Echo

Environmental Protection Agency announces dioxin review, plans for Dow cleanup

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(MI) Booth Newspapers – The federal government will speed up a long-delayed assessment of how dioxins affect human health, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday. Lisa Jackson promised the quickened timetable while announcing a revised strategy for planning the cleanup of one of the nation’s biggest dioxin pollution zones: a 50-mile section of Lake Huron watershed near a Dow Chemical Co. plant in Michigan. Dow has acknowledged responsibility for the pollution. Dioxins are toxic byproducts from manufacturing chemicals.

Echo

Dioxin cleanup continues at West Michigan Park in Saginaw Township

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(MI) The Saginaw News – A crew spreads clean dirt onto the grounds of West Michigan Park on W. Michigan Ave. in Saginaw Township. Crews removed a layer of dioxin-polluted soil and is replacing it with clean fill as part of The West Michigan Park Soil Removal Project. The park is located along the banks of the Tittabawassee River. More

Echo

Pall Life Sciences water cleanup proposals criticized

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(MI) Ann Arbor News – Critics charge that modifications to Pall Life Sciences’ long-running groundwater cleanup plan could endanger Ann Arbor’s drinking water. About 35 people turned out for a meeting Wednesday night of the Coalition for Action on Remediation of Dioxane, when proposed modifications to the Scio Township company’s plan were discussed. Critics say changes to the plan will dramatically increase the amount of a possible carcinogen allowed to remain in area aquifers. More

Echo

Canadian researchers shine new light on old Great Lakes contaminant

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By Jeff Gillies, gilliesj@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
May 19, 2009

In the alphabet soup of Great Lakes contaminants, PCBs, PCDDs and PBDEs usually rule the broth. But in a recent study, Canadian scientists took a closer look at another noodle. They examined a group of seldom-studied, dioxin-like contaminants called polychlorinated naphthalenes, or PCNs. These chemicals can have toxic effects including chloracne and liver damage. And although industry abandoned their use 30 years ago, the researchers still found the chemicals in lake trout collected from Lake Ontario from 1979 and 2004.

Waste

Michigan may join most Great Lakes states in banning mercury in toys, landfills

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Even though only 1 percent of toys contain mercury, Mike Shriberg says that’s too much of the dangerous element in the hands of vulnerable children. “You’re still talking about millions of products out there,” said Shribert, a children’s health advocate. The Michigan Network for Children’s Environmental Health, where Shriberg directs policy, is pushing a package of bills in the Michigan Legislature to tighten restrictions on mercury-containing products, including toys. The bills passed the house last week and were sent to the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs. Michigan and Pennsylvania are the only two Great Lakes states that haven’t banned the sale of mercury-added “novelties,” a term lawmakers use to cover products as diverse as  toys, games, shoes and yard statues.

Echo

Toxaphene – A stubborn pollutant persists

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Matthew Cimitile, cimitile@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
April 23, 2009

The largest, deepest and coldest Great Lake holds another distinction, – it has the highest levels of toxaphene found in the region and possibly anywhere in the world. Since federal bans on persistent pollutants in the 1970s and 80s, most chemical concentrations have declined in the Great Lakes. Some Great Lakes toxicologists say the same is true of toxaphene. But toxaphene in Lake Superior has increased by 25 percent since its ban in 1990, according to Mel Visser, a former environmental health safety officer and author of Cold, Clear and Deadly, a book that details the legacy of Great Lakes contaminants. The insecticide has been shown to damage the immune system, nervous system, lungs and cause cancer.

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

Three Great Lake states among a dozen receiving $6 billion in stimulus cleanup funds

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By Matthew Cimitile, cimitile@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Ohio, New York and Illinois are among a dozen states just awarded funds from the federal Department of Energy for environmental clean up. The three Great Lakes states along with nine others are getting $6 billion in new funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The investment is expected to create thousands of jobs, federal officials announced Tuesday. Funding will speed the cleanup of soil and groundwater, help transport and dispose of waste and clean and demolish former weapons facilities. “These investments will put Americans to work while cleaning up contamination from the cold war era,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a news release.

Echo

Great Lakes cleanups hampered by economic woes, bureaucratic hurdles

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By Andrew Mcglashen
Environmental Health News

A most-wanted list of toxic substances–including PCBs, dioxins, mercury, lead and pesticides–has lingered in western New York’s Eighteenmile Creek for decades, leaving its salmon, trout and other fish unsafe to eat and jeopardizing its wildlife. Now the nation’s sour economy has complicated and delayed the already daunting cleanup of the Lake Ontario tributary, as well as several dozen other toxic hotspots around the Great Lakes. “Given the fiscal situation in the State of New York, it’s really up in the air if the cleanup will get done,”said Victor DiGiacomo Jr., who chairs a local group of landowners, officials and others aiming to restore the area. Eighteenmile Creek, a meandering, lush stream in Niagara County known for its salmon and trout runs, is one of 43 highly contaminated sites that were designated “Great Lakes Areas of Concern” more than 20 years ago as part of a water-quality pact between the United States and Canada. As a promise to expedite the cleanups, Congress passed the Great Lakes Legacy Act in 2002, and then last fall, reauthorized it for another two years.