Waste

Cloth bags condemned as plastic strikes back

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(ON) The Toronto Star – The plastics industry is warning consumers that reusable fabric grocery bags can create a health risk because they can become contaminated with fungus and bacteria if not properly washed. As the green movement against disposable plastics gains momentum, the Canadian Plastics Industry Association warns that it had 24 reusable bags tested at two laboratories and in many of them found mould, yeast and bacteria, including intestinal fecal bacteria. More

Echo

Volunteers count crane flies in Stoney Creek

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – Adam Rhein trudged through a murky branch of Stoney Creek in Washington Township in chest-high rubber waders on Tuesday and lowered a long net into the gentle water. Rhein and more than a dozen other juniors from Romeo High School joined the council’s effort to collaborate with communities, schools and businesses in order to test for pollution in the river and more than 1,000 miles of creeks. The rivers and streams meander through Oakland and Macomb counties then spill into Lake St. Clair, a major source of drinking water and recreation. More

Echo

Great Lakes groups urge passage of Obama cleanup plan; cite jobs, environment benefits

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By Allison Bush, bushalli@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
May 14, 2009

Regional environmental and economic groups on Thursday urged Congress to quickly approve President Barack Obama’s proposed allocation of $475 million to restore and protect the Great Lakes. “This initiative, from our perspective, is the exact priorities the Great Lakes need, and the right amount,” said Andy Buchsbaum, co-chair of Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition. The proposal allocates the most money – $146 million – to cleaning toxic substances from contaminated sediments. Other funding would go to keeping out and removing invasive species, preventing pollution, improving near-shore health and protecting habitat and wildlife. The president has not identified specific geographic regions that would receive the funding.

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

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

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.

Water

Lakes Erie and St. Clair get spring dose of dirt

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Some Great Lakes watersheds sweating off the winter freeze are sending huge brown plumes of sediment into Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair. But are these smudges, visible in satellite photographs, a sign of spring or a sign that something is wrong? “It’s both,” said the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ John Matthews on the Lake Erie plume. “It’s normal, but it’s also a function of how we’ve affected stream channels in that watershed.”

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.