SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
chemicals
Local Fears Grow After Major PFAS Spill at Former Navy Base in Maine
Forever chemicals were stored in tanks at an airport at more than 10,000 times the federal limit.
Aug 27, 2024
Maine officials in recent days have downplayed the public health risk posed by an accidental discharge of firefighting foam containing the toxic substances known as "forever chemicals" over a week ago, but initial tests on Monday revealed startlingly high concentrations of the chemicals near the airport where the spill occurred.
The state found that perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), a type of synthetic perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that's been widely used to make firefighting foam and is still in circulation despite being phased out of production, was present in a chemical tank at Brunswick Executive Airport at a level of 3.2 billion parts per trillion (ppt).
The Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine CDC) advised the public not to consume freshwater fish from Mere Brook, Merriconeag Stream, Picnic Pond, and the site 8 stream near the airport, which is a former Naval Air Station.
The chemical tank fed firefighting foam concentrate into a fire suppression system that malfunctioned at Hangar 4 at the airport on August 19, sending the toxic foam into a nearby parking lot, down sewage and storm drains, and floating through the air at Brunswick Landing, a residential and business development in the area. About 1,500 gallons of the foam concentrate spilled.
The tests indicated a level of PFOS well over federal and state limits. Maine requires remedial action when PFOS is found at a level of 1,000 ppt in groundwater and 210 ppt for milk—while the federal drinking water standard is less than 4 ppt.
Samples taken at nearby drainage ponds found PFOS concentrations of a little over 1 million parts per million where the foam entered and 701 ppt where it would leave the ponds.
"In terms of risk, the next step is figuring where that water is going, and if it has reached a public or private drinking water source."
Exposure to PFOS, which are among the substances known as "forever chemicals" because they don't break down easily, have been linked to compromised immune and cardiovascular functions, decreased fertility, and several types of cancer—even in trace amounts, let alone the levels found after the spill.
Environmental toxicology expert Kurt Pennell of Brown University told the Portland Press Herald that officials would likely need to treat the water in the highly contaminated drainage ponds and determine whether the ponds now pose a risk to the public.
"In terms of risk, the next step is figuring where that water is going, and if it has reached a public or private drinking water source," Pennell told the Press Herald.
Officials are planning to continue taking samples from the drainage ponds, nearby water bodies, and Harpswell Cove—the part of Casco Bay where the ponds discharge—but despite the Maine CDC's warnings about freshwater fish in the Brunswick Landing area, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said in a statement last Friday that it does not believe nearby water wells will be impacted.
"We understand the concerns expressed by the community given the foam's visibility," the DEP said. "The Maine DEP and the Environmental Protection Agency have been studying the former Brunswick Naval Air Station for 30 years and are familiar with hydrogeology on the site. Although the site has a history of PFAS contamination, DEP continues to believe that the recently released material will not impact any nearby wells. The Brunswick-Topsham Water District has confirmed that the public water supply has not been impacted by this incident."
The Press Herald reported that because the public water district "taps distant aquifers" and the "groundwater under Hangar 4 flows away from nearby residential wells," people who rely on the area's water supply are not at risk.
The water district has increased its PFAS testing since the spill, and initial results are expected in September.
The Press Herald's editorial board on Sunday condemned state officials—both for allowing PFOS-laden foam to be stored at Brunswick Executive Airport at more than 10,000 times the federal limit, and the "conflicting and confusing" response to one of the country's largest firefighting foam spills in 30 years, marked by a "flamboyant" absence of transparency:
The Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, the body created by the state to redevelop what is the former Brunswick Naval Air Station, said Monday that the cause of the spill remained under investigation. At the same time, state and town officials were reporting that the fire suppression system in the hangar in question had malfunctioned.
In a subsequent statement, the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority said it was committed to "addressing the cleanup with the utmost urgency and transparency." It was heavily criticized for not adequately notifying local environmental organizations, businesses, or the broader public.
Brunswick officials referred reporters calling about the spill to the state, while state environmental officials would not release information about past forever chemical discharges at the airport—of which there have been several—and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "referred questions back to the state, even though the property is a contaminated Superfund site that requires long-term EPA monitoring and remediation," reported the Press Herald.
While state officials offered conflicting messages, Jared Hayes, a policy analyst with the public health watchdog Environmental Working Group, said the spill would "likely create a long-lasting contamination problem" in the area.
"Neighbors should be concerned," Hayes told the Press Herald. "So, yeah, this is a problem. It's a pretty big problem."
State toxicologist Andy Smith acknowledged that the harm PFOS can cause when people inhale foam, which was visible blowing around Brunswick Landing after the spill, is not yet known.
Brunswick officials announced they would host a public information session on Thursday, with state lawmakers as well as representatives from the Maine CDC and the DEP present.
The Press Herald editorial board accused state officials of responding to the disaster so far with the words: "Best of luck with that."
"Best of luck to our water supplies, ponds, brooks, rivers, beaches, and coves, now tainted by these chemicals which we know all too well to have potentially disastrous effects on human and animal health—even in trace quantities," wrote the editors.
"Just how much of this substance is there in Maine?" they added. "Who ensures that it is stored safely and securely? Who is liable for any escape of firefighting foam concentrate and PFAS-laden substances like it? What is the funding formula for the multimillion-dollar cleanup of incidents like this? What is the official protocol for testing exposed drinking water wells, relevant stormwater outfalls, and more? Where else has this happened?"
"The questions go on and on," wrote the board, "and we urgently need answers to all of them."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The US Has Taken Too Long to ‘Slam the Door’ on Asbestos
The protracted journey to any kind of asbestos ban is a sobering reminder of how long the United States takes to regulate chemicals on any shelf.
Apr 07, 2024
Like almost all things chemical in the United States, the recent announcement by the Biden administration that it is banning a major form of asbestos is both a triumph and a disgrace.
The triumph is that after decades of Sisyphean advocacy by public health groups and scientists, chrysotile asbestos, a known carcinogen, is finally facing an assorted set of deadlines for import and use in this nation. In a bit of rhetorical ecstasy, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan proclaimed that the federal government “is finally slamming the door on a chemical so dangerous that it has been banned in over 50 countries.”
Even with this move, the United States remains many steps behind other developed nations when it comes to asbestos and chemical safety across the board—thanks to decades of industrial and political suppression of science, the enduring might of industrial lobbyists, and our ever-divided government.
While this administration does deserve credit for acting on asbestos after years of neglect, it is more accurate to describe the White House as politely showing the door to companies who use what is nicknamed “white asbestos.” Two years ago, when the EPA first started proposing rules to get the last uses of asbestos out of current applications, the agency floated a two-year deadline. After heavy lobbying by the chemical industry, which still uses asbestos diaphragms to produce a third of the nation’s chlorine, it now may be up to 12 years before the last chlorine company converts to non-asbestos technology.
The Biden administration is also generally giving a two to five-year phaseout period to companies that use asbestos sheet gaskets to seal pipes. The quickest prohibition is six months against asbestos in automotive brakes and linings, other vehicle friction parts, and oilfield gear. Brenda Mallory, the White House’s chair of its Council on Environmental Quality said, “This action marks a major step to improve chemical safety.”
It should be clear that it is only a step, and therein lies the disgrace. Even with this move, the United States remains many steps behind other developed nations when it comes to asbestos and chemical safety across the board—thanks to decades of industrial and political suppression of science, the enduring might of industrial lobbyists, and our ever-divided government.
Deny, Delay, Disinform
Asbestos makers have known since the 1930s that their products were dangerous and yet they purposely buried that knowledge for decades. They banked on being able to avoid consequences for cancers that took decades to develop in workers who inhaled asbestos fibers. Johns-Manville, the 20th century’s largest asbestos manufacturer, was infamous for a longstanding policy of not telling employees whether asbestosis showed up in their physical examinations.
The entire industry and insurers led by Metropolitan Life copied the same playbook. According to a paper in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, the final draft of a 1957 industry study deleted the internal finding that asbestos miners with asbestosis were more likely to develop lung cancer than a person without asbestosis. That, in turn successfully, dampened the concern of the American Medical Association.
The leading AMA industrial health editor wrote the authors of the industrial study to say he was “particularly pleased” at the findings of no association of lung cancer to asbestosis. The association’s top consultant for occupational disease went so far as to claim in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association that there was “no epidemiological evidence” of increased lung cancer among workers exposed to asbestos.
Even today, asbestos exposure is still tied to 40,000 deaths a year in the United States and 255,000 worldwide.
The legacy of death and disease from disinformation and “disappeared” information haunts us to this day. By the beginning of 2001, according to a 2004 report by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 600,000 people had filed lawsuits over asbestos-related illnesses that had already cost companies $54 billion in legal costs, with an eventual projected total cost of between $200 billion and $265 billion. The NBER said asbestos cases “involve more plaintiffs, more defendants, and higher costs than any other type of personal injury litigation in U.S. history.”
Just two years ago, a Montana jury awarded $36.5 million to a man who worked in the late 1960s at a vermiculite mine and mill in the town of Libby where the mineral was contaminated with asbestos. The operations were owned by W.R. Grace, but the villain, according to the verdict, was the mill’s workers compensation insurer, Maryland Casualty.
The doctors for the insurer did not tell workers that their annual X-rays showed scarring of the lungs. A New York Timesfeature quoted a 1967 memo from a lawyer of the insurer who feared “the extent and severity of the problem.” The mine was closed in 1990, but its asbestos dust has so far been tied to 400 deaths and 2,400 cases of disease. In 2009, for the first time ever, the EPA declared a public health emergency, calling the asbestos contamination in Libby “the worst case of industrial poisoning of a whole community in American history.”
Still a Modern Killer
Even today, asbestos exposure is still tied to 40,000 deaths a year in the United States and 255,000 worldwide. It was not until the 1970s that the United States began banning the crumbly forms of asbestos insulation on boilers and hot water tanks, fireproofing sprays, and wall patching. By then, no one knew how much asbestos the average American was living with. “No one has any kind of numbers,” Sandra Eberle, chemical hazards program manager of the Consumer Product Safety Commission toldTheNew York Times in 1984. “We don’t have statistics on how many homes asbestos is in, and we don’t know whether or not it poses a hazard in those homes.”
Numbers continue to be hard to come by. As many other nations began enacting bans over the course of the rest of the 20th century, US efforts stalled. In 1989, under President George H.W. Bush, the EPA attempted to ban most products containing asbestos by 1997. The chemical lobby responded by suing the EPA.
A federal court overturned much of the ban in 1991 on technical grounds. It faulted the EPA for not adequately evaluating potentially less burdensome alternatives to asbestos and not comparing the toxicity of potential alternatives. Although the ruling was primarily concerned with the EPA’s process, Robert Pigg, a top asbestos trade-group executive, seized on it to claim: “We have known for many years that asbestos can be safely and securely bound in today’s products.”
While the EPA says that chrysotile asbestos is the “only known form” of the mineral still being used and imported to the United States, there are several other forms that the current regulation is silent on, leaving the door open for their use.
The result was three decades of mostly federal silence, with untold exposures to workers at plants still using asbestos. In the 2000s, companies such as Georgia Pacific tried to fend off lawsuits over its use of asbestos in its Ready-Mix joint compound in the 1960s and 70s with highly flawed counterfeit research.
In 2022, as the Biden administration launched its effort to ban chrysotile asbestos, ProPublica/National Public Radiointerviewed more than a dozen laborers who worked at a chlorine plant that operated until 2021 in Niagara Falls, New York. The story said “asbestos dust hung in the air, collected on the beams and light fixtures, and built up until it was inches thick. Workers tramped in and out of it all day, often without protective suits or masks, and carried it around on their coveralls and boots.”
One worker said, “We were constantly swimming in this stuff.”
Chemical Industry Wins Compromise
Yet, none other than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s highest-spending lobbying group, opposed the ban. It claimed, like Pigg in 1991, that the mineral “has been utilized safely in the United States for decades.” The American Chemistry Council unleashed a host of scare tactics. It claimed that an asbestos ban was itself a health hazard that could “cause substantial harm” to the nation’s drinking supply and retard “the production of products necessary to achieve our climate and sustainability goals including batteries, windmills, and solar panels.”
The council began pining for a 15-year phase-out period for asbestos. Two years later, the final rule clearly reflects a compromise, with the Biden administration saying it recognizes that converting chlorine facilities to non-asbestos technology “requires extensive construction, additional permits, specialized expertise, and parts for which there are limited suppliers.”
Even if that compromise holds up against lawsuits, the “final” rule is likely far from a final say on asbestos. While the EPA says that chrysotile asbestos is the “only known form” of the mineral still being used and imported to the United States, there are several other forms that the current regulation is silent on, leaving the door open for their use.
The journey has already spanned several generations to get to where we are on asbestos. We should not have to wait so long to deal with the rest of the chemical world.
There is also the unresolved issue of “legacy” asbestos installed in walls, ceilings, and flooring and basements over most of the 20th century. In older school buildings, a 2018 EPA Inspector General report said, “substantial amounts” of asbestos were sprayed for insulation and as fire retardants in school buildings, particularly from 1946 through 1972. A 2017 study by the Centers for Disease Control found that deaths from mesothelioma remained “substantial” and were increasing, likely due to workers maintaining or remediating older buildings with asbestos.
The EPA said it will release an evaluation of other types of asbestos and legacy uses by December. But the piecemeal approach is why advocates such as Linda Reinstein, co-founder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, have long pushed for more sweeping federal legislation banning all asbestos fibers in products and requiring chlorine companies to convert to non-asbestos technology in two years, as the EPA had originally planned. Such legislation would make asbestos regulation less vulnerable to the highly variable whims of whoever is in the White House. The legislation is named for Reinstein’s late husband Alan, who died from mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer tied to asbestos exposure.
While Reinstein said in an interview that she was “delighted” that the EPA has issued its current rule, she remained highly concerned that there remain loopholes the asbestos-using industry can exploit, especially since she feels that little has changed in its mentality of putting “profits over people.” She emphasized, “This does not ban what you can find on a store shelf.”
A Painfully Long Journey
The protracted journey to any kind of asbestos ban is a sobering reminder of how long the United States takes to regulate chemicals on any shelf, such as menthol in tobacco products, PFAS “forever chemicals” in our water, pesticides in agricultural fields, and even cosmetics in the bathroom cabinet. National Public Radio’s “Living on Earth” recently featured a study from China finding that women undergoing in vitro fertilization who used skin care products were more likely to miscarry than women who did not use skin care products.
Cosmetics have increasingly been tied to endocrine disruption and cancers. The “Living on Earth” feature served as a reminder that here at home, the United States has banned only 11 chemicals in cosmetics, while the European Union has banned more than 1,300. Leonardo Trasande, director of New York University’s center of environmental hazards, told the program, “The more you unravel the onion, the more you realize–whoa, this is a bigger and more complicated story than you might be able to deal with fully in a lifetime.”
The journey has already spanned several generations to get to where we are on asbestos. We should not have to wait so long to deal with the rest of the chemical world. None other than Reinstein said it best: “What we do matters. What we don’t do matters even more.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Bombshell' Memo Shows Open Chemical Burn in East Palestine Violated EPA Rules
"It's inconceivable that there wouldn't have been someone from the enforcement office, or general counsel, saying, 'Oh, Norfolk Southern wants to do an uncontrolled burn—that's illegal, you cannot do that," said a former EPA official.
Mar 07, 2024
A day after the head of the National Transportation Safety Board told Congress that the deliberate burning of toxic chemicals in five crashed train cars in East Palestine, Ohio last year was unnecessary, a former Environmental Protection Agency official said the so-called "controlled burn" also likely went against EPA regulations.
Kevin Garrahan, who worked for the agency for 40 years and focused on environmental risk assessment and hazardous waste cleanup, toldHuffPost that soon after a Norfolk Southern train derailed in the town of 4,700 people, he alerted a former EPA colleague to a 2022 memo on the open burning and open detonation of waste explosives.
The memo described when local EPA officials can issue permits for the pre-planned combustion of waste explosives, and said the open burning of hazardous waste should be a last resort.
Because the EPA determined in 1987 that "open burning of nonexplosive waste could not be conducted in a manner that was protective of human health and the environment," the memo says, the method "is generally the least environmentally preferred treatment technology and, consistent with existing requirements, should only be available where there are no safe modes of treatment."
Considering laws banning the open burning of chemicals and the EPA's knowledge of the danger that was spelled out in the memo, the decision to allow emergency crews to blast holes in five train cars, drain the toxic vinyl chloride they were carrying into pits, and set the chemicals on fire seemed "incredibly stupid and reckless," Garrahan wrote to his colleague.
"Am I missing something?" he asked.
"The big question is if there is another train derailment involving toxic chemicals—and there will be—would EPA sit idly by and allow a state and a polluter to decide to do an open burn again?"
Garrahan's former colleague agreed that there were concerns about "OB/OD," or open burning and open detonation, but did not reply to Garrahan's later emails about the safety of the operation.
In a case of a private company directing a public official regarding their response to a potential public safety threat, East Palestine fire chief Keith Drabick told the NTSB that Norfolk Southern and its contractors pushed him to approve the deliberate burning of the vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen that has been linked to liver, brain, lung, and blood cancers as well as neurological damage. Drabick said railroad officials gave him just 13 minutes to make the decision.
Garrahan told HuffPost that the EPA, which deployed state and federal officials to the crash site, should have stepped in and cited the 2022 memo as proof that the so-called "controlled burn" that Norfolk Southern was suggesting actually fit the definition of open detonation.
"It's inconceivable that there wouldn't have been someone from the enforcement office, or general counsel, saying, 'Oh, Norfolk Southern wants to do an uncontrolled burn—that's illegal, you cannot do that," Garrahan said, calling the memo a "bombshell."
Instead, the EPA to this day has referred to the operation, which sent huge plumes of black smoke into the surrounding area and forced an evacuation of East Palestine, as a "controlled burn," suggesting any damage would have been contained.
The incineration of the vinyl chloride raised concerns about the release of dioxins, another class of toxic compounds that are linked to reproductive and developmental harms and are also carcinogenic. HuffPost reported that an EPA dioxin expert was not consulted about the Norfolk Southern derailment and its aftermath until a month after the accident.
Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator, told the outlet that the EPA went against their previous protocols, which were in place in 2012 when a train carrying vinyl chloride derailed in Paulsboro, New Jersey.
Officials in that case sealed off the affected cars and vacuumed the hazardous materials before taking it to a facility for safe disposal.
As Jennifer Homendy, chair of the NTSB, testified at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Drabick and other officials tasked with approving the deliberate burn were not given all the relevant information they needed from Norfolk Southern about a potential spontaneous explosion.
The maker of the vinyl chloride in the cars, Oxy Vinyls, told the rail company that there was no hazardous chemical reaction happening in the crashed train.
"They believed polymerization was not occurring, and there was no justification to do a vent and burn," Homendy said. "There was another option: let it cool down."
Oxy Vinyls' input was not passed along to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Drabick, or other local authorities who proceeded with the incineration that allowed Norfolk Southern to reopen the railroad the following day.
"Meanwhile," said Plain Dealer reporter Jake Zuckerman, "some of the locals are still stuck in hotels, that Norfolk Southern is no longer paying for. And they say they're suffering symptoms of chemical exposure, which the EPA and Norfolk Southern deny."
The EPA's decision-making in the case of East Palestine raises questions about the future safety of other American communities if a similar accident happens.
"EPA sat idly by when a major bad decision was made," Enck told HuffPost. "The big question is if there is another train derailment involving toxic chemicals—and there will be—would EPA sit idly by and allow a state and a polluter to decide to do an open burn again?"
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular