Toxics in our environment

Posted 8/21/12

The drama that has been playing out in Hoosick Falls, a small village outside of Troy, NY, over the past 18 months points out how ineffective our governments have been in protecting us from the ill …

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Toxics in our environment

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The drama that has been playing out in Hoosick Falls, a small village outside of Troy, NY, over the past 18 months points out how ineffective our governments have been in protecting us from the ill effects of toxic substances.

Back in the summer of 2014, a resident, named Michael Hickey, suspected that his father’s death due to a rare form of cancer was connected to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a chemical used in the making of Teflon. Hickey, who was not getting help from village officials, had the water tested by a Canadian lab, and PFOA contamination was revealed.

Some 18 months after Hickey raised the alarm, officials from the New York State Department of Health (DOH) warned the people in the village that their drinking water is, in fact, contaminated with this known carcinogen, and many people in the village have levels of it in their bodies that far exceed the level that was determined to be safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In May of this year, the safe level of exposure was lowered from 400 parts per trillion to 70 parts per trillion. Thousands of residents have undergone blood tests and many had levels 15 times higher than that.

The second of two public hearings on the subject was held on September 7, and DOH Commissioner Howard Zucker pointed a finger at EPA as being to blame for the state not taking action sooner to protect people’s health in Hoosick Falls. Zucker said the EPA guidelines were confusing, and some lawmakers were harshly critical of his answers under sharp questioning.

The EPA has begun the process of establishing the contaminated areas as Superfund sites, which will allow federal funding to be used to clean up the mess. The sites are also New York State Superfund sites, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo has signed a bill that will allow anyone who has been exposed to contamination from a superfund site to bring a lawsuit against the polluter for up to three years after the superfund status is achieved.

No doubt there is plenty of blame to go around in this story, but one thing that certainly helped create the conditions for this situation is our lawmakers’ tendency, at both the federal and state level, to put the interests of big business ahead of adequately protecting public health.

In the past, the EPA did have some authority over chemicals being used by industry, but because of the way the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) was written in 1976, the EPA actually had very little control over most chemicals being used in the U.S. In fact, when the agency tried to ban asbestos, which is perhaps the most well-known carcinogen in the country, a judge threw out most of the ban. It’s estimated that more than 700 chemicals are introduced into the marketplace every year, and the vast majority of them had no regulatory review at all.

Specifically regarding PFOA, the EPA did reach an agreement in 2006 with the chemical’s main manufacturers that PFOA use would be phased out by the end of 2015. Yet the legacy of PFOA persists in the environment and in human bodies.

Moving to June of this year, almost everyone agreed that the system for dealing with toxic chemicals in this country was wildly out of date and not effective at protecting people from the impacts of truly dangerous chemicals. In a rare show of bipartisanship, Congress voted to update the TSCA, and President Barack Obama signed the legislation. Not all environmental groups applauded it, but many said it took an important step forward in handing more authority to EPA to do its job. Had this updated version of the legislation been in place when PFOA was first introduced, it is possible that EPA could and would have prevented it from ever being used.

Andy Igrejas, the national campaign director for the activist group Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, wrote an analysis (tinyurl.com/zhsbvqw) of the updated law that said the law was not good enough to earn his group’s endorsement, but “the bill should do more good than harm.”

Igrejas wrote, “The key legal roadblocks that have prevented EPA from taking action on chemicals have mostly been removed. The provision requiring identification and protection for disproportionately exposed populations provides a powerful new handle for environmental justice communities and workers like firefighters. The requirement to identify and protect populations that are disproportionately susceptible to injury provides a potentially powerful handle to protect the developing fetus and child from endocrine-disrupting chemicals. The mandatory schedule and deadlines in the bill are lame, sure, but even a relatively small number of chemicals can impact millions and millions of people. If EPA gets it right, and truly implements the letter and spirit of these provisions, we could prevent new harm from those chemicals and have a positive impact on a substantial part of the population.”

There is a backlog of thousands of chemicals that should have EPA review, so this process of addressing the many chemicals in use in the country today will take time. On the other hand, the new law also requires EPA to sign off on new chemicals before they enter the market, so maybe there is the faintest hint of light at the end of the tunnel.

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