WASHINGTON TIMES 29-6-98
FROM WIRE DISPATCHES AND STAFF REPORTS
TORONTO -- Taking aim at the world's most toxic chemical
pollutants, delegates from more than 100 nations begin negotiations
today on the first global treaty banning or reducing the use of the
so-called "dirty dozen."
They include pesticides such as DDT, toxaphene and chlordane,
as well as industrial products such as PCBs.
At talks in Montreal, sponsored by the U.N. Environmental
Program, delegates will start crafting a legally binding treaty to
be in place by 2001 that would curb emissions of 12 of the most
dangerous man-made substances. (ENDS)
OTTAWA CITIZEN 30-6-98
By SARAH BINDER
MONTREAL (CP) - The ice storm that hit Eastern Canada last
winter, knocking down transformers and power lines, had a
little-known side effect: it spilled PCBs into the environment.
Canada has banned production of the toxic chemicals but they
remain in wide use as insulating agents.
What to do about the PCBs still in use is one of the issues
facing delegates from about 100 countries meeting in Montreal this
week to discuss persistent organic pollutants.
Known by their acronym POPs, the chemicals are linked to
cancer, birth defects and other genetic and developmental
abnormalities in people and animals. The chemicals include
pesticides such as DDT as well as dioxins and furans.
The Montreal meeting, called by the United Nations Environment
Program, is the first round of negotiations towards a global treaty
on eliminating POPs. The UN body is hoping the pact will be in
place by 2001.
UN officials say the damage done by the pollutants to humans
has been documented in hundreds of cases.
"There is no question that there is a very major repercussion
to the environment but also to human health," Klaus Topfer,
executive director of UNEP, said Monday.
"The outstanding goal must be to eliminate not to ask for
better risk management."
Despite the overwhelming evidence, public-health and
environment activists are worried that governments may come up with
weak measures under pressure from industry and from developing
countries.
"There is no safe level for exposure to POPs," said Theo
Colborn, of the World Wildlife Fund.
The chemicals travel by wind, water and accumulate in plants,
animals and then humans.
The fauna and flora of the Canadian Arctic are heavily
polluted and represent a real danger to the Inuit who dine on
traditional food.
The region is a warning to the world, said Sheila
Watt-Cloutier, of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.
The Arctic region that seems "so pure and pristine" is
"already laced with deadly and invisible pollutants," she said.
Canada has taken a leading role in reducing the amount of
toxins spewed into the air, Environment Minister Christine Stewart
said as she opened the session.
But the federal government came under criticism from
Greenpeace for its lack of action on Noranda's proposed Magnola
plant, the world's second biggest magnesium producer. Greenpeace
says the plant in Asbestos, Que., could churn out an unacceptable
level of POPs.
It is not known how much PCBs the ice storm released into the
air, but Jack Weinberg of Greenpeace said it was an example of the
need to identify where the pollutants are stored and how to destroy
them.
Dr. Peter Orris, of the World Federation of Public Health,
said an 11-year study of Michigan children born to mothers who ate
PCB-contaminated fish during their pregnancy showed attention and
memory problems.
As well, the study suggests the children suffered a signifcant
drop in IQ points.
Topfer said there will be five more negotiating sessions
within the next two years and a diplomatic signing conference
scheduled for 2000. Then every signing country must ratify the
treaty.
Topfer said he is optimistic the treaty will become legally
binding by 2001. (ENDS)
NY TIMES 30-6-98
By The Associated Press
MONTREAL (AP) -- Delegates from 100 countries began
negotiations Monday aimed at producing the first global treaty
eliminating the use of certain long-lasting toxic chemicals.
The five-day meeting, sponsored by the U.N. Environment Program,
is the first of five scheduled negotiating sessions aimed at
drafting a treaty to eliminate 12 so-called persistent organic
pollutants, or POPs.
The targeted chemicals, known as the ``dirty dozen,'' include
pesticides such as DDT and industrial chemicals such as dioxin and
PCBs. The chemicals have been linked to cancer, birth defects and
other genetic and developmental abnormalities in people and
animals.
``There is no question that there is a very major repercussion
to the environment but also to human health,'' said Klaus Topfer,
executive director of the U.N. Environment Program. ``The
outstanding goal must be to eliminate, not to ask for better risk
management.''
Public health and environment activists attending the talks have
expressed concern that governments may come up with weak measures
under pressure from industry lobbyists and from developing
countries.
``There is no safe level for exposure to POPs,'' said Theo
Colborn of the World Wildlife Fund.
Topfer said there will be five more negotiating sessions within
the next two years and a diplomatic signing conference scheduled
for 2000. Then every signing country must ratify the treaty.
Topfer said he is optimistic the treaty will become legally
binding by 2001. (ENDS)
TORONTO STAR 30-6-98
Environmentalists doubt that promise will stick
By Brian McAndrew
MONTREAL - Jo Dufay worries about the health of the 137
million babies who will be born in the world this year.
Dufay helped ``carry'' that concern here yesterday to the
delegates from 92 countries who started negotiations on an
international treaty to outlaw the 12 worst toxic chemicals on the
planet.
She was one of 50 women who stood in a silent vigil - each
holding a replica of a pregnant belly - outside the downtown
building where the United Nations conference is going on this week.
The ``dirty dozen'' chemicals that can hurt children the most
include pesticides like DDT and deadly dioxins passed along to them
inside the womb and in mothers' breast milk.
"This action is about hope,'' said Dufay, following the
demonstration staged by the Greenpeace environmental group.
``If women can't breastfeed their children, what kind of world
do we live in?'' asked Dufay, a mother of two and former Toronto
resident now living in Ottawa.
``The answer doesn't lie in telling women to stop
breastfeeding. The answer is stopping the production of toxic
chemicals,'' she said.
That's something John Buccini hopes will happen if an
agreement can be reached through five negotiating sessions ending
in 2000.
Buccini, director of Environment Canada's commercial chemicals
evaluation branch, was selected by the delegates to chair the
intergovernmental negotiating committee.
``The time is right. We have a forum here where the parties
can work in a very cohesive manner,'' Buccini said. He added that
an ``unprecedented'' meeting of government, environmental and
chemical industry interests in 1996 created the breakthrough that
inspired these treaty negotiations.
Some countries are already taking action.
``We're seeing changes being made before negotiations begin,''
he said, noting South Africa's pledge to end the use of DDT -
sprayed to kill malaria-carrying insects in many developing
countries - within three years.
Environment Minister Christine Stewart told the conference
Canada promises to eliminate the 12 toxic chemicals.
``They are our most dangerous toxic substances. They are
deadly to our health and our environment and we want them
eliminated,'' she said.
None of the pesticides on the list are used or manufactured in
Canada. Production of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) was banned
in the 1970s but they are still used in electrical equipment.
Dioxin and furans are unwanted creations of combustion in things
like automobile exhaust and waste incineration.
Stewart's vow was met with disbelief by Canadian
environmentalists, who said the shifting of responsibility for
control of toxic chemicals from the federal to provincial
governments would prevent her from living up to the promise.
``That's the height of hypocrisy,'' said Paul Muldoon,
executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association.
``They gave away control over toxic chemicals and now you have
provinces that have slashed their environmental budgets who have
neither the will nor the ability to act on getting rid of these
substances.''
Stewart said in an interview her department is negotiating
with the provinces over controlling the toxic chemicals.
Even if agreement can be reached on a legally binding treaty,
it may still take a long time to rid the world of the chemicals. An
agreement would allow for the phase-out of chemicals until
acceptable alternatives are found.
``I would not want to speculate how long it will take for us
to have a DDT-free world,'' Buccini said.
``Dioxin may be a beast we have to live with for some time but
hopefully it will be reduced.''
All 12 chemicals can cause or are suspected of causing cancer.
Newer research has shown children exposed to even low-level
concentrations of the chemicals in the womb or through breast milk
can suffer memory and attention problems.
Those children can also suffer from diminished intelligence
levels and may be at a learning stage two years behind others, said
Dr. Peter Orris, director of the World Federation of Public Health
Association's POPs project.
The chemicals picked up the label POPs - persistent organic
pollutants - because they last a long time before breaking down.
The chemicals do not dissolve in water but are stored in the
fatty tissues of animals and fish. They get into humans through the
food chain. (ENDS)
NY TIMES
By MICHAEL FUMENTO
ARLINGTON, Va. -- It's such an old joke that it's lost its
humor, but it makes a point. A drunk is looking for his wallet at
night at the base of a street lamp. Asked if he's sure that's where
he dropped it, he says, "No, but the light is better here."
Good thing you didn't laugh, because the story also
illustrates a serious problem. The Environmental Protection Agency
established a panel last year to assess the most important
children's health issues today. But the panel has thus far ignored
many of the largest problems, focusing instead on familiar areas
that are already under the spotlight.
The shortest list of our children's problems should include
obesity, poor nutrition and asthma. Yet the E.P.A.'s Children's
Health Protection Advisory Committee included only asthma on its
top-five list. Instead, the panel has adopted essentially the
agenda that alarmist environmental groups wanted it to take,
emphasizing the dangers of pesticides as the greater enemy.
That might be what's to be expected from an agency with the
word "environmental" in its name, but the problems facing American
children are not so easily pigeonholed. What seem like solutions
from a narrow environmental viewpoint could be distractions from
other, more important issues -- and in fact could hurt children's
health.
Consider the problem the E.P.A. seemed to have gotten right
-- asthma.
Asthma is growing at a terrible rate: the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention estimates that 15 million Americans now
suffer from it, with the number of doctor's office visits resulting
from the disease doubling between 1975 and 1995. Blacks are hit
hardest of all. Their hospitalization rate for asthma was more than
three times that of whites, their death rate from the disease more
than seven times higher.
The E.P.A. blames air pollution for the increase in incidence
of asthma, because bad air quality -- from pollution or cigarette
smoke, for example -- can aggravate the symptoms of asthmatics. Yet
its own data show that air pollution levels have steadily declined
as the disease has skyrocketed. A study published recently in The
Lancet, a British medical journal, looked at the hospital
admissions records for 460,000 children in 56 countries and found
that asthma rates were highest in countries with the least air
pollution.
Blaming air pollution "is political, not medical," says Dr.
David Rosenstreich, the primary author of a study on the causes of
asthma that was published last year in The New England Journal of
Medicine. His team found that the disease's primary cause in
American inner cities -- where asthma rates are the highest -- is
actually the inhalation of dried cockroach excrement. Indeed, Dr.
Margaret Heagarty, a Harlem pediatrician who was a dissenting voice
on the E.P.A. panel, said we should forget about air pollution and
declare war on roaches instead.
Yet the E.P.A. is considering limiting or banning many
organophosphates and carbamates, two types of pesticides that are
potent cockroach killers. Even though 30 years' use has shown these
chemicals to pose very little danger to humans, the E.P.A.
committee on children has voiced concern about the use of both
pesticides -- a campaign that can only harm children and help
roaches.
Making these insecticides the target will harm children's
health in another way. Because these pesticides are vital in
controlling crop-eating insects, restrictions on their use would
mean that fruit and vegetable prices would probably rise.
More than 200 studies associate low consumption of fruits
and vegetables with higher risk of cancer. A study published in
1995 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
reported that the quarter of the population with the lowest dietary
intake of fruits and vegetables -- disproportionately inner-city
minorities -- suffers roughly twice the cancer rate of the quarter
of the population that eats the most produce.
As Bruce Ames, a biochemist and director of environmental
health science at the University of California at Berkeley, told
me, "It just doesn't make any sense to spend $146 billion on E.P.A.
regulations, a few billion on cancer treatment research, and
practically nothing to get people to eat good diets."
Further, our youngsters' atrocious eating habits have led to
an explosion in obesity, making American children among the fattest
on earth. From 1963 to 1970, Government data show only 5 percent of
children ages 6 to 11 were obese. Since then, that percentage has
almost tripled. For children ages 12 to 17, it has more than
doubled.
Again, minority groups suffer the most. Almost 19 percent of
Mexican-American boys ages 6 to 11 are obese, as are 18 percent of
non-Hispanic black girls in the same age group.
Moreover, a recent Harvard study reported that one apparent
cause of asthma is, yes, obesity. In the past, doctors presumed
that people who have asthma become obese because the disease makes
it difficult to exercise. But this study found that the heavier
adults are, the more likely they are to develop asthma. The
researchers who conducted the study will look at children next.
As the facts pile up, we can hope that the E.P.A. will refocus
its energies on the biggest problems, rather than favoring those
causes pushed by the environmental lobby.
* Michael Fumento, a science adviser to the Atlantic Foundation,
a legal group, is the author of "Science Under Siege: Balancing
Technology and the Environment."
WASHINGTON, DC, June 30, 1998 (ENS) - To reduce sources of
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that impact the Arctic region, the
eight Arctic countries will cooperate to expedite the phase out of
the use of PCBs by the Russian Federation. PCBs are carcinogens and
are highly mobile substances that can move great distances from
their point of origin.
Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian
Federation, Sweden and the United States are working together to
accomplish the phase out of PCBs, and to develop environmentally
sound disposal practices.
Scientists have tracked the spread of PCBs through the food
chain in the Arctic. They tend to build up in the bodies of marine
mammals used by aboriginal peoples as major sources of food. PCBs
are a known contaminant in the breast milk of Inuit women.
A study published September 12, 1996, in the New England
Journal of Medicine confirms that children exposed to low levels of
PCBs in the womb grow up with low IQs, poor reading comprehension,
difficulty paying attention, and memory problems.
The Russian Federation PCB phase out project will be
undertaken in stages:
-- information gathering on the production, use and disposal
of PCBs in the Russian Federation
-- a feasibility study on alternatives to PCB use and disposal
practices
-- demonstration projects to test alternatives
The first phase of the project will be conducted under the
auspices of the international Arctic Monitoring and Assessment
Program, based in Oslo, Norway.
This project also supports work under the Convention on Long
Range Transboundary Air Pollution Protocol on Persistent Organic
Pollutants, which was signed at Aarhus, Denmark on June 24. The
protocol will ban the production and phaseout of certain uses of
PCBs in signatory countries. The production of PCBs has been banned
in the United States since 1976.
Four new Regional Environmental Centers (RECs) are being
established in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. Plans are to
also establish one in Central Asia.
The European Commission will fund the centers with ECU5.6
million (US$6.16 million). The United States will provide $1
million in funding.
The newly-independent former Soviet Union countries (NIS)
decided at Sofia, Bulgaria in 1995 to develop a similar program
tailored to their specific conditions.
Conceived as service providers for non-governmental
organizations and the private sector as well as government
agencies, the four new Regional Environmental Centers are expected
to be operational within a few months.
Plans are to establish an international coordinating committee
for the new RECs and the countries and organizations that support
their activities. The committee will help attract technical,
scientific and added financial support.
The first Regional Environmental Center was established in
Budapest, Hungary in 1990 to develop civic environmental
institutions.
The Budapest REC, established with joint funding from Hungary,
the United States and the European Commission, has grown from five
employees to 100 with its funding now totaling 20 million ECU.
Donors include Japan, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Croatia,
Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway,
Slovakia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, plus
inter-governmental and private institutions. Recognizing its unique
position, the Hungarian government has granted the Budapest REC
international status. (ENDS)
By Alexandru R. Savulescu
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, June 30, 1998 (ENS) - Even low doses of
certain hazardous chemicals can produce long-term health effects,
according to the second annual joint message of the European
Environmental Agency (EEA) and the United Nations Environmental
Programme (UNEP).
"Chemicals in the European Environment: Low Doses, High
Stakes?" launched at the Fourth Ministerial Conference: Europe’s
Environment, held in Aarhus, Denmark, June 23 to 25, presents the
state of information and action on manufactured chemicals in
Europe.
Chemicals are widespread in the air, soil, water and sediments
of Europe’s environment, following the marketing of up to 100,000
chemicals in the EU, the report says.
"Since chemicals circulate globally - both through trade and
through air and water - no country or region alone can protect its
citizens and environment from risk," says Domingo Jimenez-Beltran,
EEA’s executive director.
There is a lack of proper monitoring and information on these
chemicals. Still, according to the report, some chemical emissions
and concentrations are declining in Europe.
"While international efforts are encouraging," says Klaus
Toepfer, UNEP’s executive director, "a great deal needs to be done
in Europe, where the exposures and impacts of thousands of
chemicals on people and ecosystems are not well-known." According
to the report, for 75 percent of the 2,000 to 3,000 large volume
chemicals on the market, "there is insufficient toxicity data
available."
Current toxicity risk assessments are based on single
substances, while people and ecosystems are generally exposed to
mixtures of chemicals.
According to the report, there is little direct scientific
evidence of widespread ill health or eco-system damage. But, no
evidence does not necessarily mean no effects.
The evidence for some chemical hazards in some people is
increasing, particularly for "neurotoxins, endocrine disruptors
that may damage developmental and reproductive health, cancers and
allergies," the report says. The evidence on "disturbances to
wildlife and ecosystems" from low level chemical exposure is also
increasing.
Many laws exist to protect workers, consumers and the
environment, but their "implementation and effectiveness can be
poor," the report states.
Toepfer says, "the completion of the agreements on Prior
Informed Consent and the start of the negotiations on a Convention
on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) represents main steps" to
"reduce unwanted exposure to hazardous chemicals that persist and
accumulate in the environment."
This week, Canada is hosting the opening session of a new
round of negotiations to develop a global agreement to control
emissions of POPs. The negotiations, under the United Nations
Environment Program, are taking place in Montreal from June 29 -
July 3, and will attract 300 delegates from over 100 countries.
(ENDS)