Dioxin Study is a Political Hot Potato for EPA

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Dioxin Study is a Political Hot Potato for EPA

JoAnn Guest

Nov 17, 2006 19:50 PST

 

Dioxin Study is a Political Hot Potato for EPA

" Dioxin has gone from being a `possible' to a `known' human

carcinogen "

Mark Hertsgaard / SF Chronicle 12mar01

 

Mark Hertsgaard is the author of " Earth Odyssey: Around the World in

Search of Our Environmental Future " (Broadway Books) and a columnist

for the Blue Ridge Press syndicate. He lives in San Francisco.

 

http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Dioxin-Hot-Potato-Hertsgaard.htm

 

ONE OF EVERY thousand high-risk Americans could develop cancer from

the toxic chemical dioxin, according to a landmark study the

Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to make official. Even

more worrisome, the study warns, are dioxin's effects on the

thyroids and immune systems of children.

 

Ten years in the making, EPA's dioxin study is a political hot

potato

for the Bush administration.

 

Issue the study, and the administration angers its allies in the

chemical, paper and other dioxin-producing industries, who will

surely face calls for stricter regulation. Bury the study, and

environmental activists will cry coverup, further damaging the

administration's shaky credibility on the mom- and-apple-pie issue

of environmental protection.

 

 

How President Bush and EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman

handle this dilemma is important in its own right.

 

But their decision will also shed light on the administration's

policy toward the international treaty on persistent organic

pollutants, or POPs, that 122 nations, including the United States,

negotiated last year.

 

The treaty, which calls for eliminating dioxin and other toxics

" wherever feasible, " will be signed in May in Stockholm by

environmental

ministers of signatory countries. Will Whitman be among them?

 

There is irony in all this for Bush, for the dioxin study was

initiated in 1991 during his father's presidency. What's more, Bush

Senior and his

EPA chief, William Reilly, ordered the study at the specific behest

of the chemical industry, which complained that environmentalists'

calls for limits on dioxin were based on hype, not sound science.

But now that

the study is near completion, it is unwelcome in corporate

boardrooms.

 

" Industry pushed for this study as a way to stall tougher

regulations, "

says Rick Hind of Greenpeace, one of 411 groups that recently wrote

Bush, urging the study's release. " Dioxin has gone from being a

`possible' to a `known' human carcinogen, and the risks of cancer

have increased tenfold. "

 

Dioxin first attracted public attention during the Vietnam War; it

was the contaminant in the defoliant Agent Orange. The chemical's

reputation

worsened in the 1980s, when it caused the evacuation of the Love

Canal neighbors in upstate New York.

 

Dioxin is formed whenever chlorinated compounds are burned. It

remains ubiquitous because it is a byproduct of so many industrial

processes.

Production of PVC plastic - the plastic used in water pipes and

credit cards - is a leading source of dioxin.

 

So is the operation of waste incinerators, steel plants and paper

mills that use chlorine as a bleaching agent.

 

Every person on Earth has dioxin in his system. The chemical lodges

in the fatty tissues of animals that consume contaminated water and

plants;

it also accumulates through the food chain. Humans who eat lots of

fatty foods therefore end up with the highest body burdens. Exposure

is especially high for people, often poor or nonwhite or both,

living near industrial facilities (46 percent of the nation's public

housing projects are situated within a mile of toxic factories,

according to a University of Texas-Dallas study.)

 

So, will the EPA study see the light of day? In truth, its contents

are no secret. A working draft is on the agency's Web site, and the

media has reported on it. But the study has no legal standing until

the EPA formally approves it. Taking that step would oblige the EPA

to incorporate the study's findings into its regulations, and

therein lies the rub.

 

Bush and Whitman have records of skepticism toward regulations that

restrict corporations' freedom of action. As governor of New Jersey,

Whitman removed approximately 1,000 chemicals from a " right to know "

law

that required companies to inform residents about toxics used in

their communities.

 

Whitman disparaged the law as bureaucratic overkill, claiming it

listed such trivial items as lipstick. But sodium hydrosulfate was

also on the

list, and in 1995 it caused an explosion at a factory in the town of

Lodi that killed five workers and caused evacuation of 400

residents.

 

Criticizing regulation is easy in the abstract, but real people can

end up paying a terrible price for lack of proper regulation. It's

terrible and unnecessary, for the costs of changing production

patterns are often overstated. In Europe, bleaching of paper has

been virtually eliminated

without economic pain, an experience that doubtless fueled

governments' enthusiasm for the POPs treaty. Here in the Bay Area,

the governments of

San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Marin County have passed

resolutions calling for the elimination of dioxin wherever possible.

 

Bush and Whitman can score points with voters, who overwhelmingly

support environmental protection - if they reconsider their

skepticism

of regulation, release the dioxin study and sign the POPs treaty.

 

The chemical and paper industries may not be happy, but surely that

should matter less than the health of the American people.

 

 

JoAnn Guest

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