IV. Chemicals and Management of Waste

For many, the mere mention of toxic chemicals immediately conjures up images of a skull and crossbones, or dead fish floating on poisoned water. Tragically, this image was reality at one time — most recently in the former East European communist bloc and USSR. The legacy of communism’s mismanagement of the environment is one that still haunts us today. One of the latest examples was the release of huge arsenic-loaded mud ponds resulting from gold mining and processing in Romania that caused environmental damage down the entire lower half of the Danube River in 2000. The spills resulted from engineers who built the poorly constructed dams that held the mud slurry, and poor governmental enforcement due to under staffing and corruption. None of these parties believed they would be severely punished if their cost-cutting negligence resulted in the horrific damage that it did.¹ Tragically, this is a natural consequence of the type of government or NGO-business partnerships that are being promoted today.

Because of these kinds of horror stories, many people believe all chemicals are bad and should be banned. Not so. It is poor government, or so-called government-business “partnerships” that are usually at fault. Chemicals are natural. All things are made up of chemicals, including human beings. Toxic substances like arsenic are naturally found in living plants like wheat and peach pits. Many act as natural pesticides to prevent insect infestation or disease. Humans produce hydrochloric acid in their stomachs to aid the digestion of food, while our stomach’s lining provides protection from the acid. Outside our stomachs, this acid can and does cause serious acid burns. While salt is essential in our diet, it can be lethally toxic in high enough concentrations. The key point to remember, as explained many years ago by a 16^th Century Swiss physician named Paracelusus, is that the dose makes the poison.

Dr. Bruce Ames of the University of California, Berkeley, asserts, “The vast bulk of the chemicals humans are exposed to are natural, and for every chemical some amount is dangerous.”² Ames is one of the world’s most highly respected microbiologists and cancer researchers, who invented one of the most frequently used tests for cancer. In short, Ames says that chemicals serve vital functions when used properly. It is only when they are not used properly that problems can occur. For instance, Ames has found that coffee is about 50 times more carcinogenic than DDT, and more than 66 times more carcinogenic than the most dangerous present-day pesticide, called ETU.³ Why? Coffee is made up of over 1,000 chemicals, 70 percent of which are thought to be carcinogenic.⁴ Yet, the EPA does not ban or even regulate exposure to coffee.

Nonetheless, toxic chemicals can clearly cause damage and loss and must be treated with respect. When used properly, they carry little risk for either people or the environment. Extreme reaction to a perceived toxic threat is usually counterproductive and is often the result of deliberate scare campaigns conducted by activist pressure groups that are legally exempt from the false advertising laws that govern the conduct of corporations. This was the case in the 1989 Alar scare perpetrated by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Fenton Communications, and a gullible and greedy CBS 60 Minutes. The scare terrified mothers and created economic devastation for the United States apple industry, which used this very safe chemical to prevent premature apples from dropping from the trees.⁵ It also brought much new revenue to the NRDC, Fenton, and CBS.

Government officials can also politicize risk, thereby creating fear when risk is actually low. Dioxins, for instance, are a group of chemical compounds that can be released by human activities like trash burning, metal smelting, fuel burning, and bleaching paper pulp. Natural sources of dioxins, such as volcanic eruptions and forest fires, dwarf emissions caused by human activities. Further, while they were originally thought to be highly carcinogenic, tens of thousands of studies on dioxin have shown they are not, and dioxins do “not present an appreciable human health risk.”⁶ Nonetheless, the Environmental Protection Agency in 1994 attempted to label dioxins a “known human carcinogen,” – even though its own scientific advisors rejected that conclusion. In June 2000, EPA tried again, claiming the cancer risk from dioxins exposure is ten times higher than the agency reported in 1994.

However, EPA’s 2000 dioxin risk assessment was completely out of line with assessments conducted by government and scientific agencies in the rest of the world. As reported by James Taylor, managing editor of Environment and Climate News, “EPA modeling resulted in an estimated “safe” daily intake of dioxins between 100 and 1,000 times lower than safe intake levels as determined by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Canada, Japan, the European Commission Scientific Committee on Food, and the Joint United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization Expert Committee on Food Additives.”⁷ Analysis of Ben and Jerry’s vanilla ice cream showed, for instance, that it had 200 times the EPA’s maximum level of dioxin considered to be safe. In fact, the background level of dioxin is naturally 100 times higher than the EPA deems safe for human exposure.⁸

Figure 8. Median cost per life-year saved for different sectors of society in 1993 dollars. Source: Tengs et al. “Five-hundred life-saving interventions and their Cost Effectiveness.” Risk Analysis, 1995, 15:371

This is not to say that regulations should not be used to reduce risk. But big government is rarely a good source of information to define risk and formulate regulations because it is subject to the myriad of political agendas within bureaucracies. Further, government bureaucrats rarely consider cost. Just how much are citizens willing to pay? It costs almost nothing “per life saved” to reduce the lead in gasoline from 1.1 g to 0.1 g. However, to control arsenic emissions at glass manufacturing plants would cost $51 million per life saved; and to control benzene (a highly toxic chemical) emissions at rubber tire manufacturing plants would cost $20 billion per life saved.⁹ The question is not where to draw the line, but how might our limited dollars be better spent elsewhere. In almost every case, the cost of protection from environmental toxics is many orders of magnitude higher than saving lives in health care, residential safety, transportation safety and occupational safety. (See chart)¹⁰

The real cost comes when the zeal for saving lives suffers the Law of Unintended Consequences, in which the cure is worse than the problem. Such is the case for the drumbeat by many environmentalists to eliminate the use of pesticides. These special interest groups claim that hundreds of Americans die annually due to man-made pesticide-caused cancer. In fact, the figure, according to some prominent scientists, is at most 20 — a small number compared to other risks prevalent in our society, such as the 300 people who are killed annually by drowning in their bathtubs.¹¹

Since eliminating pesticides would cost between $20 billion and 300 billion annually, the minimum cost per life saved would be $1 billion.¹² The tragic unintended consequence of this is that increased food prices would cause many people to reduce their intake of fruits and vegetables. A dietary decrease of fruits and vegetables of just 10 percent in the United States would cause an increase in cancer deaths by about 26,000.¹³ In other words, banning the use of pesticides in the United States might save 20 people, but 26,000 lives would be lost. In other words, 25,080 lives additional lives would be lost trying to save them. This example pointedly reveals the Law of Unintended Consequences. It also shows the potential global tragedy resulting from a global command and control concept of sustainable development.

Another disastrous example of the Law of Unintended Consequences involves the quest by overzealous EPA bureaucrats to reduce automobile emissions. As a result of the Clean Air Act in 1990, federal authorities forced oil companies to add oxygenates to gasoline sold in the nation’s ten smoggiest cities. Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MTBE) quickly became the additive of choice, and began to see widespread use. This chemical has been linked to testicular, kidney and liver cancer, as well as leukemia and lymphoma in laboratory rats.¹⁴ Because of its high solubility, MTBE spreads quickly, polluting ground water and causing it to taste and smell like turpentine. Leaking underground tanks at corner gas stations forced wells to close. A mere spoonful of MTBE can contaminate enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.¹⁵

MTBE has been detected in all 50 states, and in cities of all sizes. New York has identified 1500 sites, with 400 on Long Island alone. California has identified upwards of 10,000 sites. Santa Monica, California was hit hard in 1995, forcing the city to shut down half of its wells and import 80% of its water. Human health has been affected. In Alaska, so many people became ill, the state declared an epidemic, finally banning MTBE in 1994.¹⁶ The Center for Disease Control reports MTBE exposure is linked to health symptoms including: headache, dizziness, burning sensation of nose or throat, coughing, nausea, vomiting, and disorientation. Many other states have also reported adverse health reactions: Montana, Illinois, Arizona, Iowa, New York, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.¹⁷

Incredibly, the EPA knew about some of these problems before it authorized its use. Yet, it forged blindly ahead and mandated billions of dollars of retrofitting refineries to inject MTBE into gasoline. Once the magnitude of the problem was determined, it refused to ban the substance, forcing the states to take action.¹⁸ Both California and Alaska have banned it. Other states are considering bans. Yet it wasn’t until 2000 that the EPA even started to consider banning it. The nation’s leading environmental bureaucracy was embarrassed and feared negative public reaction if it admitted it may have created one of the biggest environmental disasters in the history of the U.S. And EPA admission would also expose the U.S. government to enormous liability claims. The cleanup costs alone will likely cost industry and local governments billions of dollars. Had a private company done the same thing, of course, it would have been brought up on criminal charges.¹⁹

In summary, the question of toxic chemicals becomes one of balancing risk. Most chemical toxics don’t present a health risk to people or the environment, if used correctly. Just how much we spend on toxics that are proven to cause health risk, should be balanced against the benefits to society and the environment compared to spending limited dollars elsewhere.

Hazardous and Radioactive Waste

Hazardous waste. Hazardous waste is the term given to the waste generated at home, school and work that poses a danger to human health or the environment. If not disposed of correctly, it can damage our air, land and water. The EPA identifies four categories of hazardous waste: corrosive, ignitable, reactive, and toxic.

Following a fatal chemical-release accident in Bhopal, India, the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) was enacted in 1986 to promote emergency planning, minimize the effects of such accidents, and provide the public with information on releases of toxic chemicals in their communities. Section 313 of EPCRA established the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), a national database that identifies 650 chemicals and the facilities at which they are used.²⁰ The TRI tracks chemicals manufactured and used at identified facilities, as well as the annual amounts of these chemicals released in routine operations or accidents. The TRI seems to be an excellent system of getting critically needed information to state and local governments to enable them to determine risk for hazardous wastes.

While TRI may be “an excellent system” for the purpose of getting information about chemicals to first respondents and community leaders who understand chemicals, toxicity, risk management and how to safeguard a community, it has been abused greatly by both EPA and NGO green activists like Greenpeace. They have used the data to disseminate raw information to people who don’t understand its context and limitations, and thus scare communities about chemicals to get them to demand that perfectly safe facilities be shut down or moved. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, EPA finally removed all this extensive data from its website. Greenpeace, however, irresponsibly refused to do so – meaning that terrorist groups still have access to invaluable research data about where chemicals are stored and how many people would likely die if there were a disaster, or a terrorist attack. Again, the potential for horrible abuse by command and control government and NGO partners should in itself be sufficient to not advance the UN sustainable development concept.

Household hazardous wastes include leftover household products that contain corrosive, toxic, ignitable, or reactive ingredients.²¹ Many communities in the United States offer a variety of options for safely managing these wastes. While not always convenient, they can help to reduce future pollution. The primary problem is identifying if, and under what circumstances a waste item becomes hazardous. Environmental bureaucracies have a tendency to lump anything that might conceivably be a future problem in this category, even if it is not a problem today, and generally frown at concentrations of toxic chemicals which are currently found in the waste. The best solution for this is local control, where the federal government serves as an advisor, such as providing TRI data, and the local government sets the rules on hazardous waste. In some cases, like batteries and tires, commercial recycling has provided a viable solution.

Commercial hazardous waste has a long history and is involved with recycling, breakdown into harmless substances, and storing toxics in long-term containment. Since this kind of storage is very expensive and costly to the user, companies have been very innovative in finding ways to recycle or develop markets for them. Vitrification or incineration at extremely high temperatures, in kilns that have state-of-the-art air recycling and pollution control systems, is one of the best ways to get rid of toxic chemicals.

Developing markets to sell waste products so that others can reprocess them into useful new chemicals is also a good alternative. However, it is now almost impossible to send chemicals overseas, to countries that would love to get this cheap source of feedstocks for their own processing and reprocessing plants – because the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Shipment of Hazardous Wastes prohibits this. Many countries signed onto this accord, believing it was designed to protect them – not realizing how it would be used to prevent them from acquiring feedstocks, because certain developed countries (mostly in Europe) did not want any cheap foreign competition for their own chemicals industries. Containment is the choice of last resort. Once companies can no longer dump their waste into rivers, oceans or dump sites, free market incentives create the ability to find alternative uses — all without command and control government instructing them how to do it.

Nuclear Waste. Much of the controversy over nuclear power centers on the lack of a disposal reprocessing system for the highly radioactive spent fuel that must be regularly removed from operating reactors. As a result, progress on nuclear waste disposal is widely considered a prerequisite for any future growth of nuclear power. While most nations have a mid to long-term disposal plan, concerns about past abuses still haunt the technology. Russia, for instance, used the Arctic Ocean as a dumping ground for many types of nuclear waste. Since some of this has a half-life of thousands of years, if sedimentation does not slow the deterioration process the polymer containers might deteriorate within a short period of time, creating future containment problems. This represents a classic case of an unaccountable government-owned industry choosing short-term solutions that could cause severe problems in the future.

There is some good news for the Arctic dump sites, however. Investigations by the International Arctic Sea Agency has tentatively shown that the nuclear waste provides no immediate threat to either humans or the Arctic eco-system. This optimistic conclusion is based on the fact that despite the detection of some leakage that is occurring already, these reports all find that the radionuclides (the radioactive elements of the waste) remain localized to the specific waste sites,.²²

Planned nuclear waste disposal in the United States will be far more secure, though concerns remain. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) and 1987 amendments, the Department of Energy (DOE) has selected Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for housing a deep underground repository for spent nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive waste. The state of Nevada has fought DOE's efforts on the ground that the site is unsafe, pointing to potential volcanic activity, earthquakes, water infiltration, underground flooding, nuclear chain reactions, and fossil fuel and mineral deposits that might encourage future human intrusion.

DOE contends, however, that extensive and exhaustive studies have shown that Yucca Mountain is a suitable depository site, although studies of the site should continue. A "viability assessment" issued by the DOE December 18, 1998, concluded that "no show stoppers have been identified to date at Yucca Mountain." A Draft Environmental Impact Statement completed by the Energy Department in July 1999 supported those findings. The planned Yucca Mountain repository is not scheduled to open until 2010 at the earliest, more than a decade later than the 1998 goal specified by NWPA. Because the geologic formations are believed to have remained undisturbed for millions of years, it appears technically feasible to isolate radioactive materials from the environment until they decay to safe levels. "There is no scientific or technical reason to think that a satisfactory geological repository cannot be built," according to the National Research Council.

While no one can be certain the geology will remain stable for the needed 10,000 year period, the Yucca site does offer the safest depository. Local residents remain concerned, however, and every means should be taken to monitor the site for safety purposes and ensure that proper security and safety protocols are followed.

Solid Waste

Each American produces about 4.5 pounds of waste daily. During the course of a year, the U.S. produces some 200 million tons of municipal waste, double what it was in 1966. This has given rise to claims that the U.S. is running out of landfill space. However, Americans ship off less waste to the landfill than they did in 1979 because of incineration, recycling, and composting. Consequently, out of 200 million tons of waste produced, only 110 million tons wind up in America’s landfills.²³

In many communities solid waste incinerators are now “waste to energy” (WTE) facilities that generate substantial amounts of electricity in state-of-the-art, non-polluting plants. In goes a steady stream of garbage, and out comes electricity, ash that is perhaps 10% of the wastes’ original volume and recycled metals and glass that can be readily collected from the ash. (Even bottle caps, paper clips, staples and metal bottoms from cardboard juice boxes can be extracted from the ash. Previously, these items would have gone to landfills.)

Is America really running out of landfill space? If the U.S. continues to produce 110 million tons of landfill waste for the next one-hundred years, the total space required would fill up a block fourteen miles square, and one hundred feet deep. Assuming there are only 2,000 landfills in America, each landfill would only require less than 0.1 additional square miles to dispose of all the waste in the next 100 years! Even with an ever increasing amount of landfill waste, only a slightly larger area would be required — eighteen miles on a side.²⁴ When spread out over thousands of landfills in America, the seemingly insolvable problem disappears. It is also extremely unlikely that landfills will cause an increase in cancer-related deaths. The EPA estimates that the 6,000 landfills in the U.S. will only cause 5.7 cancer-related deaths over the next 300 years.²⁵

The biggest problem with solid waste is the age-old — Not In My Back Yard, or NIMBY syndrome. Solid waste dumps create truck traffic, some smells, and reduce property value. Thus the solid waste problem is a political issue, not one of insufficient space. Modern landfill sites are generally very clean, hidden behind trees and berms, and often capped by gasification systems, that collect escaping methane for use in power plants. Bear in mind too that garbage and landfills are merely a price of being people. Even the Anasazi and Romans had garbage and landfills.

One solution to the NIMBY problem is for the local city or county government to purchase sufficient land to not only provide space for the landfill, but also act as a buffer zone between the landfill and adjacent residential development. The site can also be located in industrial areas which are not as sensitive to this issue. The city or county can also compensate local residents for the inconvenience by reducing their property taxes and giving them free trash service or reduced electricity rates (especially if some of the electricity comes from gasification or WTE facilities). Nonetheless, these options are generally very expensive solutions that will, in the free marketplace, place increasing pressure on the waste industry to develop more cost-effective alternatives.

Almost all the topics addressed in the sustainable development issues above are resolved by eliminating poverty. Since there is a direct correlation between the waste produced per person and per capita income,²⁶ however, the wealthier a developing nation becomes, the more waste they will produce. At the same time, the wealthier the nation the more environmental protection they can afford. Since developing nations will not have to reinvent-the-wheel concerning waste disposal, they will be able to employ existing technology to cost-effectively dispose of their increasing amounts of solid waste.

Principles

Chemicals are not inherently bad. All things are comprised of chemicals. Most are toxic or harmful if used incorrectly, or if people are exposed to high doses. How they are used determines whether they harm or help people and the environment.

Nature produces toxic chemicals. Many toxic chemicals are naturally produced, including the vast majority of pesticides. Natural does not necessarily mean better or safe.

Emotional reactions to perceived toxic chemical threats can invoke the Law of Unintended Consequences. Applying an environmental “solution” without first determining its consequences can create cataclysmic problems that are much worse than the original problem the solution is supposed to resolve.

Risk analyses done by government agencies are often politicized. Too often the internal politics and agendas of agencies, bureaucrats, and outside pressure groups and the media politicize the science used in developing regulations for a specific law.

Government agencies tend to lump real and potential chemical hazards into one group. Not all hazards contain the same risk under all circumstances. Yet, government agencies often lumps them all together for their ease of administration, or to increase regulatory power, funding, or notoriety.

Sustainable solutions must be prioritized before implementing. Billions of dollars can be spent on perceived problems that have low benefits for people and/or the environment compared to other, less glamorous problems.

There is more than adequate space for solid waste disposal. The problem is political, not physical, and centers on legitimate NIMBY concerns.

Where possible, free market solutions are usually better than regulatory solutions. Hazardous waste problems can often be met with creative use of markets and reformulation rather than command and control dictates.

Nuclear waste can be safely contained, but strict protocols must protect neighboring communities. While controversial, permanent repositories such as the Yucca flats site in Nevada should provide a safe storage for spent nuclear fuel.

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