air toxics
Mesopotamia or Midlothian – Burning is Bad
Here's a great story from Wired that reports the results of the first tests done in and around the places where the military's "burn pits" were located during the most recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Not familiar with "burn pits?" If you grew up in rural Texas you are because it's exactly the way your grandfather got rid of his family's trash – by putting it in a big pile and then putting a match to it. Besides turning a ravine into an impromptu landfill, burn pits are the most popular way of disposing of your garbage when Waste Management just can't get to you.
In the military, burn pits were the disposal option of choice for everything: human waste, paints and paint removers, asbestos insulation, plastic and styrofoam containers, old computers and monitors – any waste you can imagine being generated at a front line military base.
Not surprisingly, troops that spent time around these open-air waste incinerators have been complaining about chronic bronchitis, neurological disorders, and rare cancers – just like people who live dowwnind of waste burning at cement kilns and incinerators. Military spokespersons have reassured these whiners that there was "no specific evidence" of the pits doing any human health damage. To which all of you who've been doing this for a while will respond: "How many times did anyone look for such damage?" The answer is zero – until now. Pulmonologist Dr. Anthony Szema of the Stony Brook School of Medicine, just released the results of an experiment that links the burn pit dust to immune system damage. Dr. Szema exposed 15 mice to the dust from the remains of a burn pit in Iraq. When collected on-site, the pit still stunk with the incinerated remains of animal carcasses, lithium batteries, printers and glues. This lovely cocktail of toxins was then inhaled by the mice and researchers tracked their respiratory system and spleen for signs of strain. And they got them.
Lung inflammation occurred within two hours of exposure, and T-cells dropped by a third. T-Cells are a critical component of the human immune health originating in the bone marrow but then going to the Thymus to finish their development. AIDS and other immune destroying diseases kill T-Cells. After two weeks of being regularly exposed to the burn pit dust, the mice had lost 70% of the T-cells they started with. "I can't even imagine what this date shows when you think about someone coming back from Iraq," Szema says. "these guys weren't inhaling the air once. They were working in it, sleeping in it, exercising in it. For days on end." Despite being limited to mice, Szema is confident that the results are transferable to humans. The symptoms of his mice line up with those being reported by veterans to a database at BurnPits360, a website dedicated to tracking the health of exposed servicemen and women. It's also one more step in understanding why different people react to pollution differently. With your immune system offline everyone is vulnerable to different inherent health weaknesses that are exacerbated. Dr. Szema isn't surprised at the results of his groundbreaking tests. "Based on the patients I've seen, this is a no-brainer. If anyone tries to say, ' Oh dust is just dust,' I can tell them that's simply not true."
Frisco Unleaded Meets Tonight Amid Rumors and Rumblings
Downwinders' affiliate Frisco Unleaded is having a public meet and greet tonight beginning at 7 pm in a back room at Matitto's on the Square in Frisco. It's the group's first public meeting since it sent out thousands of mailers to Frisco households about the dangers of continuing to let the Exide lead smelter operate in the middle of town. That mailer, along with the media attention it received, prompted the city to set a June 18th hearing date to move forward with amortization of the smelter. Local attorney Jim Schnurr will come and give an encore and revised version of his "Amortization 101" presentation that initiated Frisco Unleaded's first public meeting back in September. They'll also be a preview of the EPA/TCEQ "open house on May 21st, and a citizen's slide show of Exide that's ready to be shown in from of any interested group. Meanwhile, municipal election are May 12 and there seems to be unanimity among all four Council candidates that Exide has to go, although some are more blunt than others. From an anonymous tip over the digital transom comes news that that the TCEQ has found lots of hazardous waste in the Exide "non-hazardous" waste landfills. We're tracking this down and expect to have an update shortly. If true, this news ought to shore up the City's case for amortization, since no zoning has ever authorized hazardous waste disposal at the facility. And besides all this, is the city still trying to work a deal with Exide that "buys-out" the smelter? If it is, what impact will finding a lot of hazardous waste onsite do to the cost of such a deal? Digging up and re-disposing of a hazardous waste landfill or two isn't cheap. If you live in Frisco or know someone who does, you really owe to yourself to come out and find out what can be done to accelerate removal of the smelter and meet the brave citizens who are pushing the issues toward progress.
Yep, Diesel Exhaust is Really Bad For You
In maybe the least surprising air quality news this week, a long-term study involving thousands of participants concluded that exposure to diesel pollution increases your risk of lung cancer significantly. For those most heavily exposed, the risk was three to seven times higher.
Because the subjects were all miners who were working eight or more hour a day in underground chambers full of diesel engines, the results were predictable to anyone tracking the science in the 20 years since the study began. But it was the association of disease with diesel pollution at even “low levels” that will drive the debate over how and where highways are built or expanded. There’ve been a rash of studies coming out over the last year or so linking road traffic pollution to asthma, heart attacks, strokes and all the other ailments caused by bad air.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the study is that so much energy was expended by the diesel lobby to keep it from ever seeing the light of day. To the point of requiring the the Department of Health and Human Services to turn over documents and be held in contempt for not doing so.