Italian Government Seizes Cement Plant for Toxic Violations

This is what we call enforcement.

Italian Justice Department officials seized a cement kiln run by Italcementi, the world's fifth largest cement manufacturer, near the village of Velletri, southwest of Rome, for not completing updates in equipment that would bring it in line with European Union environmental standards.

It's the second time this year that the Italian government has resorted to seizure of a major polluter's facility. A steel plant was ordered shut last month.

In the case of the kiln, operations will continue while the modernization is being completed.

Italcementi owns the old Essroc cement plants in Logansport, and Speed, Indiana, Nazarath. Pennsylvania, and Martinsburg, West Virginia as well as Canada and Puerto Rico.

Perry’s Politicizing of Science Costs Anti-Cancer Agency its Stars

For most of modern history, Texas Governors haven't served more than two four-year terms and most had trouble doing that. Although they might be able to appoint a lot of folks to state agencies, current Governors couldn't re-make the agency into their own private fiefdom because there were too many members who owed their jobs to former Governors, maybe even ones from a different political party, or with different ideas about policy.

Rick Perry's never-ending-term has changed that. In office for 12 years and counting, he's managed to use time and the power of appointment to remake just about every executive branch agency the state has. And not just at the top, but deep, deep down into the upper and mid-level echelons of power. Because of the work we do, we see it most obviously with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, where Perry's influence reaches down to make sure the Chief Engineer is as ideologically-correct as the politically-appointed Chair. As a result, the Commission's science is harnessed in service to Rick Perry's perpetual campaign goals and is never allowed to contradict them.

But now that same MO seems to have backfired when it comes to superstar anti-cancer researchers who don't need the connections or positions Perry offered them.

Via the New York Times, (how come we haven't heard about this as much from Texas news outlets?) comes word that at least seven more scientists joined their former boss, a Nobel Prize winner, in walking out of Governor Perry's "Cancer Prevention and Research Institute." With $700 million in grant money, only the federal government offered more cash for research projects, so what could have forced such a walk-out?

Apparently, the researchers had the quaint idea that they'd actually be working on ways to, you know, cure cancer. Instead, Perry seems to have wanted the fund to provide another pipeline of money to his cronies in industry by focusing on "commercialization projects"  that "focus on turning research into drugs or other products that can be sold rather than financing research itself."

Nobel laureate Dr. Alfred G Gilman resigned in protest last May after the Institute voted to approve such a $20 million dollar commercialization project. Now his colleagues are leaving in droves for the same reason.

"Phillip A. Sharp, another Nobel laureate, was among seven scientists who resigned last week, writing in his resignation letter that the agency’s decisions have carried a “suspicion of favoritism” in how the state is handing out taxpayer dollars.

Brian Dynlacht, another scientist who is leaving, warned that the agency was headed down a path of systematic abuses.

“You may find that it was not worth subverting the entire scientific enterprise — and my understanding was that the intended goal of C.P.R.I.T. was to fund the best cancer research in Texas — on account of this ostensibly new, politically driven, commercialization-based mission,” Dr. Dynlacht wrote in his letter."

Let's just be very clear about this. As long as Rick Perry is Governor, anyone who tells you a Texas state agency is an adequate watchdog for any industry, much less the state's polluters, either has no idea how state government works these days, or knows exactly how it works and is sending you down the proverbial garden path.

GAO: Fracking is Overwhelming EPA, Has Many Unknown Risks

GAO stands for Government Accountability Office. We bet you didn't think there was such a thing.

The GAO is in business to issue reports on how government works and doesn't work. It's the audit and investigative arm of the Congress. Today comes news that the Office has issued two new reports on fracking – one on how federal regulators are coping with the new responsibility of overseeing so much new drilling in so many new places all at once, and one on the possible risks posed by fracking to the public health and the environment.

GAO says fracking is overwhelming the resources of the federal agencies assigned to watchdog the process and industry:

"Federal and state agencies reported several challenges in regulating oil and gas development from unconventional reservoirs. EPA officials reported that conducting inspection and enforcement activities and having limited legal authorities are challenges. For example, conducting inspection and enforcement activities is challenging due to limited information, such as data on groundwater quality prior to drilling. EPA officials also said that the exclusion of exploration and production waste from hazardous waste regulations under RCRA significantly limits EPA’s role in regulating these wastes. In addition, BLM and state officials reported that hiring and retaining staff and educating the public are challenges. For example, officials from several states and BLM said that retaining employees is difficult because qualified staff are frequently offered more money for private sector positions within the oil and gas industry."

And the GAO says there are a lot of unknown risks to fracking based on the evidence so far:

Oil and gas development, whether conventional or shale oil and gas, pose inherent environmental and public health risks, but the extent of these risks associated with shale oil and gas development is unknown, in part, because the studies GAO reviewed do not generally take into account the potential long-term, cumulative effects. For example, according to a number of studies and publications GAO reviewed, shale oil and gas development poses risks to air quality, generally as the result of (1) engine exhaust from increased truck traffic, (2) emissions from diesel-powered pumps used to power equipment, (3) gas that is flared (burned) or vented (released directly into the atmosphere) for operational reasons, and (4) unintentional emissions of pollutants from faulty equipment or impoundments–temporary storage areas. Similarly, a number of studies and publications GAO reviewed indicate that shale oil and gas development poses risks to water quality from contamination of surface water and groundwater as a result of erosion from ground disturbances, spills and releases of chemicals and other fluids, or underground migration of gases and chemicals. For example, tanks storing toxic chemicals or hoses and pipes used to convey wastes to the tanks could leak, or impoundments containing wastes could overflow as a result of extensive rainfall. According to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation's 2011 Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, spilled, leaked, or released chemicals or wastes could flow to a surface water body or infiltrate the ground, reaching and contaminating subsurface soils and aquifers. In addition, shale oil and gas development poses a risk to land resources and wildlife habitat as a result of constructing, operating, and maintaining the infrastructure necessary to develop oil and gas; using toxic chemicals; and injecting fluids underground. However, the extent of these risks is unknown. Further, the extent and severity of environmental and public health risks identified in the studies and publications GAO reviewed may vary significantly across shale basins and also within basins because of location- and process-specific factors, including the location and rate of development; geological characteristics, such as permeability, thickness, and porosity of the formations; climatic conditions; business practices; and regulatory and enforcement activities."

So now we have the Director of the US Centers for Disease Control's Environmental Health agency saying that, "We do not have enough information to say with certainty whether shale gas drilling poses a threat to public health,"  along with the GAO saying the extent of the risks posed by fracking to our air, water, and land are largely unknown. How many more red flags do you need?

Even a Few Weeks of Cleaner Air Can Make A Big Difference

We can't tell you how many times a resident from DFW will go on a business trip or vacation to a less-polluted place and report an almost instant shedding of the ill effects of dirty air, only to have an almost equally fast re-acquaintance with those effects once they return. Could air pollution really make that much of a difference in so little a period of time?

As it turns out, yes.

Via an new study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that the Chinese government's decision to close down Beijing's polluting factories and take cars off the road during the 2008 Olympics resulted in a remarkable short-term improvement in cardiovascular health. It's the first major study to look at the immediate effects of air pollution in young healthy adults.

In a synopsis published by Environmental Health News, one of the authors describes the study and its importance:

"For the 5-month study from June to November, the researchers recruited 125 resident doctors with an average age of 24 from a centrally located hospital. Half were male, and all were healthy with no history of diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

The researchers measured heart rate, blood pressure and six markers of cardiovascular diseases in blood samples before, during and after the games. The markers included C-reactive protein (CRP), fibrinogen, von Willebrand factor, soluble CD40 ligand, soluble P-selectin concentrations and white blood cell count (WBC).

Two markers associated with blood clotting significantly decreased from pre-Olympic to the during-Olympic period: P-selectin levels dropped by 34 percent and von Willebrand factor levels were reduced by 13 percent. After the games, when the pollution control measures were removed, most markers rose back to pregame levels. But two markers – P-selectin and systolic blood pressure – worsened and showed a significant increase compared to the levels during the games.

Air pollution emissions were also measured at similar times. Levels of most air pollutants during the games decreased up to 60 percent compared to their pregame levels, depending on the type of pollutants. For example PM2.5 dropped 27 percent, nitrogen dioxide 43 percent and sulphur dioxide 60 percent. After the games when pollution controls were removed, emissions rose to higher levels than were measured before the games started.

This study suggests that even young healthy people can benefit from short-term air pollution reduction and supports efforts to quantify and understand the benefits and costs of air pollution control measures."

The next time a politician complains about the cost of air pollution controls, make sure and ask them if they're for preventative heart disease treatment. When they say yes, please remind them that keeping crap out of our air that would otherwise end up in our lungs is such preventative care.

Researcher Smackdowns Gas Industry Over Smog Study Criticisms

You may remember that Dr. Jay Olaguer with the independent Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) set off a bit of a controversy last month with publication of a new study showing that gas mining activity in DFW was "significantly" increasing local smog levels 2 to 8 miles downwind. His report focused on flares and compressors and showed that just one facility could increase ozone levels by 2-3 parts per billion. This was another invaluable piece of evidence pointing to the impact of under and un-regulated emissions from the gas mining industry

It didn't take long for the gas industry to have it usual knee-jerk response – deny everything. Even if you have to misrepresent the original research and lie about its conclusions. First, the PR specialists at Energy in Depth responded without even reading the study.  Dr. Olaguer's full response to that piece of hackary is located here.

Next Ed Ireland, PR director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council did another whack job trying to discredit Olaguer's work. His falsehoods and mistakes are rebutted point by point here.

Industry charged that the model used by Dr. Olaguer wasn't peer-reviewed. It was – in three different journals.

Industry charged that all the smog-forming Volatile Organic Compounds examined by Dr. Olaguer were treated the same in the model. Wrong again. Highly reactive VOCS – the ones most likely to cause smog problems, are treated in much greater detail than the standard model used by TCEQ and others.

Industry charges the flare emission factors used by Dr. Olaguer are based on the 2010 TCEQ Flare study. They are not.

Industry then falls back on the "we've got so many TCEQ monitors that say everything is hunky-dory" argument. HARC responds by saying that "the TCEQ monitoring network is too sparse to determine the true impact of oil and gas site emissions on air quality." Amen.

HARC's study is unique in that it started from scratch and didn't assume anything – unlike the approach TCEQ and the industry uses. "The HARC model is, in fact, the only model currently available that can tractably assess ozone impacts at very high spatial resolution near sources." TCEQ and the industry don't have a credible response to this study because they've never looked at the same phenomena that Dr. Olaguer is examining.

Pollution from gas drilling and processing is setting back progress in DFW's fight for better air quality. There are no more excuses for local officials to hide behind. Gas may be cleaner when it burns in a power plant, but North Texas has become the natural gas equivalent of Appalachia where the local environment and public health is sacrificed for industry profits.

Midlothian Cement Plants Linked to Higher Child Asthma Rates

A new analysis of the historic 2009 Cook Children's Hospital survey of regional childhood health confirms that higher levels of Tarrant County childhood asthma track closely with the downwind pollution plume coming from the three Midlothian cement plants in adjacent Ellis County.

According to researchers Patricia Newcomb and Alaina Cyr from the UTA College of Nursing "…the bulk of Tarrant County asthma cases lie directly in the path of southeasterly winds that have historically carried high levels of particulate matter from working cement kilns in a neighboring county. Asthma prevalence increases in a linear configuration within the path of the 'cement plume' as residential location comes closer to the cement kiln area."

Exposure to Particulate Matter pollution, or soot, is a well-known known cause for asthma. It can also make a child's asthma worse.

"This latest study is one more piece of empirical evidence that we need to decrease pollution from the Midlothian cement plants to secure the right of our children to breathe without getting sick, " said Jim Schermbeck, Director of Downwinders at Risk, a local group originally founded in 1994 to oppose the burning of hazardous waste in the Midlothian cement plants.

Proximity to the pollution from the three Midlothian cement plants was the only environmental factor geographically associated with higher concentrations of childhood asthma, ruling out poverty and indoor air pollution. There also wasn't a strong correlation to urban gas drilling, although the authors concede that "urban drilling may play a part as well" in the region's higher than normal child asthma rates, and there was no direct comparison between the geography of drilling activity and area asthma levels.

In 2009, Cook Children's Hospital released its Community-wide Children's Health Assessment and Planning Survey (CCHAPS), the largest examination of childhood health in North Texas ever undertaken. It found that Tarrant County and the western side of the North Texas region suffer childhood asthma rates significantly higher than state and national averages.  

In "Conditions Associated with Childhood Asthma in North Texas," published in the October edition of ISRN Allergy, Newcomb and Cyr revisit the Cook study and delve more deeply into its data. "The purpose of this study was to identify significant associations between asthma diagnosis, comorbid conditions, and social problems in children." The complete article can be accessed on the Cook Hospital CCHAPS website page devoted to asthma, under "Special Reports."

Midlothian is the home of the largest concentration of cement plant manufacturing capacity in the United States. It hosts three large cement plants – TXI , Holcim and Ash Grove –  with a total of six kilns. They are the largest stationary sources of pollution in North Texas. Reports submitted by the plants themselves show they poured over a million pounds of Particulate Matter pollution into the North Texas air in 2009.

EPA recently announced that it was considering once again delaying the implementation of new federal emission rules, including stricter particulate matter pollution standards, from 2013 to 2015 that have been in the works for two decades. The delay would also water down proposed PM pollution standards. Schermbeck said Newcomb and Cyr's analysis shows the real world costs of such a rollback.

"It's a scientific fact, endorsed by EPA, that inhaling tiny bits of particulate matter can make people sick and even kill them. What this study makes clear is that the agency is senselessly condemning more Tarrant County kids to illness and suffering by delaying rules that were supposed to have been in place in the 1990's. It's time to start saving lives by reducing this kind of pollution."

“It’s My Park – Don’t Frack It”

Last Saturday, the City Of Dallas sponsored its annual "It's My Park Day." Usually, it's a assembly of hardy volunteers who are out doing clean-up in Dallas open and green spaces that the city can't always afford to do these days.

But this year was different. Showing up at Winfrey Point at White Rock Lake – the home district of "Sulfuric Sheffie" Kadane one of he most vocal supporters for allowing gas drilling in the city's parks – was another, more focused contingent and they brought along a brand new people-friendly prop to get their message across.

Led by Mountain Creek Neighborhood Alliance members Ed and Claudia Meyers, a group of about a dozen residents set-up a 15-foot tall faux drilling rig right there on the Lake shore with a bright red "Don't Frack My Parks" message at the top and then proceeded to hand out flyers quoting Council member Kadane as saying “We’ve got parklands there that aren’t being utilized for anything. What else are you gonna put there?”

The "Drilling for Truth" crew generally got a warm reception at White Rock from park-friendly volunteers, then proceeded onto the Volunteer Appreciation event at Valley View Park where they ran into Councilwoman Linda Koop. All in all, not a bad way to debut a new prop in the fight against irresponsible urban drilling. And now that it's on the move, watch for the rig in your neighborhood.

Dust from Homes Near Cement Kilns Have 2 to 9 X More Dioxin

Here's some information the Midlothian Chamber of Commerce probably won't be linking to at their website.

A national research team that includes personnel from The National Cancer Institute, Colorado Sate University, the University of Washington, and the Mayo Clinic has concluded that homes within one to three miles of cement plants contain house dust that contains 2 to 9 times more Dioxins than homes not located near kilns.

Dioxins are among the most toxic substances ever tested by EPA. Dioxin is the poison in Agent Orange. It's what made both Love Canal in New York, and Times Beach Missouri Superfund Sites. It's so toxic it's measured in grams, not pounds. It's a carcinogen and an endocrine disrupter. Like Lead and Particulate Matter, there is no known "safe" exposure level to Dioxin.

40 homes across four states were chosen from an earlier non-Hodgkin lymphoma study. Samples of dust were collected from vacuum cleaner bags and test for a variety of Dioxins (the testing for Dioxins is VERY expensive and that's one reason you don't see a lot of field tests for it). Four kinds of dioxin-emitting facilities identified by EPA were in close proximity to one or more of the sampled households – cement kilns, coal plants, sewage sludge incinerators, and medical waste incinerators. Proximity to major roadways was also considered a separate source. But "high concentrations" of Dioxins were only associated with homes near cement plants. Major roads also saw "elevated" levels, but not nearly as much as kilns.

The full study was recently published in the September edition of "Science of the Total Environment."

Midlothian currently hosts six active cement kilns. There were as many as ten up until 2008. It is the largest concentration of cement manufacturing in the nation. And all of DFW is downwind of it most of the year.

As we mentioned last week, a 1999 study by Barry Commoner and his group out of Washington University in St. Louis traced Dioxins from the TXI cement plant all the way to the Arctic Circle. So don't feel safe if you think you live far enough downwind not to be affected by the Midlothian plant plumes.

For years, Midlothian residents and others have been asking the federal government for a meaningful health effects and testing protocol for determining the total load of dioxins in and around these kilns. It hasn't come. Their requests were based on published higher incidents of certain kind of birth defects in Ellis County, as well as clusters of animal health effects observed by local ranchers and breeders. And these observations started when hazardous waste burning began in the mid-1980's. EPA has stated that waste-burning kilns release more dioxin than non-waste burning ones.

So it's important to remember that the astounding high concentrations of Dioxins that were located in homes in close proximity to a a cement kiln were linked to a kiln not burning hazardous waste. Granted, we don't know what kind of "non-hazardous wastes" it might have been burning, but the results begs the question about how much higher Dioxin levels might be in a place like Chanute, Kansas where Ash Grove's kiln is still burning hazardous wastes.

And it also once again points out why we can't be complacent about the kilns in Midlothian just because they quit burning the worst of the worst toxic wastes. Even without that practice, they pose an on-going clear and present danger to the region's public health from just their "routine" emissions. Now that all of them have or want permits to burn plastics and garbage, you could reasonably expect to see an increase in Dioxins and other forms of more exotic pollution spewing out of their tall smokestacks. And you know why their so tall don't you? So that the pollution they're releasing travels further downwind.

Yes Virginia, There is a Pro-Cancer Lobby

The New York Times' Nicolas Kristof, who's established himself as one the nation's leading editorialist on the harms of what he calls "Big Chem," has another excellent piece in the Sunday edition.

Using the curious case of Formaldehyde, the carcinogen that isn't one according to the people who make money manufacturing it, Kristoff draws a portrait of the kind of industry-fueled professional obfuscation that Big Tobacco, Big Oil and Every other Big Industry of the last 60 years has used to escape necessary regulation.

Part of this strategy is to block, delay and bury information that proves your product's guilt, and so it is with Formaldehyde, something most of us think we only run across in High School biology labs. As it turns out, the chemicals is used in a wide variety of products and our homes are full of it. Our general exposure to formaldehyde has increased. This use and exposure has risen even as the World Health Organization and American scientists have concluded that formaldehyde causes cancer.

And so a seemingly innocuous document like the 500-page "Report on Carcinogens" from the National Institutes of Health becomes a real threat to the manufactured "uncertainty" the chemical industry has spent so much to construct.

“Formaldehyde is known to be a human carcinogen,” declared the most recent Report on Carcinogens, published in 2011. Previous editions had listed it only as a suspected carcinogen, but the newer report, citing many studies of human and animal exposure to formaldehyde, made the case that it was time to stop equivocating."

This conclusion made the report an instant target. Industry got its supporters in the house to demand a follow-up study for Formaldehyde and that no other Reports on Carcinogens be published with the new consensus language on its cancer-causing impacts.

So a chemical that the science says is clearly a carcinogen is still being sold in lots of household products as if it was perfectly safe thanks to folks who, collectively, make up what might be called the "pro-cancer lobby."

Besides all of us being exposed to Formaldehyde through consumer products, people who live in places where natural gas is being mined, like the Barnett Shale, as well as those downwind of waste-burning cement plants, like the ones in Midlothian, get dosed with more of the stuff. So, you know, we're doubly-blessed in DFW.

Study: Green Spaces Make Pregnancy Easier

Coming under "Confirming Things You Probably Already Knew," is this study via the folks at Environmental Health News:

"Living in homes surrounded by grass and trees can reduce pregnant women's exposures to traffic-related air pollution, according to a study in Barcelona, Spain. As green space around their homes increased, their exposure to fine particles and nitric oxides decreased. Particles and gases in vehicle exhaust can affect the development and health of fetuses, so this study suggests that green space in urban neighborhoods has a health benefit."

Over the last five years, study after study has provided proof that living near roadways increases your likelihood of having respiratory problems and other health problems. And yet, just like the regulations surrounding lead smelting or waste-burning haven't caught up to the most recent science, so traditional highway risk assessments don't yet acknowledge most of this new scholarship. 

The design of the CF Hawn/SM Wright freeway redo that will help shape South Dallas for a generation or more is in its final stages of planning. There may be as little as 2-4 months until approval will be given by the Federal Highway Administration to proceed with a 6-lane thoroughfare instead of a more community-friendly four land boulevard that residents have voiced support for time and again.

Now is the time to call attention to a factor that may not have been examined very thoroughly, if at all, by TXDOT or local officials in designing the redo – before another wrong is inflicted on South Dallas by the city.