Tag: Toxins

  • Toxic lead removal could be California’s biggest yet

    environmental Strategist, between the lines:  Some of the products you may be using today that contain lead are chocolate, cosmetics, computers and other electronics, construction trade materials, batteries, keels of boats, car and truck tires….

    • Production and use of lead is growing worldwide.
    • Roughly 10 million tons are produced annually with half of that coming from recycling.
    • Lead is usually found in ore with zinc, silver and most abundantly in copper.
    • The United States is one of the world’s top producers of lead.
    • At the current rate of use it’s predicted that lead will run out in just under forty years.

    After reading about a lead issue California is dealing with it should become pretty clear that lead is a huge environmental exposure most people do not think about.

    Workers remove topsoil from homes in the 1200 block of South Indiana Street in Boyle Heights that may have been contaminated by lead from an Exide Technologies plant in Vernon. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

    By: Tony Barboza, LA Times 

    The task of removing lead-contaminated soil from thousands of homes near a closed Vernon battery recycling plant would be the largest cleanup of its kind in California and rank among the biggest conducted nationwide, say environmental officials and experts in toxic remediation.

    The California Department of Toxic Substances Control announced last week that soil testing shows decades of air pollution from the Exide Technologies facility deposited toxic dust across a wider area of southeast L.A. County than previously estimated, possibly fouling as many as 10,000 homes.

    “It is safe to say that no lead cleanup of neighborhoods in California involving DTSC has approached the number of potential properties that could be involved in this case,” department spokesman Sandy Nax wrote in an email.

    Community groups that rallied for the plant’s closure are now urging state officials to dedicate additional funds quickly to expand soil testing and clean more homes. Over the last year, contaminated soil has been removed and replaced at 146 of the homes closest to the facility in Maywood and Boyle Heights, with Exide footing the bill.

    “Every day, week or month that goes by, our children are being exposed to the poison that is lead,” said Mark Lopez, who lives a few miles from the Exide plant in East Los Angeles and heads the group East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice. “We hope the next battle is not having to fight DTSC for the cleanup.”

    Lead is a powerful neurotoxin that has no safe level of exposure. It can cause learning disabilities, behavioral problems and diminished IQs in children. Because of its use throughout the years in gasoline, paint and batteries, the metal is one of the most common contaminants at cleanup sites across the nation.

    Exide issued a statement Monday standing by the findings of a report it filed last week with state regulators “that establish the limits of lead impacts from the Vernon facility.”

    The Georgia-based company has said its contributions to lead in the soil are small relative to other sources, such as lead-based paint in older homes, leaded gasoline phased out decades ago and other businesses in the heavily industrial city of Vernon. The report said contamination from the plant was limited to nearby industrial zones and do not extend into residential areas.

    The preliminary results released by the state last week were based on soil samples from 146 additional homes spread over a two-square mile area stretching out from the plant and into Boyle Heights, Maywood, Huntington Park and East Los Angeles. The sampling data were used to predict where similarly elevated levels of lead should be expected.

    Officials with the toxic substances department have not determined how many of potentially thousands of properties will ultimately require soil cleanup, but acknowledged last week that it would be considerably more extensive and costly than anticipated.

    In a deal reached in March with the U.S. attorney’s office, Exide agreed to close and demolish the 15-acre facility to avoid criminal charges stemming from years of environmental law violations. As part of the settlement, the company is required to pay $50 million for a state-supervised pollution cleanup, including $9 million to remove lead contamination from homes.

    Now, the cleanup cost could balloon to tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

    State and federal officials say the agreement with Exide requires the company to pay the full cost of cleanup, even if it exceeds $50 million. But the toxic substances department said last week it was looking for funds to pay for the work while the agency seeks additional money from Exide and other responsible parties.

    Lead emissions from smelters, mines and battery processing facilities have resulted in extensive cleanups before, many of them through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program to deal with the nation’s most hazardous sites.

    Many of those were the result of pollution from secondary lead smelters, which like Exide melted down used car batteries into raw materials for new ones.

    One of the largest is an EPA cleanup in Omaha, Neb., that has removed soil from the yards of more than 12,000 homes contaminated by an old smelter’s lead emissions. The cleanup has been going on for more than a decade, at a cost of more than $300 million.

    A moderate-sized cleanup is a few hundred homes, said Ian H. von Lindern, who worked for decades as a consultant on environmental cleanups, including the Bunker Hill Superfund Site in northern Idaho, where more than 6,000 properties were cleaned of lead-tainted soil.

    “Ten thousand would be large,” he said.

    Determining the extent of the contamination from a facility like Exide will be challenging and expensive, environmental cleanup experts said.

    Removing the lead could take many years — but would significantly reduce health risks to young children. Those age 6 and under are most vulnerable to lead poisoning because they often play outside and ingest soil and dust.

    The county health department has tested the blood of hundreds of people who live near Exide as part of a free screening program funded by the company. The tests have not revealed any lead poisoning requiring medical intervention, but the program has faced criticism for screening few young children

    Cleaning up a yard takes about a week and costs about $45,000, the toxic substances department said. Contractors dig up and haul away contaminated topsoil and replace it with new dirt.

    Department officials said last week they are studying other major cleanups and believe the lead could be removed from soil in L.A. County at a lower cost.

  • FYI on Drinking Water

    environmental Strategist, between the lines:  I am not using the report below to promote a watchdog group, rather we all need to understand the pressure we put on water resources.  Access to clean drinking water has been a world issue for years and in the United States we are being educated about water conservation but not so much about protecting the purity of the resource.

    It really does not matter how much water we have if we can’t use it.  Las Vegas is a perfect example.  Las Vegas sits atop a huge aquifer but the water can’t be used because it is contaminated with nuclear waste from munitions testing.

    Report Finds “Probably Carcinogenic” Chemicals in All Municipal Water Samples Tested

    August 21, 2013

    By Dr. Mercola

    The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has once again released a report that should grab your attention. After analyzing water samples from 201 municipal water systems from 43 states, EWG found chemicals considered “probable human carcinogens” in every single water system they tested.

    The report “Water Treatment Contaminants: Toxic Trash in Drinking Water” was sparked by concerns about water contamination in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, which spilled tens of millions of gallons of sewage into waterways along the East Coast.

    But the results of their analysis clearly indicate a far more widespread and concerning problem that superstorms merely inflame.

    The problem is that chlorine and other water treatment chemicals, in addition to being somewhat toxic in and of themselves, react with ordinary organic particles in the water ( manure from livestock, dead animals, fallen leaves, etc.) to create hundreds of extremely toxic byproducts, which aren’t monitored or regulated at all.

    These toxic byproducts have been labeled “disinfection byproducts,” or “DBPs,” and there are 600 we know about and probably hundreds more that we don’t, says EWG’s senior scientist Renee Sharp.2

    Most people are not aware that DBPs are actually 1,000 times more toxic than chlorine. Just like with ionizing radiation and mercury, any exposure at all in concerning and potentially toxic; there is no safe level.

    The Byproducts of Chlorination May Be Deadly

    Chlorine is the only disinfectant that has been extensively studied, but now many water treatment plants are using another disinfectant called chloramine, the health effects of which are largely unknown. Chloramine is a combination of chlorine and ammonia.3 More than one in five Americans are drinking tap water treated with chloramine.

    Chloramine stays in the water system longer than chlorine and is difficult to remove—it can’t be removed by boiling, distilling, or by standing uncovered. Its vapors can accumulate in indoor air and concentrate in an enclosed area, such as your shower stall, bathroom, kitchen, or apartment.

    Chloramines combine with organic matter in water supplies to create iodoacids and nitrosamines, which are extremely toxic. According to David Sedlak of UC Berkeley:4

    “Nitrosamines are the compounds that people warned you about when they told you shouldn’t be eating those nitrite-cured hot dogs… They’re about a thousand times more carcinogenic than the disinfection byproducts that we’d been worried about with regular old chlorine.”

    There are three principal types of chlorination byproducts, known to produce dangerous health effects:

    • Trihalomethanes (THMs): Found to cause cancer in laboratory animals, and trigger the production of free radicals in your body; chloroform is an example of a trihalomethane; THMs are associated with bladder cancer, gestational and developmental problems
    • Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs): Lead to central nervous system depression and drowsiness, and can irritate your skin and mucous membranes
    • Haloacetic Acids (HAAs): May cause liver disease in test animals at very high levels, and is a class B2 probable human carcinogen associated with neurological problems, growth retardation, low birth weight, and sperm toxicity

    Why I Recommend Filtering Your Tub and Shower Water…

    Scientists now suspect trihalomethanes in your tap water may be responsible for thousands of cases of bladder cancer each year, based on mounting evidence from multiple studies. But the risk to pregnant women and their unborn babies is also very concerning. Trihalomethanes are associated with numerous developmental and reproductive abnormalities, including stillbirth, miscarriage, low birth weight, and neural tube defects. The neural tube refers to the anatomical structure that develops into your baby’s brain and spinal cord.

    Just the simple act of showering in treated water, in which you have absorption through both your skin and lungs, may pose a significant health risk to you—and to your unborn child, if you are pregnant. Numerous studies have shown that showering and bathing are important routes of exposure for trihalomethanes and may actually represent MORE of your total exposure than the water you drink.

    According to EWG:

    “The EPA standard for trihalomethanes is based on preventing bladder cancer, but the agency has noted that these chemicals may present reproductive and developmental risks as well. A spike that lasts three months exposes a pregnant woman and her fetus to excessive trihalomethane for an entire trimester, a critical window of development. Scientific research has shown that such intensive exposure can have serious consequences for the child.”

    Analysts have found that trihalomethane levels in public water systems vary throughout the year, depending on factors such as farming cycles. But the EPA regulates the chemicals based on an annual average, which means that spikes in the byproducts may go undetected.

    EPA-Regulated Chemicals are Just a Drop in the Bucket

    As concerning as trihalomethanes are, they are just the tip of the iceberg—there are hundreds of other chemicals finding their way into your water supply. The EPA regulates only nine pollutants generated by chlorine or chloramine treatment—four trihalomethanes and five haloacetic acids. These nine regulated chemicals represent less than two percent of the more than 600 unwanted chemicals created by the interaction of water treatment disinfectants and pollutants in source water.

    The legal limits for the nine regulated chemicals are not what either the agency or many independent scientists believe is truly safe. Rather, the regulations represent political compromises that take into account the costs and feasibility of treatment.

    When you add up the total chemicals contaminating public drinking water, the number is beyond staggering. According to William Marks, author of Water Voices from Around the World, there are more than 116,000 human-made chemicals now detected in public water systems!

    In much of the country, farming is a major source of organic pollution in drinking water and a contributor to water treatment contamination. However, with the exception of large confined animal feeding operations, farm businesses are exempt from the pollution control requirements of the federal Clean Water Act. Few states have the authority to compel farms to adopt practices that would reduce agricultural pollution reaching rivers, lakes and bays.

    Other Chemicals You Can’t See or Taste

    Besides DBPs, American drinking water has also been found to contain a host of toxic chemicals, many of which are hormonally active in humans. Some of the most common chemical contaminants include:

    • MTBE (Methyl-tert-butyl Ether): A chemical added to fuel to raise octane number; a potential human carcinogen at high doses
    • Atrazine: According to the documentary FLOW, this US herbicide, banned in the European Union, is the most common water contaminant in the US. Atrazine is an endocrine disruptor known to feminize animals, and is linked with numerous reproductive problems, breast and prostate cancer, and impaired immune function in humans
    • Pharmaceutical Drugs: A 2008 report found a multitude of drugs in the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans, including pain relievers, cancer drugs, antidepressants, oral contraceptives, blood pressure and cholesterol drugs
    • Glyphosate (Roundup): This toxic herbicide is carcinogenic in minute amounts and is linked to more than 20 adverse health effects, including cancer, birth defects and infertility; unfortunately, glyphosate is turning up in the bloodstreams of people all over the world
    • Hexavalent Chromium (Chromium-6): Otherwise known as the “Erin Brockovich chemical,” hexavalent chromium is classified as another “probable carcinogen;” EWG found it in the drinking water of 89 percent of the cities sampled

    Don’t Be Duped by Bottled Water!

    Consumers are frequently mislead into thinking bottled water is safer than tap water, but sometimes it’s even MORE contaminated, as bottled water is less regulated than tap water. Studies reveal that about 40 percent of bottled water is actually tap water, possibly with no additional filtering. When testing bottled water, EWG discovered 38 contaminants in 10 brands, including DBPs, nitrates, caffeine, arsenic, Tylenol, bacteria and industrial chemicals.

    Disposable plastic water bottles are massively polluting our planet. According to the Container Recycling Institute, in the US alone more than 67 million plastic water bottles are discarded each day, adding to an enormous plastic garbage patch swirling around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Bottled water is a serious environmental hazard.

    What is the BEST Water You Can Drink?

    The finest sources of water in the world are gravity-fed mountain springs, accessed directly from where they emerge from the earth. This water is naturally filtered and structured by the earth itself, and even contains beneficial living organisms, like certain types of algae.

    If you’re up to the task, you can collect your own spring water to meet your drinking water needs. There is a Find a Spring website that helps you locate the spring nearest you. The website also allows you to add a spring that is not currently in the database. If you don’t live near a mountain, don’t despair, as just about any spring is better than all other available options.

    Typically, natural springs are monitored for contaminants by local municipalities and, best of all, most of these springs are FREE! You can easily store 10 five-gallon jugs in most cars, which can be purchased online. Glass is best, but it is heavy, so you want to use three-gallon glass jars instead. Just remember to wrap glass bottles with some blankets or towels so they don’t bang against each other in your car, and break.

    Recommendations for In-Home Water Filtration

    If collecting natural spring water is not an option, you can filter your water at home. The best solution is to install a whole housewater filtration system. This not only protects your body (inside and out), but also your appliances. I recommend systems that use at least 60 pounds of filter media and are capable of generating eight or more gallons per minute, which makes it possible to handle multiple water applications simultaneously (showers, laundry, and kitchen). This size serves up to a 3,200 square foot home. Of course, if your home is larger, you may need more than one house filtration system. I also recommend looking for a whole house water filter that has three separate stages of contaminant removal:

    • Stage one removes sediment
    • Stage two removes chlorine and heavy metals
    • Stage three removes hormones, drug residues, chemicals, pesticides, and herbicides with a heavy-duty carbon filter

    In terms of the carbon filter, choose granular carbon, not a solid block of carbon. Granular carbon allows for better water flow, better water pressure and improved filtration overall. Also look for NSF certification, which ensures your water filter is meeting national standards. NSF certification is not granted before a product can prove it removes everything it claims to remove. It’s also good to make sure all particles under 0.8 microns are being filtered out of the water. A lower number is actually better, but I recommend 0.8 microns because that covers most bacteria, viruses and VOCs.

    If you can’t afford a whole-house filtering system, then at least filter your shower water, since that’s going to be your most significant source of contamination, for the reasons already discussed.

    Final Thoughts

    Given the information in the EWG’s latest water report, chances are close to 100 percent that your tap water contains carcinogenic pollutants. In addition to the chemical disinfectants themselves, tap water contains disinfection byproducts that, in some cases, are 1,000 times as toxic as the contaminants they are designed to remove. These contaminants have been associated with bladder cancer, birth defects, miscarriage, and a number of other very serious health problems.

    Showering or bathing in contaminated tap water poses even more of a risk to your health than drinking it, so it isn’t enough to simply filter the water you drink. Optimally, you may opt to install in a whole home water filtration system. If you test your water, you’ll want to do it more than once, as DBPs can fluctuate throughout the year, depending on factors such as farming cycles.