Echo

Great Lakes or great sink? Pollutants produced abroad and still circulating at home threaten water quality

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By Matthew Cimitile, cimitile@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo 4/22/09
Indian cement plants, Russian incinerators and Chinese farms send large amounts of persistent pollutants to the Great Lakes. The continued expulsion of these toxins pose serious environmental and health problems for all countries, including those who have long since banned these chemicals, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Climate change may further complicate the issue. As countries like China develop, they are not only becoming the largest emitters of carbon dioxide but of persistent organic pollutants or POPs, according to the International POPs Elimination Network. These chemicals drift into the atmosphere or fall to the surface to evaporate.

Echo

An ill wind blows no good

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Matthew Cimitile, cimitile@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo 4/21/09
As contaminated sediment is cleaned up in the Great Lakes, persistent pollutants continue to blow in, threatening again to poison soil and harm human health. That has some experts questioning if it’s worthwhile to spend money to remove toxic sediments if they will once more become contaminated in a matter of years. “We have been very hung up on cleaning the watershed because we believed it was the source of contamination in the lake, but in recent decades contamination has come through the air,” said Mel Visser, former vice president of environmental health safety at Upjohn Pharmaceutical in Michigan and author of Cold, Clear, and Deadly: Unraveling a Toxic Legacy. “Even if you cleaned all the lakes tomorrow you wouldn’t do anything to the water because the concentration of these chemicals is controlled by the amount in the air,” said Visser, whose book describes current sources of chemicals that continue to pollute the Great Lakes’ air, food supply and water. The Great Lakes Legacy Act signed in 2002, provides funding to clean up Great Lakes sediments.

Echo

Building a Great Lakes toxic legacy

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Millions of dollars have been spent cleaning historic Great Lakes contamination. Millions more are sought. Does it make sense to clean the lakes before the pollution sources are eliminated? A look at toxic fallout. An ill wind blows no good
As contaminated sediment is cleaned up in the Great Lakes, persistent pollutants continue to blow in, threatening again to poison soil and harm human health.

Echo

Wisconsin county overcomes air pollution imports to avoid regulation

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By Julia Cechvala
Great Lakes Echo

For the past six years the Dane County Clean Air Coalition has promoted voluntary efforts to reduce air pollution. In February they paid off when the coalition announced that the county meets the federal standards for fine particle pollution. This means that Dane, along with Brown and Columbia counties, escaped regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency can impose on “non-attainment areas.”

Plenty of air quality challenges have confronted Dane County, including some outside the county’s control. Emissions as far away as Texas or Ohio affect Wisconsin’s air, according to Larry Bruss, head of regional pollution issues for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Industrial farms, factories and power plants emit pollutants that combine to form ground level ozone and fine particle pollution.