ProPublica that as much as 85 percent of the fluids used during hydraulic fracturing is being left underground after wells are drilled in the Marcellus Shale, the massive gas deposit that stretches from New York to Tennessee.

A hydraulic fracturing operation in Bradford County, Pa. (Photo: the New York State Environmental Impact Statement)

That means that for each modern gas well drilled in the Marcellus and places like it, more than 3 million gallons of chemically tainted wastewater could be left in the ground forever. Drilling companies say that chemicals make up less than 1 percent of that fluid. But by volume, those chemicals alone still amount to 34,000 gallons in a typical well.

These disclosures raise new questions about why the Safe Drinking Water Act, the federal law that regulates fluids injected underground so they don’t contaminate drinking water aquifers, should not apply to hydraulic fracturing, and whether the thinking behind Congress’ 2005 vote to shield drilling from regulation is still valid.

When lawmakers approved that exemption, it was generally accepted that only about 30 percent of the fluids stayed in the ground. At the time, fracturing was also used in far fewer wells than it is today and required far less fluid. Ninety percent of the nation’s wells now rely on the process, which is widely credited for making it financially feasible to tap into the Marcellus Shale and other new gas deposits.

Congress is considering a bill that would repeal the exemption, and has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to undertake a fresh study of how hydraulic fracturing may affect drinking water supplies. But the government faces stiff pressure from the energy industry [3] to maintain the status quo — in which gas drilling is regulated state by state — as companies race to exploit the nation’s vast shale deposits and meet the growing demand for cleaner fuel. Just this month, Exxon announced it would spend some $31 billion to buy XTO Energy, a company that controls substantial gas reserves in the Marcellus — but only on the condition that Congress doesn’t enact laws on fracturing that make drilling “commercially impracticable.”

The realization that most of the chemicals and fluids injected underground remain there could stoke the debate further, especially since it contradicts the industry’s long-standing message that only a small proportion of the fluids is left behind at most wells.

But while the message has not changed, the drilling has.

The Marcellus Shale, denoted in brown, primarily cuts across large swaths of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. (Map by Jennifer LaFleur/ProPublica)

In the nation’s largest and most important natural gas fields, far more chemicals are being used today than when Congress and the EPA last visited the fracturing issue, and far more of those fluids are remaining underground. Drilling companies say that as they’ve drilled in the Marcellus they’ve discovered that the shale rock — which is similar to many of the nation’s largest natural gas projects in Louisiana, Texas and several other states — holds more fluids than they expected.During hydraulic fracturing, drillers use combinations of some of the 260 chemical additives associated with the process, plus large amounts of water and sand, to break rock and release gas. Benzene and formaldehyde, both known carcinogens, are among the substances that are commonly found.

If another industry proposed injecting chemicals — or even salt water — underground for disposal, the EPA would require it to conduct a geological study to make sure the ground could hold those fluids without leaking and to follow construction standards when building the well. In some cases the EPA would also establish a monitoring system to track what happened as the well aged.

But because hydraulic fracturing is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, it doesn’t necessarily have to conform to these federal standards. Instead, oversight of the drilling chemicals and the injection process has been left solely to the states, some of which regulate parts of the process while others do not.

As the industry was lobbying Congress for that exemption — and ever since — the notion that most fluids would not be left underground continued to emerge as a recurring theme put forth by everyone from attorneys for Halliburton, which developed the fracturing process and is one of the leading drilling service companies, to government researchers and regulators.

“Hydraulic fracturing is fundamentally different,” wrote Mike Paque, director of the Ground Water Protection Council, an association of state oil and gas regulators, to Senate staff in a 2002 letter advocating for the exemption, “because it is part of the well completion process, does not ‘dispose of fluids’ and is of short duration, with most of the fluids being immediately recovered.”

In May, ProPublica heard a similar explanation from the industry-funded American Petroleum Institute.

“Hydraulic fracturing operations are something that are done from 24 hours to a couple of days versus a program where you are injecting products into the ground and they are intended to be sequestered for time into the future,” said Stephanie Meadows, a senior API policy analyst who has been closely involved in fracturing legislation issues. “I don’t see the benefit of trying to take that sort of sequestration type activity and applying it to something that is temporary in time.”

Asked how much fracturing fluid can remain underground, and whether it could be as high as 30 percent, the figure that was still being included in government reports earlier this year, Meadows said: “I guess I didn’t know that the statistics are that high.”

Neither the American Petroleum Institute nor the Ground Water Protection Council responded to requests for further comment.

EPA officials maintained in 2005, and say now, that the volume of fluids left underground had little to do with its opinion that hydraulic fracturing for gas wells is not the same as underground injection. They say that distinction is because the primary function of the two types of wells is different: Gas wells are for production processes, while most EPA-regulated underground injection wells are intended for storage.

But Stephen Heare, director of the EPA’s Drinking Water Protection Division in Washington, said that both the circumstances and the drilling technology have evolved. When asked to explain how hydraulic fracturing today is different from other forms of underground injection, he said the bottom line was simple.

“If you are emplacing fluid, it does not matter whether you are recovering 30 percent or 65 percent of it, if you are emplacing fluids, that is underground injection,” Heare said. “The simple explanation for why hydraulic fracturing is different from other injection activities,” he added, is that hydraulic fracturing “is exempt from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.”

The argument that fracturing should not be regulated by the EPA became prominent in the 1990s, after the EPA said that fracturing lay outside the scope of the Safe Drinking Water Act, because the primary purpose of gas wells was energy production, not fluid disposal.

A 1997 Alabama lawsuit challenged that position, and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the EPA.

What is hydraulic fracturing? Click here to see it explained. (Graphic by Al Granberg)

[2] In that decision, the judges wrote that “According to the state agency, hydraulic fracturing is not underground injection because it does not result in permanent subsurface ‘emplacement’ of the fluids, as these fluids are pumped out of the ground before methane gas is extracted out of the well.” But the judges called that assertion “untenable” and ordered the EPA to regulate fracturing in Alabama under the Safe Drinking Water Act. They also ordered the EPA to more clearly define fracturing as a type of underground injection, a move that could have paved the way for regulation in other states as well.

But in 2005, before such regulation could happen, Congress stepped in and gave hydraulic fracturing its special exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

When Congress voted for the exemption, it referred to a 2004 EPA report, which concluded that fracturing did not pose a threat to drinking water. That report, which has since been criticized as incomplete, said that while some of the fracturing fluids remained underground, “Most of the fracturing fluids injected into the formation are pumped back out of the well along with groundwater and methane gas.”

Lee Fuller, vice president of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said that the emphasis on wastewater removal was made to help legislators understand how fracturing was different from underground injection, but that those legislators also knew that much of the water stayed underground when they voted for the exemption.

“The EPA study said there was a certain amount of the water that does stay in the fractured formation. That information was known,” he said, adding that more of the water may seep out over the life span of the well. “So I think there was an understanding of it on the part of the proponents of the proposal.”

In the 2004 report, the EPA said as much as 59 percent of fracturing fluids can remain underground. A 2009 Department of Energy report titled Modern Shale Gas put that figure at 30 to 70 percent, but emphasized that most wells fall into the lower end of that range, explaining that “the majority of fracturing fluid is recovered in a matter of several hours to a couple of weeks.”

Just six months ago that point was reiterated in testimony before the House Committee on Natural Resources, when the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission repeated a statement that former Alabama state geologist Donald Oltz made in the 1997 Alabama court case: “Almost all hydraulic fracturing fluid is recovered to the surface after a hydraulic fracturing operation.”

That statement contrasts sharply with the latest reports from regions where gas drilling is on the upswing.

Spokesmen for Cabot Oil and Gas, Range Resources and Fortuna Energy — three of the most active companies developing gas resources in the Marcellus Shale — say that more water is trapped underground in newer drilling areas because the “tight shale” that is loath to give up the gas is likely to hold on to the fluids too.

“It’s not like you pump a volume of water into the frack and then it gives you that volume back,” said Ken Komoroski, a spokesman for Cabot Oil and Gas, who says only 15 to 20 percent of the fluid comes back out. “Most of the water and sand stays in the formation compared to in other geologic formations.”

In Pennsylvania, where regulators had once predicted that drilling in the Marcellus would produce about 19 million gallons of wastewater per day, that estimate has been revised to just a fraction of that volume, largely because so much of the fluid is remaining underground.

Range Resources now reuses 100 percent of the wastewater it extracts from its Pennsylvania wells by diluting it with fresh water and using it to drill more wells, said spokesman Matt Pitzarella. Range has been able to do that, Pitzarella said, in part because it’s extracting only 20 percent of the 4 million gallons it pumps underground for each of its wells.

Gas industry officials say the amount of fluids they leave behind in their wells should have no bearing on whether hydraulic fracturing is or is not regulated by the federal government. What’s important is managing the risk, says the Independent Petroleum Association’s Fuller, a job he says the industry is doing very well without additional oversight.

“You are wrapping yourself around a distinction of whether something should or should not be regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act as opposed to whether something does or does not pose an environmental risk,” said Fuller, who asserts that despite numerous reports of contamination in drilling areas, the fracturing process has never been conclusively proven to be the cause.

Regulation, Fuller said, “may shut down natural gas drilling for a long time, but it is not going to make the environment any better.”

It will fall to Congress — and then to the EPA — to decide whether that is truly the case. Sponsors of the Frack Act hope for a vote this spring. If it passes, and if the EPA finds reason to change the conclusions it reached in 2004, the agency would then have to decide exactly how fracturing will be addressed by the Safe Drinking Water Act.

“The thinking we did then, the study that we did then, we were really looking at a different set of circumstances,” said Heare, the EPA’s Drinking Water Protection Division director. “The agency has not investigated the impacts of hydraulic fracturing in other settings such as shale gas production and at this time is unable to quantify the potential threat.”

From Green Right Now Reports

Star Market at Chestnut Hill in Newton, Mass., recently became the first grocery store in the nation to receive US Environmental Protection Agency’s GreenChill Partnership platinum store award. The advanced refrigeration technology in the new store, which is part of the Shaw’s line of supermarkets, significantly reduces its impact on climate change and the stratospheric ozone layer by cutting the use of refrigerants by 85 percent compared with the typical supermarket.

Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, called the store’s efforts “wicked cool.”

“This store shows that smart design and advanced technologies help us right now to better protect our climate, the ozone layer, and our health,” McCarthy said in a statement.

The GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership is an EPA cooperative alliance with the supermarket industry to promote advanced technologies, strategies, and practices that reduce refrigerant charges and emissions of ozone-depleting substances and greenhouse gases.

GreenChill partners emit about 50 percent less emissions than the industry average, and have pledged to continually lower them as part of the program. EPA estimates that if every supermarket in the nation joined GreenChill and reduced emissions to the current GreenChill average, the U.S. would prevent 22 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 240 tons of ozone-depleting substances annually, and save $108 million in refrigerant costs each year. GreenChill has 46 partners, with more than 6,500 retail food stores in 47 states.

Under the program, GreenChill Partner stores agree to:

• Transition to non-ozone-depleting refrigerants;
• Reduce refrigerant charges;
• Reduce both ozone-depleting and greenhouse gas refrigerant emissions; and
• Promote supermarkets’ adoption of advanced refrigeration technologies

Earlier this year, the EPA honored a handful of supermarkets for reducing their use of greenhouse gas refrigerants that deplete the Earth’s ozone layer and contribute to climate change. Awardees included  Sprouts Farmers Market, Whole Foods, and Hill Phoenix.

Sprouts Farmers Market, which owns stores across California, Arizona, Colorado, and Texas, received a New Partner Award.

New partners pledge to go above and beyond regulatory requirements by measuring and tracking refrigerant emissions that affect climate change and the Earth’s ozone layer, and then setting reduction targets for these emissions. Partners also agree to use only ozone-friendly alternatives in all new and remodeled stores.

“We look forward to a productive and mutually beneficial partnership with Sprouts Farmers Market,” Keilly Witman, GreenChill Program Manager, said in a statement. “The public wants to do business with companies that share their environmental values. By joining GreenChill, Sprouts Farmers Market is proving to consumers that they care about the Earth’s ozone layer and climate system.”

Whole Foods Market’s newest store in the North Atlantic Region, located at Legacy Place in Dedham, Mass., was recognized for its environmentally friendly design, construction, and operations with the Green Building Initiative’s (GBI) Green Globes certification and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) GreenChill certification.

For the Green Globes certification, the Dedham store was evaluated in six categories, including energy, water, resources, emissions, indoor environment and environmental management systems, and received a three out of four “Green Globes” rating. The EPA’s GreenChill certification program promotes advanced technologies, strategies, and practices that reduce refrigerant charges and emissions of ozone-depleting substances and greenhouse gases.

“With the combined power generated from our fuel cell and solar panels, the Dedham store is essentially able to generate almost 100 percent of its power needs on-site with clean energy resources,” Kathy Loftus, global leader of sustainable engineering, maintenance, and energy for Austin-based Whole Foods, said in a statement. “We are the first supermarket to use fuel cell technology in the state.”

By generating most of its power on-site with a fuel cell, Whole Foods’ Dedham store will prevent the release of more than 764 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually, the equivalent of planting more than 175 acres of trees and removing over 90 cars from the road, according to the natural foods grocer. The peak power generated from the photovoltaic (PV) solar energy system is enough to meet the store’s entire lighting power needs.

To achieve a Green Globes rating, Whole Foods used Green Globes’ online and interactive program to monitor the environmentally friendly building upgrades. A GBI-authorized third-party building science expert was engaged to review the building documents, conduct an on-site inspection and assess an official Green Globes rating.

Squint and you can’t see them. Try a standard microscope. They’re still not there.

And yet, they’re everywhere. Nanoparticles are in hundreds, if not thousands, of consumer products, from sunscreen to child car seats to sports socks.

So the EPA has decided to take a closer look at these eensy particles, to investigate their potential to harm humans and the environment.

Nanos, which are about 1/100,000 of the width of a human hair and have been aggregating in consumer goods faster than E coli at a feed lot, have raised concerns among environmentalists, public health officials and others. These guardians of the environment want to know more about how nanos act in water, air and soil, and also whether they can invade and damage human tissue.

Nanoparticles are many times smaller than even a blood cell, and therefore can cross cellular barriers in the human body. Questions remain about whether and how much nanos can damage human tissue.

The study of nanos and their effects has often been done behind closed doors in the private labs of consumer companies. A European survey of companies making products using nanoparticles (done by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work) found that only 8 percent had conducted testing to examine the potential effects on workers.

In the US, the EPA wants more information about using nanos safely in consumer products, and also about the positive prospects for using nanoparticles to clean up the environment.

Rice University, for instance, has been studying using nanoparticles to clean up oil spills by capturing oil particles in water droplets.

The EPA notes that some studies show sunscreens with nanoparticles “provide superior protection against UV radiation.”

Some environmentalists dispute that claim, saying that nanos in sunscreens are dangerous and may actually have the opposite of the desired effect, aging skin instead of protecting it by introducing free radicals. (See our story Don’t get burned, use sunscreens without nanoparticles, which contains a list of  cosmetic makers who have so far kept nanos out of their sunscreen.)

The EPA wants to sort out the good and the bad, identifying any hazards presented by nanos and promoting steps to minimize risks, according to a press release this week.

Researchers are investigating “widely used nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes” that are used in vehicles, sports equipment, electronics and titanium dioxide, the key ingredient in many sunscreens as well as skin cosmetics.

• See the EPA’s nanotechnology website for more information.

• The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health also maintains a nanoparticle info site, with archived articles and research about the potential occupational exposure to, and health effects of, nanos.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Here’s a little cautionary tale about how bigger is not always better — and about the inter-connectedness of our energy and food systems, specifically how coal-fired power plants affect your diet.

Say you were camping with friends and caught a really BIG fish. This monster would give you bragging rights for a year. Now say you caught a smaller fish, suitable for pan frying but not Kodak-worthy.

What do you do? If you’re Daniel Boone, you toss the little guy back. It’s a no brainer. But if you’re a post-industrial age sportsperson, you must consider this: That big fish fillet could be disproportionately loaded with mercury; keeping the little fishy could be safer.

According to recent sampling studies by the federal government, all of our freshwater fish are contaminated, to some extent, with mercury. And the way mercury works its way through the food chain is that it builds momentum, so that those higher on the food chain are more contaminated — a process called “biomagnification.” And some of those big fish contain a mercury that’s become more toxic, too, after the mercury has been acted on by bacteria found in wetlands and swamps and converted to the more dangerousmethylmercury.

The science is complicated, but you don’t need a biology degree to get the gist of things — that our fish are coming to us in less than pristine condition.

Fishy Findings

The U.S. Geological Survey study tested fish from 291 streams across the country and found thatall tested positive for traces of mercury, demonstrating how widespread mercury pollution has become. But scientists also reported that only about one-quarter had mercury levels exceeding the EPA’s safe guidelines for people eating “average amounts of fish.”

Still, all of the fish tested in the US showed some levels of mercury contamination. (The levels of mercury ranged from .008 to 1.95 parts per million – or micrograms per gram of wet tissue.)

This left us to wonder: Are we supposed to be alarmed? What can we now safely eat? Must we forfeit fresh fish along with all those ocean varieties that are endangered?

The answers can be confusing.

The government’s FAQs on this topic only left us feeling more uneasy about our future meals and also more than a little helpless about the air pollution at the root of it all. They explain that mercury is a “potent neurotoxin” in fish, wildlife and humans, yet they note that fish are “important part of a healthy diet.” We did know that: Fish are high in protein and healthy oils.

So officials are advising us to continue to eat fish, but with caution. The public should:

• Make “informed decisions” based on EPA and FDA guidelines.
• Check our state advisories and USDA guidelines to find out which freshwater fish are most affected and where.
• Kids and women of child-bearing age need to take special care because mercury can be harmful to developing bodies, and especially minds. They should eat no more than two meals a week that contain fish that are “lower in mercury,” according to the

“We don’t want to scare people away from eating fish, because they’re a healthy source of protein, but they should pay attention to state fish consumption advisories and also the EPA and FDA guidance for consumption of commercial fish,” says Mark E. Brigham, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, a leader on the study and an expert in mercury in biological systems.

Isn’t that a lot to ask of consumers who are already busy reading food labels, trying to shop “the outside aisles” of the grocery store, searching for information on how livestock was fed and trying to find the hormone-free milk?

“We want informed consumers,” says Brigham.

In case you think freshwater fish present a minor culinary concern, you should know that the federal government estimates about 34 million people fish for sport and food. No doubt many more fancy catfish at the neighborhood fish fry and patronize lakeside restaurants looking for walleye and perch.

To be fair, though, Brigham isn’t on the food side of this issue, but the fact-finding science side. He understands that his team’s discovery —  that every last fish tested had some traces of mercury — is not a comfort to the fish-eating public. But it was not surprising.

Mercury, he points out, “is a pervasive contaminant in the environment.” It is the second leading cause of “impaired” water systems — the first is pathogenic contamination, such as bacterial infections — and has been tracked for many years. Forty-eight of the 50 states issue advisories on mercury in fish.

In addition, “there’s always been a natural component to the mercury cycle. It does get emitted from volcanoes and is “degassed from the earth” and rained back down into waterways.
That’s the good news within the bad news.

A human-made problem

The really bad news, though, is that historical sampling of lake beds shows that mercury contamination from natural sources was slight compared with the rapid accumulation from post-industrial activities.

Knowingly and inadvertently, humans have spewed significant mercury into the earth’s biological systems, waterways and atmosphere as we’ve developed cement plants, mercury and gold mines, metal smelting and coal-burning power plants.

Some of that pollution has been cleaned up as we’ve realized that dumping industrial waste directly into streams and lakes, no matter how giant (think: Lake Erie), is not a good idea.

But the main contributor to the global “mercury cycle’” is coal power plants, of which there are 491 in the U.S. and hundreds more around the world, such as in China, which is building coal plants faster than anyone.

Coal-fired power plants account for 40 percent of all mercury emissions in the U.S., according to the EPA.

The top 50 most-polluting U.S. coal-burning power plants emitted 20 tons of toxic mercury into the air in 2007, according to a study by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project.

All U.S. coal plants collectively emit some 48 tons of mercury annually, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, preliminarily released in July.

That mercury gets emitted as oxidized, elemental or particulate-bonded forms. The oxidized or particulate-bonded mercury falls to the earth relatively quickly, contaminating the local region and watersheds — but it can also be captured more easily. The elemental mercury, though, can ride in the atmosphere, joining mercury emissions from around the world, Brigham said, which explains why his study group found mercury in fish in areas distant from known sources of mercury.

Furthermore, certain natural conditions, present in wetland environments and forests, enhance a process that converts mercury into methylmercury, which is easily taken up by aquatic life. This leads to the seeming paradox of some fish in relatively undeveloped watersheds and pristine areas having some of the highest elevated levels of mercury (in the rural South and wild wetlands of the Pacific Northwest and Midwest); and complicates the matter of knowing what is safe to eat.

The best way to help save our freshwater fish and their ocean cousins from further injury, Brigham among others has concluded, would be to reduce those mercury emissions at their source.

(Though remember, some fish is safe to eat all the time, and other fish is safe to eat some of the time, like once a week, if it’s the right type…Check your advisories.)

Dialing back mercury emissions

The EPA first tried to reduce mercury emissions from coal plants with a 2005 regulation called the Clean Air Mercury Rule. But it was thrown out by the courts, which advised the agency to employ the Clean Air Act to set mercury emission guidelines.

The EPA is in the midst of trying to make this change, but a new rule must meet certain tests. The Clean Air Act requires, for instance, that standards for other pollutants in the same category, known as “Hazardous Air Pollutants” (lead, toxic gases and dioxin) be set simultaneously.

Once a rule is written and approved, coal-fired plants will be required to use the latest technological advances to cleanse mercury from their admissions. It can be done: Some coal plants in the U.S. have already added scrubbing technology, required by more stringent state guidelines, proving that removing the mercury is possible.

Furthermore, according to the July GAO report technology to remove mercury is effective and affordable.

Coal plants with the technology already in place are removing 80 to 90 percent of the mercury in air emissions.

Coal’s CO2 emissions, blamed for rising carbon in the atmosphere, will not be affected by this new rule.

Resources:

• GAO Testimony to the U.S. Senate committees and subcommittees concerned with food and environmental health.
• EPA list of State Fish Advisories
• Effects of Mercury on People on the EPA

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

By Karina Rusk

SAN LEANDRO, CA (KGO) — This week it will be 200 days since President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a massive federal program to create jobs by infusing cash into local communities. Some of that stimulus money is being used to clean up an environmental hazard in the Bay Area. >> Read the full story

Your kids may be working on their ABCs, but is their school working on its IPM?

That’s Integrated Pest Management, an increasingly requested – or required – method of fighting pests without using potentially harmful pesticides. (Or using minimal pesticides.)

For decades, schools liberally applied toxic pesticides on their grounds and in their classrooms to beat back bugs and rodents. Exterminators or the school janitor might have sprayed DDT, diazinon or chlordane. If things got bad enough, teachers would (and still could) take matters into their own hands with a can of Raid.

But study after study has made it painfully clear that children are especially sensitive to pesticide exposure. All of their touching, crawling and putting little fingers into mouths makes a bad situation worse. Neurotoxins in pesticides can attack immune systems, organs, brains and nervous systems. Experts point to pesticides’ links to cancer, birth defects or neurological problems.

Letting the bugs or rodents run rampant isn’t an option. Pests also threaten kids’ health.  German cockroach feces have been linked to asthma in children, as has pesticide residue.

So, what is IPM? Common sense, basically. It means taking practical, relatively simple steps to pest control before thinking about hauling out the heavy pesticides.

With an IPM program, there will be scrutiny of all parts of the school, indoors and out. Part of the plan involves looking for and sealing cracks, crevices or gaps where pests can enter or hide.

Those involved in the IPM plan will search for pests’ food sources, such as students’ or staff’s dirty dishes or utensils. Cleaning garbage cans and dumpsters on a regular basis is another element. Checking for sources of water is another.

Planting landscape elements that are pest-resistant and suggestions of care for grass and athletic fields is part of the program.

Only after exhausting all the “natural” steps does pesticide become an option. IPM schools are urges to use pesticides that have minimal impact on people. Limited,  targeted use – in areas where students or staff aren’t likely to put their hands —  is the goal. Biopesticides can stop roaches from reproducing without creating hazardous conditions. Bait traps, removing weeds and moving plants away from buildings can help. Boric acid, a relatively harmless compound, can be used in gel form to deter ants.

An added bonus: Integrated Pest Management is probably going to cost less than all that hazardous spraying.

There are more than 53 million kids and six million adults in more than 120,000 public and private schools today, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). If it’s such a no-brainer, why hasn’t every state and school district signed on with IPM plans?

A new cancer study from India suggests that fluoride is a contributing factor to osteosarcoma, or bone cancer – but just how much fluoride intake causes the uncommon disease is not clear.

Fluoride in Americans’ tap water has spurred controversy since its introduction in 1945. Anti-fluoride activists say the risks are too high to add “medication” to the water, while government officials cite scientific studies that prove fewer cavities and no serious risk.

In Europe, most countries refuse to treat their water with fluoride with the exception of the United Kingdom. According to the British Medical Journal, fluoridation was introduced in 1963, and the Department of Health reports that rates of dental decay have been reduced 70 percent. But experts remain divided over epidemiological research that has suggested that water fluoridation might be linked to osteoporosis, dental fluorosis, irritable bowel syndrome, and other health problems.

The latest cancer study indicates blood fluoride levels were significantly higher in patients with osteosarcoma than in control groups, according to research published in Biological Trace Element Research (April 2009).

Osteosarcoma occurs mostly in children and young adults. According to the study, status of fluoride levels in the serum of osteosarcoma is still not clear. Other reports have also indicated that there is a link between fluoride exposure and osteosarcoma.

“The more studies that we have which talk about osteosarcoma with fluoride, the more the scientific community will take notice and eventually blind politicians will do the same,” said Paul Beeber, president of the New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation.

GOVERNMENT REACTION

So far U.S. government health officials don’t agree.

The American Dental Association issued a statement that community water fluoridation is a safe, effective public health measure for preventing tooth decay after a similar study appeared in 2006.

After more than 60 years of rigorous scientific study of water fluoridation, ADA officials said “the overwhelming weight of scientific evidences does not show an association with osteosarcoma.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokeswoman Janis Winogradsky said they don’t comment on outside studies. But she referred to a National Research Study done for the Environmental Protection Agency in 2006 in which researchers reviewed the literature on fluoride exposure and osteosarcoma. The report states that the literature does not clearly indicate that fluoride is carcinogenic in humans.

According to the American Cancer Society, osteosarcoma is a rare cancer, which means it can be hard to gather enough cases to do large studies. Smaller studies can usually detect large differences in cancer rates between two groups, but they may not be able to detect a smaller difference.

Nearly 70 percent of U.S. residents who get water from public water systems now have fluoridated water, according to the CDC. The rationale: Water fluoridation is a low-cost way to bring the benefits of fluoride to all residents.

How do cars pollute? In two main ways, through inefficient mileage (guzzling a gallon of gas every eight or 10 or 14 miles) and through tailpipe emissions.

There’s the pollution associated with manufacturing, also, but to keep it simple let’s stick with emissions and mileage. Obviously, both affect the air. Think of mileage as a measure of your car’s pollution volume over time – if a gallon of gas doesn’t take you very far, you have to burn a lot more gas — and emissions as the chemistry of that pollution; if the mix is particularly noxious, your car will be a bigger offender than one with better tailpipe controls.

So if you want to buy the cleanest car you can — in the price range you need — you’ll look at both factors. Fortunately, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has already done this work, assigning a  “greenhouse gas” score to most models. Find it at the EPA’s Green Vehicles website.

The EPA’s “greenhouse gas” score considers how much a vehicle contributes to global warming via its full lifecycle emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (NO2), and hydroflurocarbons (HFCs). The rating is mainly a function of a car’s gas mileage, but the analysis also looks at the fuel a car uses (gasoline, natural gas, diesel, ethanol) to factor in emissions.

Cars are given a score between 1 and 10, with 10 being the highest (the Prius solos at this rating) and 5 being not so hot (the Lincoln Town Car) and 3 (the GMC Sierra 15 gasoline model) being about as low as it goes. (The Sierra 15 jumps to a 6 on ethanol though.)

At the same site, the EPA chart also breaks out a column that considers just regulated tailpipe emissions — which doesn’t capture all the greenhouse gases and considers some outputs that aren’t greenhouse gases — giving each model an “air pollution score” as well. A diesel, say, might not score as well on this scale as it would on the greenhouse gas scale.

Interested in seeing just the EPA’s gas mileage ratings? Look to fueleconomy.gov, courtesy of the Department of Energy.

The glass can be greener on the other side, if you recycle it.

Everyone knows that paper and plastic can be recycled. But sadly many people forget to recycle their glass. All glass containers or jars should be recycled.

Glass is 100% recyclable which means nothing will be wasted. When glass is recycled over and over again, there is no loss in quality and no waste or by-products. When glass manufacturers use recyclable materials to make new glass products, they are using less energy, cutting raw materials and CO2 emissions.

The glass manufacturing industry has a goal of using 50% recycled content for containers by 2013, according to Joseph Cattaneo, president of the Glass Packaging Institute in Alexandria, Va..  So, the industry needs your glass recycling; they can’t do it without you.

According to studies released by the EPA, glass recycling has been growing in popularity (and accessibility; not all cities collect it). In 2007, the EPA estimates 28.1 percent of glass was recycled, compared with 25.3 percent in 2006, and about 19 percent in 2003.

Once you recycle your glass, it can be on the shelves again in as little as 30 days. The glass is typically sorted through by color and for non-glass contaminants, then sent to a glass manufacturer. Then its back on to store shelves. Chances are the glass containers that you use at home are made up of some recycled glass according to Cattaneo.

For the do’s (rinse it out) and don’t’s (do not include the metal lid) of glass recycling see the GPI’s guide.

The glass industry has received a boost in popularity as an alternative to plastic containing Bisphenol A, or BPA, a plastic additive that’s a hormone disruptor linked to fertility and developmental health issues.

Glass is made up of only natural materials such as sand, soda ash, and limestone. There are no synthetic chemicals to be passed on to the consumer.  Glass is the only packaging material certified by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration as “generally regarded as safe”.

The key downside with glass is that it’s heavier to ship than plastic, an argument against glass packaging that’s been leveled by the plastics industry as it endeavors to keep a competitive edge in packaging.

As the popularity of glass manufacturing increases, so does the demand for your recycled glass. So, take the glass to the curb — safely inside your recycling bin.

(Photo credit: Glass Packaging Institute)

Copyright C 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Just days before President Obama pledged to restore science to its rightful place in public policy, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies released a report addressing environmental changes some political appointees have preferred to ignore: Sea levels are rising, and coastal communities, along with governments responsible for the species that depend on coastal environments, are going to have to take measures to deal with it.

“The primary causes of global sea-level rise are the expansion of ocean water due to warming and the melting of glaciers and ice sheets,” explains the press release accompanying the report (the full document can be found here), which further declares that, yes, human-induced factors are part of the cause.

This report focuses on the Mid-Atlantic region, where high populations not only mean the prospects for impact on cities is high — the density of human-built environments can also impede the natural expansion of wetlands, which would otherwise creep higher as sea levels rose. Many scientists have predicted at least a two-foot rise in sea level by 2100; if levels were to rise by a meter in that period, the report says, most wetlands in the region studied would not survive.

Accepting that these changes are underway, the paper’s authors focus on possible efforts to cope, which “include seawalls, bulkheads, and other shoreline armoring; elevating buildings and land surfaces (including beaches and wetlands); and allowing shorelines to change and moving structures out of harm’s way.”

Time is of the essence, according to a summary that says “preparing now can reduce the eventual environmental and economic impacts of sea level rise.”

This and many other federal studies on climate change can be found at the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media