By Eartha Jane Melzer 6/4/09 3:37 PM Michigan Messenger
EPA Photo of Saginaw River dredging.
As a resident of the infamous Niagara Falls, N.Y., neighborhood Love Canal in the 1970s, Lois Gibbs led the fight to clean up dioxin contamination and relocate people who were being exposed to it. Now she is warning that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to spend more time reviewing its decades-old draft report on the human health effects of dioxin is the misguided continuation of a plan established by the administration of former President George W. Bush.
The people of the dioxin-contaminated Saginaw Bay watershed need objective, scientific information about dioxin now, she said in a telephone interview: “This report has so much information that would be so valuable to the state of Michigan. Here you have a state that has a mammoth problem and needs to figure out what to do.”
The EPA’s draft assessment of dioxin states that there is no safe level for dioxin exposure and that people are already being put at increased risk for cancer by background levels of the chemical.
Chemical companies, such as Dow, have lobbied against the release of this report which could mean new rules for how foods are labeled and how much cleanup is required at dioxin contaminated sites around the country.
The 50-mile stretch of contamination that extends from Dow Chemical‘s Midland plant into Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay is likely the largest site of dioxin contamination in the country and comprehensive cleanup would be expensive and complicated. As government agencies debate how to classify dioxin, locals who are living amid the pollution are experiencing elevated cancer rates and some are asking to be relocated to safer areas.
On May 26, the EPA announced that it plans to release the long-delayed report on the human health effects of dioxin by the end of 2010, after a review by the agency’s Science Advisory Board. The announcement came as the agency also declared that it would play an expanded role in pursuing cleanup of Dow’s dioxin contamination.
Some groups expressed cautious optimism about these developments but others — including Gibbs,who is now executive director of the Virginia-based Center for Health Environment and Justice — note that the EPA plan for the health assessment includes caveats that could result in additional and lengthy delays.
The final sentence in the EPA announcement states: “The release date of the final dioxin human health and exposure assessment is dependent on the scope and complexity of the revisions that will need to be made to the 2003 draft assessment based on the contents of the final response to comments report.”
Gibbs said that the additional review was ordered by former President George W. Bush during the last weeks of his administration, and that the chemical industry has successfully lobbied for repeated reviews in order to delay the reports release.
Bush would’ve continued to delay this report for decades, she said, and it’s too soon to tell if the Obama administration is serious about changing course.
“Bottom line is [the additional review] is not needed at all,” she said, “The questions that SAB is being asked to respond to are not science questions.”
Among the issues the board will review, Gibbs said, is whether dioxin is a carcinogen.
“That is silly because it has already been defined as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer,” she said.
The U.S. Health and Human Services’ National Toxicology Program also classifies dioxin as a carcinogen.
Another question that will be revisited by the panel, she said, is whether there is a safe level of dioxin exposure.
“Industry wants some level of threshold,” Gibbs said, but the EPA’s draft report states that there is no safe level for exposure to dioxin and indicates that for most people the major source of exposure to dioxin is through foods, especially fish, meat and dairy products.
“Dioxin accumulates in your fat cells,” she said, “and it stays there for 7 ½ years.”
Though there have been some advances in in limiting industrial emissions of dioxin from paper mills and other source Gibbs said, people such as those in the Saginaw region who are exposed both through the environment and through their diet need the government to begin to act to minimize the health risks they face.
The EPA’s dioxin health assessment could mean stricter standards for dioxin cleanup.
The absence of authoritative information on dioxin has been a factor in recent environmental battles.
In 2006, Environment Michigan and the Lone Tree Council sued to block the construction of an unlined disposal facility for dioxin-contaminated dredged materials from the Saginaw River. Among their concerns was that dust from the sediments could endanger nearby residents and that flooding could cause the toxin to spread over land. In federal District Court, the groups tried to present information about the toxicity of dioxin by presenting the EPA’s draft assessment. The judge ruled against them and dismissed the EPA’s draft report as evidence, pointing out that it had not been cleared for official release.