Message from charlie.cray@green2.greenpeace.org

[charlie.cray@green2.greenpeace.org]

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Original-TO:      dioxin-l@essential.org
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Ferd--
 
Enjoyed the show.  Lots of mental massages.
 
1) First fact:  The article by BNA was not BY Anah Lindh, 
Sweden's "environmental minister" as you said.  But hey. 
 
2) "Workers" don't all agree with PVC -- esp. those in  
sectors whose jobs have been replaced by the convenience of 
plastics -- e.g. plumbers and hospital workers, or directly 
harmed by the increased use of PVC -- e.g. firefighters.
 
3) NO dioxin emissions are safe when organochlorines are burned -
- no matter which source you compare - since there are no safe 
levels of dioxin.  Since the 30's OC's have been popping around 
the planet -- ie long before all the forest fire dioxin studies 
(in situ) that you cite. Therefore, how can that you find an 
uncontaminated control area to compare any 
industrial/technological source with?
 
4)Instead of comparing different combustion sources of dioxin 
let's just admit that the chlorine in PVC production shouldn't be 
torched anywhere -- postconsumer products in burners (med or 
muni), steel plants, houses and cars or as production byproducts 
from EDC/VCM feedstocks in on-site flares, boilers, incinerators, 
etc., as is ongoing.  All those are in reality (no matter whose 
studies) unquantified sources of dioxins.  Test/trial burns 
notoriously underestimate true emission figures.  
 
There's half-a-dozen studies which demonstrate a direct 
association between dioxin and PVC, including 
 

(Wagner, J.C. and Green, A. University of Florida, Gainesville, 
Clean Combustion Technology Laboratory, "Correlation of 
chlorinated organic compound emissions from incineration with 
chlorinated organic input."  Chemosphere, Vol. 26, No. 11, 1993, 
pp 2039-2054):
 
"We are convinced that, when all other factors are held constant, 
there is a direct correlation between input PVC and output 
PCDD/PCDF (dioxins and furans) and that it is purposeful to 
reduce chlorinated plastics input to incinerators."
 

5)If we were naive enough to believe Stephen Safe's (who by the 
way knew of PCB emissions from VCM production in the 80's) 
comparisons between Nature's Hormones and those produced by Oxy, 
Dow, Formosa, PPG, Vista, Georgia Gulf, Borden, Vulcan, Westlake, 
AKZO and Geon -- then we probably would know nothing about the 
CORPORRUPTION of science.  It is largely Safe's arguments about 
Nature's Hormones that the Competetive Enterprise Institute 
(another front for the Chemical Castration Council, which is turn 
is a front for all those companies, perhaps with the exception of 
Akzo, but I'm sure you all communicate globally, eh Dr. Bill?) 
used.  CEI is the group that wrote the reports that a week or
or so ago the CCC used when it was caught lobbying with "Twisted 
Science" (remember that AP article?)
 
By the way, have you heard the story about the German scientist 
who asked Safe at "Dioxin 95" after he was making the comparison 
between phytoestrogens and dioxin if we could now all call the 
former "Safe" dioxins?
 
6) If you had been to the Lone Star State (and Dr. Bill will 
certainly back me up on this one), then you'd know that all those 
tankers taking VCM from Oxy and others in the Gulf to L. America 
and Asia spew out more dioxin than the all GP ships you referred 
to combined.  And that doesn't include the tanker trucks and 
trains, etc.
 
7) By the way, what does the chlorine in 100,000 year old PVC 
pipes buried in landfills turn into -- or do we know yet?
 
8)  Thanks for mentioning the report by CBNS on dioxin sources to 
the Great Lakes.  Yes, EDC/VCM burners are a small percentage of 
the overall input (what was it, <2%?).  But when you consider 
that EDC/VCM burners in the US are largely clustered in LA/TX -- 
any measurable fallout (%-wise) to that far away (at least a 
thousand miles) is HUGE to think of!.  They must spew a hell of a 
LOT MORE into the Gulf of Mexico--how much we don't know, since 
they haven't all been tested (ask Dr. Bill if they have submitted 
stack emissions data to EPA for inclusion in the sources volume 
of the reassessment).  Let's not forget that those 
wastes were part of the reason ocean incineration was strongly 
opposed in the Gulf of Mexico and ultimately banned globally!  
 
Yours in virtuality--
but conscious of his own country's ecosystems...
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