It's The Environment, Stupid.

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Published on Sunday, July 11, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

A Truly Toxic Issue: Our Chemical Environment

A truly toxic issue Modern life is saturated with carcinogenic chemicals. But without regulation, just how are we supposed to avoid them?

by Sadhbh Walshe

I used to be under the impression that you had a reasonable chance of avoiding debilitating and potentially fatal diseases like cancer if you just took a few simple precautions: ate plenty of fruit and vegetables, gave up smoking, drank in moderation and did a bit of exercise. It's since become apparent that the world we live in is so overrun with environmental pollutants that it is next to impossible to keep oneself truly healthy.
A report released in the US earlier this year by the President's Cancer Panel concluded that the risk of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated; that exposure to potential carcinogens is widespread; that the 80,000 or so chemicals used by millions of Americans in their daily lives (mostly inadvertently) are largely unregulated and that, to a "disturbing extent", babies are being born "pre-polluted".
As someone who has spent a great deal of her time cycling around farmers' markets in inclement weather to fill cloth bags with local seasonal and organic produce, and sweating out toxins in hot yoga studios in between, these findings are particularly enraging.
I've known for a while that imbibing food is a perilous adventure. Meat, fish and dairy products have long since terrified me. Even fresh produce has its dangers. A conventional apple for example - the very fruit that is meant to keep the doctor at bay - can contain up to 42 different pesticides, many of them known carcinogens.
But now, it seems that food is the least of our worries, to the extent that you have some control over what you digest. The fact is we are being bombarded 24/7 by toxic chemicals: benzene and formaldehyde in our furniture and carpets, bisphenol A (BPA) in food containers and the coating on credit card receipts, and who knows what in our electronic devices.
Some of these chemicals, like formaldehyde (which is probably in the desk I'm typing at right now and in the sofa I'll be reclining on later) and BPA, which is everywhere, have been the subject of hundreds of studies and are known to be harmful, even in very low doses. BPA is particularly troubling, being linked to breast cancer, infertility and birth defects in infants (reducing the normal distance between their anus and genitals for example), yet it is ubiquitous in - of all things - babies' bottles. BPA was banned from use in Canada in 2008; despite more than 700 studies coming to the same distressing conclusion, it is still FDA-approved for use in the United States.
And these are just the chemicals we know about. What damage the other 79,998 or so chemicals floating about are causing is anybody's guess.
You can, of course, minimise your exposure to toxic chemicals by adhering to the following set of guidelines: buy food, home and garden products, toys, medicines, furniture and clothing that are organic and free of BPA, phtalates, endocrine disruptors, formaldehyde and other toxic by-products of the manufacturing process. Filter your water and air, don't use your mobile phone, don't use Wi-Fi, don't use the microwave, steer clear of electronic devices generally, wear sunscreen, avoid carpets, test your house for mould, test your house for radon levels, avoid first-, second- and third-hand smoke - and next time you sign a credit card receipt, try not to touch it.
No problem, right? Well, not if you have the resources of someone like Madonna or Gwyneth Paltrow, perhaps, but for the average Joe, toxin-free living is simply not feasible. I can't get my landlord to clean the windows in my apartment - so there's no way he's checking the radon levels anytime soon. And how, exactly, is one supposed to recognise an endocrine disruptor when it comes knocking?
For people of limited means, this is an even bigger problem. They have enough to be getting on with trying to put food on the table without having to worry whether the food, not to mention the table itself, is safe.
If average citizens are to have any hope of a toxin-free lifestyle, we need the government to step in and regulate the poisonous substances that we are being exposed to on a daily basis. Fortunately, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Last April, Senator Lautenberg proposed the Safe Chemicals Act, which would overhaul the dangerously outdated Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976. The new act, like many others before, is still waiting for congressional approval and you can be sure that the longer it languishes, the happier the plastics and manufacturing industries will be.
Meanwhile, according to the President's Cancer Panel, a whopping 41% of Americans - almost half the population - will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives. In 2009 alone, 562,000 Americans died from the disease.

© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited

Sadhbh Walshe is a film-maker and former staff writer for the CBS drama series The District. Her opinion pieces have also been published in the Chicago Tribune and Irish Times.

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• A truly toxic issue | Sadhbh Walshe (guardian.co.uk)
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World's Top Firms Cause $2.2 Trillion of Environmental Damage

Published on Friday, February 19, 2010 by the Guardian/UK
World's Top Firms Cause $2.2 Trillion of Environmental Damage, Report Estimates
Report for the UN into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment

by Juliette Jowit

The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.

[Black clouds over the central business district, Jakarta. The report into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest public companies has estimated the cost of use, loss and damage of the environment. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images]Black clouds over the central business district, Jakarta. The report into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest public companies has estimated the cost of use, loss and damage of the environment. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.

Later this year, another huge UN study - dubbed the "Stern for nature" after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern - will attempt to put a price on such global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. The report, led by economist Pavan Sukhdev, is likely to argue for abolition of billions of dollars of subsidies to harmful industries like agriculture, energy and transport, tougher regulations and more taxes on companies that cause the damage.

Ahead of changes which would have a profound effect - not just on companies' profits but also their customers and pension funds and other investors - the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment initiative and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly ordered a report into the activities of the 3,000 biggest public companies in the world, which includes household names from the UK's FTSE 100 and other major stockmarkets.

The study, conducted by London-based consultancy Trucost and due to be published this summer, found the estimated combined damage was worth US$2.2 trillion (£1.4tn) in 2008 - a figure bigger than the national economies of all but seven countries in the world that year.

The figure equates to 6-7% of the companies' combined turnover, or an average of one-third of their profits, though some businesses would be much harder hit than others.

"What we're talking about is a completely new paradigm," said Richard Mattison, Trucost's chief operating officer and leader of the report team. "Externalities of this scale and nature pose a major risk to the global economy and markets are not fully aware of these risks, nor do they know how to deal with them."

The biggest single impact on the $2.2tn estimate, accounting for more than half of the total, was emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. Other major "costs" were local air pollution such as particulates, and the damage caused by the over-use and pollution of freshwater.

The true figure is likely to be even higher because the $2.2tn does not include damage caused by household and government consumption of goods and services, such as energy used to power appliances or waste; the "social impacts" such as the migration of people driven out of affected areas, or the long-term effects of any damage other than that from climate change. The final report will also include a higher total estimate which includes those long-term effects of problems such as toxic waste.

Trucost did not want to comment before the final report on which sectors incurred the highest "costs" of environmental damage, but they are likely to include power companies and heavy energy users like aluminium producers because of the greenhouse gases that result from burning fossil fuels. Heavy water users like food, drink and clothing companies are also likely to feature high up on the list.

Sukhdev said the heads of the major companies at this year's annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, were increasingly concerned about the impact on their business if they were stopped or forced to pay for the damage.

"It can make the difference between profit and loss," Sukhdev told the annual Earthwatch Oxford lecture last week. "That sense of foreboding is there with many, many [chief executives], and that potential is a good thing because it leads to solutions."

The aim of the study is to encourage and help investors lobby companies to reduce their environmental impact before concerned governments act to restrict them through taxes or regulations, said Mattison.

"It's going to be a significant proportion of a lot of companies' profit margins," Mattison told the Guardian. "Whether they actually have to pay for these costs will be determined by the appetite for policy makers to enforce the 'polluter pays' principle. We should be seeking ways to fix the system, rather than waiting for the economy to adapt. Continued inefficient use of natural resources will cause significant impacts on [national economies] overall, and a massive problem for governments to fix."

Another major concern is the risk that companies simply run out of resources they need to operate, said Andrea Moffat, of the US-based investor lobby group Ceres, whose members include more than 80 funds with assets worth more than US$8tn. An example was the estimated loss of 20,000 jobs and $1bn last year for agricultural companies because of water shortages in California, said Moffat.
© 2010 Guardian/UK

Quality Info on CO2 Emisssions

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Biomass concerns aren't just happening in our neck of the woods. Here is a letter from Lisa Arkin concerning a proposed biomass plant in Eugene Oregon. Thanks to Susan Laing for passing this on.



Dear Administrator Jackson,

Oregon Toxics Alliance, Central Latino Americano and the Oregon Chapter of the American Lung Association filed a request for Alternative Dispute Resolution to the Environmental Justice Division of EPA Region 10. We remain extremely concerned about the public health impacts from the pollution and greenhouse gases that will be emitted from the proposed Seneca biomass plant to be located in Eugene, Oregon.

We understand that the US EPA is currently not accounting for CO2 and CO2 pre-cursor emissions from biomass burning in the regulatory process. This is a significant oversight. Greenhouse gases are determined to be air pollutants and also have a negative impact on the public health of communities in the near vicinity of biomass power plants.

We wish to submit these comments which describe the negative impacts of air pollutants and greenhouse gases on residents of West Eugene, Oregon if a proposed 18.8 MW co-generation biomass plant (Seneca Sawmill permit application submitted January 29, 2009) is approved as submitted. The community is demanding that maximum emissions control technology is required for construction, in this case, RSCR or Regenerative Selective Catalytic Reduction. If the permitting agency doesn’t require RSCR, the biomass plant will be a major source of CO2 (according to their own consultants, 212,000 tons/year).

Biomass incineration, the process of burning wood for fuel, converts large amounts of carbon from a solid state to a gaseous state. Although biomass is viewed as being ‘carbon neutral’ by virtue of using biogenic carbon, biomass energy production can adversely affect atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations in important ways. The form in which carbon is transferred from the biomass stock to the atmospheric stock is critically important from the standpoint of greenhouse forcing impacts.

Burning woody biomass releases reduced carbon (methane or CH₄), which is twenty-five times more potent as a green house gas than oxidized carbon (CO₂) on an instantaneous, per-carbon basis. Maximum control technology (RSCR) will better control methane (CH₄) emissions and reduce greenhouse gas effects.

In the process of converting carbon from a solid state to a gaseous state, biomass incineration directly affects the climate of surrounding neighborhoods, in that most of the gases produced are greenhouse gases or its pre-cursors. These gases trap pollution and infrared radiation.

Thus, biomass incineration will saturate the local climate of Eugene with greenhouse gases (CO₂, CH₄,), many other pollutants and particulate matter, with the most intense impacts to West Eugene neighborhoods. West Eugene has high concentration of low income, disabled and minority residents. This has the effect of creating a local micro-climate that leads to phenomena such as thermal inversions and acidic rain.

These phenomena will occur because, once continuous point-sources of greenhouse gasses are installed, their release rate may exceed the dispersion rate, creating a permanent accumulation of these gases in the atmosphere. This effect is compounded by the number and volume of point source polluters. The fact that Eugene sits at the bottom of the Willamette Valley and is surrounded by mountains disrupts the dispersion of gases and aggravates this micro-climate effect.

So, even if one accepts that the process is carbon neutral, a biomass plant has a significant potential for changing the quality of life for the communities nearby if maximum air emission equipment is not used. Oregon Toxics Alliance asserts that biomass energy plant poses a severe air pollution and public health hazard for nearby communities.

Thus, in order to maintain the quality of our local atmospheric conditions, it’s necessary to reduce gaseous pollutant sources and control industrial gaseous outputs with maximum control technology. EPA's regulations must account for emissions from power plants that use biomass burning to generate electricity.

Sincerely,

Lisa Arkin

Executive Director, Oregon Toxics Alliance

Email: larkin@oregontoxics.org

Website: www.oregontoxics.org

Office Phone: 541-465-8860

Street Address: 1192 Lawrence Street

Eugene, OR 97401