Archive for February 2012

After 21 years, four Presidents, countless political battles and lots of pollution, the EPA finally released its health reassessment of Dioxin this past Friday. Like so many environmental decisions from this Administration, the report splits important hairs. While
confirming that ultra-low exposures (we’re talking 1 millionth of a
gram or less) to Dioxin can cause damage to a person’s immune and
reproductive systems, cause skin rashes and liver damage, EPA says
that levels of exposure for most Americans have declined so much over
the last two decades that there should be no significant risk. To at
least one expert, that was an      “very odd statement.” Arnold Schecter of University of Texas School of Public Health, noted that EPA’s assurances really didn’t jibe “because some people
are more highly exposed than average and some groups, such as fetuses
and nursing babies, are more sensitive to the effects.” What
other populations are more highly exposed to Dioxin? People who live
downwind of facilities where its emitted – power plants, cement plants,
and lead smelters, to name a few. DFW residents live downwind from all
three. Exide’s lead smelter in Frisco was the 9th largest dioxin polluter in Texas in 2009, releasing more of the poison than industrial facilities many times its size. While
most exposures come through eating or drinking animal products that
contain dioxin because the animals themselves were contaminated and
store it in their fat, breathing in dioxins directly is also a pathway
of exposure when you live near a place that burns hazardous wastes,
smelts metals, or deals with a lot of chlorinated materials. Like
millions of DFW residents. While there was a lot of disappointment by
environmentalists at the lack of follow-through on the report, the food
industry is sweating bullets
over its conclusions. Last year, food industry groups wrote the EPA,
stating that  most Americans could “easily exceed the
daily [0.7 picogram limit] after consuming a single meal or heavy
snack.” Now they’re afraid safer food advocates will use the report to
push for new restrictions on how much of one of the most poisonous
substances ever discovered can be included in their food products.
Indeed. How unreasonable to expect less human-made poison dreck in your
food. No release date for the part of the reassessment dealing with
cancer risks. 

This week, we’ve examined new studies linking brain damage to breathing. Let’s take on heart disease now. Short-term exposure – less than seven days – to common air pollutants raises the risks of heart attack, according to a new study that looked at air quality from 100 studies on five continents. “…an improvement in air quality could have a significant effect on public
health,” wrote the authors, led by Dr. Hazrije Mustafic of the Paris
Cardiovascular Research Center at University Paris Descartes. Dr. Jesus Araujo, an assistant professor of medicine and director of
environmental cardiology at UCLA, said there is now “more than enough
evidence” from human, animal and cellular studies that air pollution
kills. One of the most important findings of the new research is that it
confirms that heart attacks increase even when exposures to worsening
air quality are short in duration.“We don’t have to be exposed for weeks or months or years,” Araujo said. The study found harmful effects to the heart from breathing in microscopic particulate matter, or soot, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide, often at levels that are considered “safe.” “The more scientists look, the more they find effects at lower
exposures,” said Jean Ospital, Director of Southern California’s Air quality District, “This is a question that always comes up, how
low do we need to go to protect public health? It seems to be a moving
target in terms of where the health effects are, where we really need to
go to have health protection.” Indeed.

Craig McDonald and Texans for Public Justice do a great and basic civic service every year by collecting all the information about which Austin lobbyists got paid by whom to do what. They put out an annual report that analyzes The Lobby by industry, and lobbying firms, as well as by individual clients and lobbyists. It’s without a doubt the most comprehensive look at the financial machinations driving legislation in Austin. On Wednesday, the 2011 edition came out. Not many surprises – the energy and natural resources industry group was the biggest spender on hired help. But it’s always a good reminder to pursue through the list of high dollar lobbyists and see how many used their “public service” as a stepping stone to private wealth.

Senior House Energy and Commerce Committee member Democrat Henry Waxman of California and other House Dems released a report on fracking the other day that deserved more attention than it got. Using data that the last (Democratically-controlled) Congress required oil and gas companies to submit concerning the ingredients and volumes of chemicals used in fracking during the period from 2005 to 2009, the report produced a wealth of new information, including: 1)“The 14 leading oil and gas service companies used more than 780 million
gallons of hydraulic fracturing products, not including water added at
the well site. Overall, the companies used more than 2,500 hydraulic
fracturing products containing 750 different chemicals and other
components.” 2) “The components used in the hydraulic fracturing products ranged from
generally harmless and common substances, such as salt and citric acid,
to extremely toxic substances, such as benzene and lead.” 3) Between 2005 and 2009, the oil and gas service companies used hydraulic
fracturing products containing 29 chemicals that are known or possible
human carcinogens, regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)
for their risks to human health, or listed as hazardous air pollutants
under the Clean Air Act. 4) “Many of the hydraulic fracturing fluids contain chemical components that
are listed as “proprietary” or “trade secret.” The companies used 94
million gallons of 279 products that contained at least one chemical or
component that the manufacturers deemed proprietary or a trade secret.
In many instances, the oil and gas service companies were unable to
identify these “proprietary” chemicals, suggesting that the companies
are injecting fluids containing chemicals that they themselves cannot
identify.” During the Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force meeting, there has often been discussion of “salt water” injection wells, or spills of “essentially salt water.” This is a canard. It is the liquid equivalent of what the cement companies used to say about the thick plumes of pollution pouring out of their smokestacks – “It’s just steam.” No. It’s not. And the hazardous waste the gas industry uses for fracking fluid and must dispose of in deep underground injection wells because of its toxicity is not “just saltwater.” You can download a copy of the report at the link.

Wasn’t it just the other day that we were talking about the harms of Particulate Matter (PM) pollution and mentioning that the Obama Administration was holding up new PM standards? And yet on Wednesday the US was announcing a new international effort to cut methane, hydrofluorocarbons, and yes, PM pollution, in an effort to make short-term gains in fighting global warming. “The science is quite clear that the only way to slow warming in the near term . . . is
to reduce emissions of these so-called short-lived climate forcers,”
said Erika Rosenthal of the advocacy group Earthjustice.” Specifically, the “Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants” (CCACRSLCP?) will fund programs to reduce diesel exhaust, ag-waste burning in the field, capturing methane from landfills, coal mines and…natural gas wells. Come to think of it, that’s another area of possible mixed messages being sent since this Administrations is simultaneously promoting fracking like a carnival barker in the US while telling other countries they need to limit their own emissions from drilling. But you know they must be really serious this time. Combined, the US and Canadian governments are throwing a whole $15 million at the campaign.

Gather ’round children, and you will hear, when daily newspapers had no peer….Hard to believe now, but not very long ago, daily newspapers hired writers who also reported. These were the kind of literary roustabouts who could go from writing a book, to a New Yorker piece, to how a local bad guy got what was coming to him for your local paper. Bud Shrake, Dan Jenkins,  Brian Woolley – if you never got to read a long Sunday Magazine piece by these kinds of writers, you just can’t appreciate the status daily dead tree media had in its last glory days. Bill Minutaglio is one of those writers. He worked for the Dallas Morning News in its Austin bureau, but he’s also written a couple of books and lots of magazine articles. He’s now a journalism professor at UT and writes a “State of the Media” column for the venerable Texas Observer. In his latest observations, he takes note of the side effect of a Rick Perry run for president – a recent uptick in Texas environmental reporting among the mainstream media that’s seen its interest in such stories generally decline over the past decade. But News abhors a vacuum and Minutaglio also discusses the rise of local grassroots blogs that are increasingly becoming primary sources of information and breaking news. As evidence of this trend, he cites our very own front page blog, as well as Sharon Wilson’s BlueDaze. We know we’ve arrived when we get mentioned in the same sentence as Sharon. Thanks very much to Mr. Minutaglio for his kind words. With the continued support our readers, we’ll keep trying to provide the news citizens need to make their air cleaner, and their government more responsive.