Mercury, PCBs, Others: Ecology officials' strategy is costly; Legislature is not on board yet

Susan Gordon; The News Tribune

[The proposed clean water rules could very well incorporate these toxins into their TMDL's. This could ban all wood stoves, outdoor burning, and even motor vehicles from watersheds. For those of you who don't know most of rural Washington is in a watershed boundary. - editor]

Some poisons are sneaky, so treacherous that they defy control, building up over time to threaten the health of people and wildlife.

So say officials with the state Department of Ecology who have a proposal to rid Washington of a leading group of toxins over the next 20 years.

But to do so would cost money. Gov. Gary Locke asked the Legislature for $1.2 million for the Ecology Department program. Lawmakers now negotiating the state's two-year budget so far haven't agreed to that. The Senate's budget proposal offers $800,000. The House proposal doesn't give the project a dime.

Foes, including businesses that use or create the toxins, say the public is protected by current policies, and that additional pollution policing is redundant.

And any changes ought to be based on "the best available peer-reviewed science," said Dennis Hayward, executive director of the Western Wood Preservers Institute, which represents about a dozen Washington wood treatment businesses. Otherwise, emotional reactions could jeopardize trade, he said.

At issue are so-called persistent bioaccumulative toxins, which earned their name because they don't lose potency over time and they attach themselves to organisms and build up in increasingly dangerous concentrations.

"They're already part of our food chain," said Mike Gallagher, coordinator of Ecology's proposed strategy to reduce the toxins.

The poisons have been linked to cancer and other disorders affecting reproduction, development, nervous systems and survival. They include mercury, the culprit behind recent health warnings to restrict consumption of tuna aand other fish, and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which some environmentalists blame for the declining population of a group of Puget Sound orca whales.

Ecology's plan would focus initially on reductions in nine toxins among a group of 65 that also would be evaluated for potential action. Although the strategy would not alter existing pollution regulations, Gallagher said it could prompt future regulatory changes.

One of the problems with existing pollution permits is that they focus so specifically on water, air or land and fail to consider the dangers posed when toxins drop out of the atmosphere and onto land or from land into water, Gallagher said.

The poisons are so mobile that they now affect Inuits in Alaska, native people whose diet includes many marine mammals at the top of the food chain

"They have higher levels of PCBs, dioxins and DDT in their bodies than we do and they've never used the stuff," Gallagher said. One reason is the food supply. The other is that the chemicals carried north in the air drop out when it's really cold, Gallagher said.

Ecology's target list includes five poisons that are either industrial byproducts or have commercial applications.

One is dioxin, a likely human carcinogen, produced as a byproduct of combustion and various industrial processes, such as preserving wood and producing pulp and paper.

Industry officials say additional curbs are unnecessary.

"Folks writing the PBT (persistence bioaccumulative toxins) initiative will not acknowledge that progress has been made," said Llewellyn Matthews, executive director of the Northwest Pulp & Paper Association. Federal rules already have prompted pulp mills to revamp their manufacturing process. As it is, dioxin emissions fall below detectable levels, she said.

"To have a policy that targets dioxin in light of this doesn't make any sense," she said.

Bonnie Rice of the Washington Toxics Coalition, disagrees. "Any level of dioxin at all is very dangerous," she said.

The Ecology Department target list also includes four banned pesticides, including DDT, which has so polluted the Yakima River that state health officials warn people not to eat bottom-fish caught there.

Heather Hansen, executive director of Washington Friends of Farms and Forest, lobbies on behalf of farmers on this issue. She objects to the Ecology plan. "How is this going to change things?" she asked. "We can't dredge the entire Yakima River. That's not feasible."

Although Ecology officials would like to eliminate all the hazards, Gallagher admitted the strategy won't do that. "We can never get everything back that's been released in the past," he said.

But he and others would like to limit further contamination and reduce the existing poison threat. To do that, officials must first establish how much of each poison is already present in Washington.

"That's something we currently don't know very well now," Gallagher said.

The proposed Ecology Department effort would move Washington ahead of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency initiative to control a similar group toxins. At this point, the EPA plan is only a draft.

The state effort follows by several years an agreement between the U.S. and Canada to reduce the toxins in the Great Lakes, where people can't eat the fish.

On a parallel front, President Bush recently announced his commitment to sign the United Nations Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which bans or limits many of the same sorts of chemicals the Ecology Department would target. Diplomats will sign the agreement in Stockholm later this month.

"It's really an international problem, not specific to Washington or the U.S.," Gallagher said.

Even so, persistent bioaccumulative toxins are present statewide, he said. They are among the toxins targeted for Superfund cleanup in Tacoma's Commencement Bay.

State Sen. Karen Fraser (D-Lacey), who chairs the Senate Environment Ecology and Water Committee, believes people want to get rid of toxins that threaten food safety. "There is very huge, very intense public sentiment in favor of doing a strategy," she said. "In fact, a lot of people feel the department's strategy is somewhat modest and should be greater than it is."

But Republicans allied with the business community don't see things that way. The strategy's biggest foe in the House is Rep. Gary Chandler (R-Moses Lake), the co-chairman of the House Agriculture and Ecology Committee. He did not return phone calls.

Lobbyists for the business community dispute the "better safe than sorry" approach that is the basis of the Ecology strategy. They argue that the state should leave the problem to federal officials to solve.

Fraser and environmental advocates disagree. "Nobody cares more about Washington than Washingtonians," Fraser said.

Gallagher, meanwhile, believes the public education component of the proposed strategy is crucial to its success. Some of the toxic pollution is as much a result of consumer preferences and lifestyles as it is a byproduct of industry, he said.

For example, benzo(a)pyrene, a likely cause of cancer in people, is a product of combustion. And it's not just industrial incinerators that cause the problem. Cars and trucks, residential wood stoves and outdoor burning contribute, Gallagher said.

As for mercury, consumers could do more to control its dangers if they stopped washing the mercury from broken thermometers down the drain and dumping broken fluorescent lights in the garbage. But most people aren't aware of the hazards caused by improper disposal, he said.

With or without money from the Legislature, it's likely to take years to reduce the risk of persistent bioaccumulative toxins. "That's why we call this a 20-year strategy," Gallagher said.

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* Staff writer Susan Gordon covers the environment and natural resources. Reach her at 253-597-8756 or at susan.gordon@mail.tribnet.com.

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SIDEBAR: Where toxins come from

"Persistent bioaccumulative toxins" targeted by a proposed state Department of Ecology strategy:

Dioxins and furans - Pentachlorophenol-treated wood, waste incinerators, forest fires, cement kilns, coal combustion, wood combustion, waste combustion, diesel and gasoline fuel combustion, bleached-chemical wood pulp and paper mills.

Mercury - Coal-fired power plants; disposal of fluorescent lamps, thermometers, thermostats and switches; medical-waste incinerators.

PCBs - Disposal of fluorescent lamp ballasts, older television sets, appliances, transformers, capacitors.

Benzo(a)pyrene - Cars, buses, trucks, engine-powered boats, gas-powered lawn equipment, used motor oils, forest fires, wood and waste combustion, cooking of meat products.

Hexachlorobenzene - Byproduct or impurity in the production of chlorinated solvents, pesticides and in other chlorination processes.

Aldrin, dieldrin, chlordane, DDT and toxaphene - Pesticides now banned in the United States, they persist in soils, sediments, water and fish tissue.

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05/21/2001

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