[Dioxin-l] "normal background level"

[superjicb]

Jon

Up until now I’ve just monitored this site, but David and Michael have
motivated me to comment. I’m not surprised to find incinerator manufacturers
on the same side of the issue as the chlorine industry.

I was in the chlorine industry for ten years.  I co-authored the ”Chlorine
and Sodium Hydroxide” section of the 1991 edition of “The Kirk-Othmer
Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology.” You may find some chlorine advocacy
position papers authored by me floating around.  I also studied chlorine
issues as a personal hobby outside my job.  I thought I was objective when I
worked in this industry, but in hindsight I recognize that I was just a
chlorine activist with a pro-industry mindset.  I thought US firms were
already the world’s best on environmental issues and that pushing too hard
could hurt US companies, the US economy and US citizens.  I’ve since learned
that for the large part I was wrong.  I’m convinced that what is good for
today’s multinationals is good only for a few individuals, and certainly not
for US citizens or the US economy.  Also, it is hard to deny that
environmental efforts in CFCs and pulp mills have helped the environment and
I’m quite sure these efforts added jobs and grew GDP beyond what otherwise
would have occurred.

Michael or David said quote: “…dioxin is highly toxic - a fact.  It follows
to reduce the level till there is no toxicity. This has such strength and
clarity that no politician can ignore the logic, and activism wins.”

I disagree because this implies cleaner incinerators will solve our
chlorine/dioxin problems.  I also disagree because politicians survive
election after election while clearly ignoring logic. This once amazed me,
but having been educated by someone who knows what goes on, I now support
campaign finance reform.  I’m not specifically knowledgeable about the
incinerator industry, but using common sense I can see reasons why they
might be inclined to support the chlorine industry.  I think I remember
reading that chlorine first came under the gun somewhere in the UK (I think
it was in the 1920s) when dioxin was discovered at an incinerator there, and
that ever since chlorine and incinerators have enjoyed varying degrees of
mutual trouble.  Michael/David’s statement suggests that we should improve
incineration so toxins are not produced.  This would be great for
incinerator sales, but I doubt it can be done without the help of
environmental advocates – like happened in the pulp and CFC changeovers,
where environmental advocates and equipment suppliers worked together.
Changes of this magnitude require that federal and state governments,
industry, hospitals, etc., spend billions of dollars, and I’d don’t believe
that industry groups with obvious self interests can successfully accomplish
such lofty goals alone, but then maybe they don’t really want to accomplish
them as we would imagine they do.

Incineration equipment suppliers are in a difficult position because
incinerator replacement costs are high and for the most part the costs will
need to be paid for by taxpayers and industry, and that’s a hard sell.  If
incinerator manufactures admit too much to the dioxin problem and to its
relationship to chlorine, you can be sure that would make it fairly obvious
that little hospital/apartment incinerators, etc., should be closed down,
and I’d guess this would be a chunk of lost business. I have no numbers but
I doubt that an apartment building can afford a new efficient incinerator
that burned hot enough not make or emit dioxin. Also its hard to imagine
getting consumers to demand dioxin-free incineration (when they have no
direct choice regarding incineration) like they could easily demand
chlorine-free paper.  Maybe you should let people know the issue exists by
selling dioxin-free baby foods, that is if you can find dioxin free
ingredients.

Dioxin byproduct production in incineration would not occur without
chlorine, and it is my understanding that most of the chlorine in
incinerators comes from man-made products like PVC.  You’d think the
incineration business would at least want to ban chlorine-containing
products to take the heat off, but with less chlorine in incinerators would
there be less dioxin and maybe less urgency to replace incinerators?  I can
see why incinerator manufacturers might be inclined to walk the fine line of
pushing slightly to force slow replacement of large incinerators with more
expensive hotter burning models, while not stirring things up so much that
smaller incinerators are closed or that politicians call for elimination of
man-made chlorine wastes.

It is difficult for environmental advocates too because they know that not
all incineration takes place in incinerators.  Lots of dioxin is formed from
chlorine derivatives (PVC, etc) burned in accidental fires, or intentionally
in backyard fires, as well as in incinerators that are out of compliance.
Also, all over the US industries get away with ignoring environmental laws
and guidelines, and authorities turn a blind eye to the non-compliance.  The
smaller government becomes the more laws will be ignored.

I read the Beaver Lake Washington study by the EPA.  It scares me to see six
times the amount of dioxin was present in 1964 that was present in 1932,
especially because between the 1800s and 1932 the dioxin level stayed almost
the same indicating that incineration has had its toll in this area since
1932. Does anyone know anything about Beaver Lake?  Does it have lots of
industry or population?  Why did the EPA pick it?  I noticed that there was
a drop in dioxin in the area between 1964 and 1974.  Is there a reason for
this drop?  Did any industries in the area close?

I don’t want you to think I’m against chlorine, which is simply an element
although not like any other element because it has its own special highly
reactive/destructive properties – if carbon is highly inert and the element
of life and a building block, wouldn’t everything stay the same if there
were no elements that broke things apart?  Don’t you need a
reactive/destructive element widely available in nature?  Aren’t the laws of
thermodynamics wonderful in that they rule chemical reactions?  If you start
with a world full of reactive elements, as they react with each other they
release energy and in time things calm down.  This is what has happened over
the years to result in the relatively stable world we live in.  If it hadn’t
happened I dare say we wouldn’t be here.

While some elements have largely inert properties (carbon), others elements
have largely reactive or destructive properties (chlorine).  If carbon is
the element of life, I hold that chlorine is the element of change. While I
am no longer a chlorine activist, I still consider it a serious mistake to
ban or advocate the ban of chlorine in all uses. Uses like pharmaceuticals
and residual water treatment should not come into question. Environmental
groups undermine their credibility when they bring these end uses into
question.  Luckily they make up a very small percent of total chlorine
demand, although likely still more than the small amount of organo-chlorines
produced by nature.

Michael pointed out that third-world countries are caught in situations
where they must choose between slow death from DDT or fast death from
malaria.  It is lucky that the US does not have to make this ugly choice
where dioxin is concerned.  Instead of poisoning our citizens with dioxin,
we can go a long way in protecting their health simply by replacing those
chlorine derivatives that add the most to chlorinated wastes.  I am not
advocating a ban on PVC in special products where it is necessary, but I do
believe many PVC end uses can be eliminated, as can many other chlorine
derivatives.  Of course, this won’t totally solve the dioxin/incineration
problem because of chlorine’s ubiquitous presence in nature, but from what I
’ve read natural sources account for a small percent of dioxin in
incineration.  Also, we still have many years worth of PVC waste in the
environment that will likely someday be burned.

I think the incineration industry should at least avoid stirring the pot and
accusing environmental advocates of not dealing with reality when it is
clear that today these advocates are intelligent, informed and well grounded
in reality.   It is especially time for industry at large to stop with all
the “sound-science” rhetoric.  Industry has the big bucks and the political
clout to make their voices heard louder than environmentalist.  In my
opinion, as long as campaign finance reform is not passed it is unnecessary
for industry to talk so much about sound-science.  Anyone who can read knows
that the “perception is reality” concept is abused by both sides.  Looking
back to the first half of the 1990s, industry wrangled with the perception
held out by environmentalists that chlorine was an “evil chemical”.  This
type of name-calling was near impossible to address scientifically, it
undermined the credibility of environmentalists, and did much to polarize
industry and environmentalists.  During that period I read a simplistic
little book that I had owned for years called “The Building Blocks of the
Universe” by Isaac Asimov.  It discussed each element on the periodic table,
including chlorine, which it ironically called the “green element.”  After
reading this book I realized that instead of defending chlorine as a
chemical that it should instead be viewed as an “element” like any other,
oxygen, hydrogen, etc.   It doesn’t sound so outlandish to ban one chemical
out of millions, but it is a totally different thing to think that you can
ban an element from the earth, especially when there are so few elements and
when chlorine is one of the few that occurs in abundance.  While it was a
good retort for the times, when you take a closer look at that simplistic
little concept, you see that the argument is thin at best, and no more
scientific than calling chlorine evil.  Its certainly time for industry to
stop using it before someone decides to blow it apart.

It appears that another issue from the first half of the 1990s that is still
being bantered about is the importance of organo-chlorines to the debate
(only now the importance is extended to all halogens).  This is totally
ridiculous.  If industry wants to discuss things in terms of chemical groups
(halogens) that is okay, but I hope that environmental advocates have
learned enough not to let themselves be pulled into an argument with
industry that can be used to show that they are prejudiced towards entire
groups of elements.  I’m sure we all recognize that each halogen has its own
special properties.

If I were an environmental advocate that wanted to take steps to eliminate
as much dioxin byproduct manufacture from the environment as possible, and
as quickly as possible, I’d do my best to point out that chlorine is a
highly reactive (destructive) and deadly poison that is needed to make
pharmaceuticals which often have destructive functions (like dioxins are
used to kill cancers) and to kill bacteria in residual water treatment, but
that the individuals that use it for these reasons are highly trained and do
so with great care.  I’d excuse these uses by pointing out that just like
living organisms use only very tiny amounts of chorine and only to carry out
necessary destructive purposes (like HCl in digestion and frog skin poison),
that man uses only a very small amount of chlorine to sanitize water and
produce pharmaceuticals.

CONNIE HANSSON

----- Original Message -----
From: Jon Campbell <Jon.Campbell@MetraTech.com>
To: 'Ralph Ryder' <ralph@tcpublications.freeserve.co.uk>; kathy or david van
dame <dvd.kvd@juno.com>
Cc: <dioxin-l@venice.essential.org>
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2000 1:08 PM
Subject: RE: [Dioxin-l] "normal background level"


> Ralph, Kathy/David van Dame,
>
>      Clarification of previous message: Kathy/David van Dame and Ralph
Ryder
> (and, I might add, many others on this list) are in agreement: that the
> incinerator and chemical industries do in fact promote the idea that the
> current level of dioxin contamination is not only "background" but also
> harmless to us. I have personal experience with this with one of my
> unfavorite companies - Wheelabrator (subsidiary of a little company called
> Waste Management).
>
> Jon
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ralph Ryder [mailto:Ralph@tcpublications.freeserve.co.uk]
> Sent: Friday, January 07, 2000 4:03 PM
> To: kathy or david van dame
> Cc: dioxin-l@venice.essential.org
> Subject: Re: [Dioxin-l] "normal background level"
>
>
> In message <20000106.190850.-366647.9.dvd.kvd@juno.com>, kathy or david
> van dame <dvd.kvd@juno.com> writes
> ><snip>
> >>Unfortunately much of the public, especially those threatened with waste
> >>to energy incinerators are being hoodwinked into accepting today's
> >>dioxin contamination level of the globe as 'the normal background
> >>level.'
> >
> >I don't believe I have heard anyone advocate that- is this your belief ?
> Yes - based on my experience of attending numerous public meetings of
> industry trying to kid the public while assisting 2 dozen communities
> fight planning applications for burners over the last 6 years.
>
> without insulting you (I only insult people I know very well and good
> friends) Do you ever look out into the real world or are you so wrapped
> up with data in text books...?
>
> Ralph
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Dioxin-l mailing list
> >Dioxin-l@lists.essential.org
> >http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/dioxin-l
> >
>
> ****************************************************************
> Ralph Ryder
> Communities Against Toxics
> PO Box 29
> Ellesmere Port
> Cheshire UK
> CH66 3TX
> Email ralph@tcpublications.freeserve.co.uk
> Tel/Fax 0151 339 5473
> ****************************************************************
>
>
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