Thirsty Planet
The world is experiencing a major water crisis that will continue to worsen unless current conditions change, says the World Bank. An August World Bank report stated that 30 countries containing 40% of the world's population are already experiencing water shortages that threaten their agriculture, industry, and health.
According to the report, population growth and contamination of water are the major causes of these water shortages. The report was prepared for the World Bank's fifth annual water symposium, which was held August 13-18 in Stockholm. In presenting the report at the conference, Ismail Serageldin, vice president of the World Bank, said, "The water problem in most countries stems not from a shortage of water, but rather mainly from inefficient and unsustainable use of water resources, a situation that cannot continue."
Unquenchable thirst? Global water demand doubles every 21 years, but projected supplies will not meet the demand.
The report states that most of the countries experiencing water shortages are in areas where populations are growing quickly, such as the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Other areas facing water shortages include northern China, western and southern India, western South America, Pakistan, and Mexico. Pollution is also a large problem affecting water in Eastern Europe.
World population is predicted to grow from the current 5.6 billion people to 8 billion people in 2025, which will result in higher agricultural, domestic, and industrial demand for water. Historically, global demand for water has increased at a rate of about 2.3% a year, doubling every 21 years, according to the report. But current and projected water supplies will not meet this demand.
The report points out that the supply of potable water throughout the world is being contaminated through pollution sources such as domestic wastes, industry, agricultural chemicals, and mismanaged land use. According to the report, contaminated water now causes 80% of the diseases in developing countries and kills 10 million people annually. "This decline in water quality can be seen in many developing countries," Serageldin said in a press release. "Most rivers in and around cities and towns in these countries are little more than open, stinking sewers that not only degrade the aesthetic life of the city but also constitute a reservoir for cholera and other water-related diseases."
About 95% of the world's sewage and a growing amount of industrial waste are now being dumped directly into rivers and streams. Even middle-income countries rarely treat sewage. For example, Buenos Aires treats only 2% of its sewage, which is typical for Latin America, states the report.
To thwart the impending water crisis, the World Bank says that $600 billion should be invested in global water resources over the next 10 years. Most of the $600 billion should be raised by the countries that are in danger, says the report, but the bank estimates that $60 billion must come from other countries. The bank plans to lend $30-40 billion of the $60 billion.
To encourage conservation of water resources, the report emphasizes that water must be viewed as an economic good and priced appropriately. It recommends that water resources must be managed carefully, through balancing benefits and costs, and by placing more emphasis on consumer participation, economic incentives, and private sector funding.
"The trend toward privatization will pick up, especially when facilities hit rock bottom," Serageldin said. "Offering private enterprise the incentives to work efficiently now appears to be the way to provide the most services at the lowest price for the poor. The coming water crisis can be averted by this joint effort of the private sector, individuals, national and local governments, and international agencies."
The World Bank, which is the largest international financier of water projects, has a keen interest in water management issues, according to Sarwat Hussein of its media relations department. "We view water as a precious resource and are interested in seeing that it's priced properly," he said. Since 1950, the World Bank has lent more than $36 billion for investments in irrigation, water supply, sanitation, flood control, and hydropower.
Breathing Trees
By absorbing carbon dioxide to make oxygen, plants provide the very air we breathe. Now, researchers are discovering another important benefit of carbon dioxide-loving plants: the potential to help slow global warming.
In a study published in the August 25 issue of Science, Pieter Tans, a geochemist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and colleagues report that in 1992-1993, plants absorbed up to half the Northern Hemisphere's carbon dioxide emissions. "That's much more than any terrestrial plant ecologist would have considered likely,'' Tans said. Conserving tree and plant populations, he added, might raise their carbon dioxide uptake even higher.
Understanding how carbon cycles through plants is vital to decreasing global warming. By burning fuel and clearing forests, human activity generates 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. About half of it remains there. The rest is believed to be absorbed by oceans and plants, though no one knows exactly how the gas is distributed.
In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide molecules allow sunlight to reach the earth's surface. At night, reradiated energy from earth surfaces is absorbed, trapping heat temporarily like glass in a greenhouse. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may cause the world's average surface temperature to rise by up to 6.3°F over the next century. Some subtropical areas will become tropical, disrupting ecosystems and allowing animal and microbe species that thrive in a hot climate to migrate into more northern and southern latitudes. Global warming may also increase rainfall and cause the sea level to rise.
The best way to slow global warming, scientists say, is to cut back on burning fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas. Some have suggested disposing of excess carbon dioxide by pumping it into the ocean, which can absorb vast amounts of the gas. But pumping would be expensive, and concentrated streams of carbon dioxide-rich water would kill many ocean organisms.
The Tans study is one of the first to suggest that saving trees might help keep the earth cool. In the study, glass flasks were used to collect 8,000 air samples at 43 sites throughout the Northern Hemisphere, on the oceans, and in Australia. Researchers checked the air samples for an isotopic "fingerprint" unique to plants. When accumulating carbon dioxide, oceans absorb the carbon-12 and carbon-13 isotopes in roughly equal proportion. Plants, however, absorb far more carbon-12, allowing leftover carbon-13 to build up in the air.
"When we looked at our air samples,'' Tans explains, "the carbon was enriched with C13.'' Measuring isotope concentrations and the carbon-12/carbon-13 ratio, the researchers found plants had accumulated up to half the fossil fuel emissions for 1992 and 1993.
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Air care. Researchers found that plants had accumulated up to half the fossil fuel emissions of carbon dioxide for 1992 and 1993.
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Paul Quay, a professor of oceanography at the University of Washington, said that although the study was well designed, its findings are preliminary. "One thing you have to be aware of is that the study only looks at two years of data,'' Quay said. "As the records become longer, we'll see if those two years are anomalous or representative.''
The study offers two potential reasons for its unusually high rate of plant carbon dioxide uptake: regrowth of American forest once used for farms, and "fertilization'' of forests worldwide by increased environmental nitrogen and carbon dioxide, which may enhance plant growth.
Many carbon dioxide cycle questions still lack answers, such as where, and for how long, do plants store atmospheric carbon. Tree trunks are one storage spot. But researchers worry that some carbon dioxide simply enters leaves of trees and decays back into the atmosphere within a year. "It's very important to pin down how the carbon cycle is working in order to make policy decisions on things like conservation,'' noted Mike MacCracken, director of the Office of the U.S. Global Change Program.
Meanwhile, James White, a geology professor at the University of Colorado and co-author of the Tans study, cautioned that simply planting trees won't solve the global warming problem. "Neither will dumping all the carbon dioxide in the ocean,'' White said. "We've got to fix the energy problem. Or else this will be something serious for our great, great grandchildren to deal with.''
Nowhere to Hide
It has been 11 years since the release of methyl isocyanate in Bhopal, India caused about 2,000 deaths and greatly heightened public awareness of the potential dangers of chemical accidents worldwide. In the aftermath of Bhopal, a variety of steps were taken in the United States to minimize the possibility that such a disastrous event would occur here, including national and local legislation and voluntary action by industrial groups.
In August of this year, the National Environmental Law Center and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group published a report, Nowhere to Hide, suggesting that we have not done enough. The authors of the report conclude that "at least one out of every six Americans lives within a vulnerable zone--the area in which there could be serious injury or death in the event of a chemical accident."
As a result of these dangers, the authors recommend that companies should be required to prepare a technology options analysis of alternatives that would eliminate or substantially reduce accident hazards, that the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, mandated by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments to investigate major accidents and make recommendations for improving safety, be promptly reinstated, and that industry and government agencies should prepare and publicly communicate their worst-case accident estimates.
The authors emphasize that the report is only a screening tool for comparing disaster potential in different zip codes around the United States. The comparison is based on a calculation of the maximum vulnerable radius around each facility containing chemicals, assuming failure of all safety and mitigation systems, and total release of facility chemicals classified as Extremely Hazardous Substances by the EPA under the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act of 1986. These areas are then summed for all facilities and chemicals in each zip code, and the sum is used as the measure of disaster potential for that zip code. Using this method, a zip code in Louisiana (70734), where a number of companies including BASF Corporation and Borden Chemicals and Plastics are located, ranked highest in danger potential.
Research on such methods that are used to determine population exposures from pollution sources indicates that study results can vary greatly depending on the selection of the geographical unit (e.g., zip code, county), the assumptions used in applying indirect measures of exposure (e.g., quantity released, number of simultaneous releases, and the effectiveness of barriers in mitigating releases), and other factors.
Industry and government scientists who have examined the report question whether the worst-case scenario used in the report is appropriate. They suggest that other assumptions would provide a more realistic worst-case scenario and also lead to more credible comparisons among facilities and locations.
The Chemical Manufacturers Association stated that the report "ignores the extensive risk management planning done by communities, state, and federal governments and companies in the past five years." The statement continues, the "CMA is committed to working with the public on accident prevention programs." The statement goes on to say that "the National Safety Council ranks chemical manufacturing as one of the country's safest industries."
Craig Matthiessen, of the U.S. EPA Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Office, responds that while more is being done to prevent chemical accidents than the report indicates, additional efforts are needed. These efforts, he says, should recognize that no one approach is best for all situations and that risk communication and management should focus on the things that are most likely to go wrong and how to deal with them.
One of the report's authors, Hillel Gray of the National Environmental Law Institute, said that Nowhere to Hide focuses attention on a significant problem and is the first attempt to assess the extent of the problem by evaluating relative disaster potential nationwide. He also suggests that if industry would provide more public information, the accuracy of the hazards could be better assessed and prevention of hazards from chemical accidents could be enhanced.
The authors of Nowhere to Hide consider the report a first step in analyzing the relative hazards of chemical accidents across the United States, although it does not provide quantitative estimates of individual risks. The report calls for greater sharing of information among government, industry, and the public so that a more accurate evaluation of hazards to individuals and prevention actions can be achieved, especially at the local level.
New Clinic for Chemically Related Illnesses
The Center of Excellence for Chemically Related Illness opened last August at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, thanks to a cooperative effort between the University of Washington's Occupational and Environmental Medicine Clinic and the state's Department of Labor and Industries and Department of Health. Perhaps the first of its kind in the country, the center represents the culmination of state legislation passed in 1994 and places under one roof research efforts, educational programs, and clinical care for people exposed to chemicals.
Through a competitive process, the two state departments awarded the contract to open the center to Harborview and designated it as a center of excellence--in part because the center already operates the well-respected Occupational and Environmental Medicine Clinic. "A center of excellence is a place where a patient can go to get comprehensive treatment," says Lindsay Shuster, medical program specialist with the Department of Labor and Industries. "It's a place where patients and physicians can go early in the game. You're not sending people all over the country." According to Shuster, Harborview is ideal for such a clinic. Not only does it operate in an academic setting, it is staffed by a group of medical professionals whose combined expertise spans a spectrum of disciplines--from medical toxicology to occupational, environmental, and emergency medicine--necessary to evaluate, treat, and research chemical illnesses. However, one medical professional oversees each patient's treatment, following the case from beginning to end. In addition to standard clinic facilities, the center also has an exposure chamber for evaluating controlled exposures to known concentrations of chemicals.
Two satellite clinics, one in Spokane and one in Toppenish, will bring the center's expertise and assistance to central and eastern Washington as well. "What's really exciting," says Shuster, "is that people in rural settings can have access." The Toppenish satellite serves farm workers in a region where pesticides are routinely used. A mobile laboratory will travel the state, providing on-site environmental evaluations.
Though any individual can seek treatment at the center (through private insurance carriers), it primarily serves patients exposed to chemicals in the workplace and who have filed claims with the state. "Individual workers were feeling that their claims about exposure to work-related chemicals were not being handled in a uniform manner," says Jeffrey Burgess. Burgess, a physician who is board-certified in emergency medicine and medical toxicology, is director of the center and of the university's Occupational and Environmental Medicine program. From 1994 to mid-1995, the state processed about 3,600 claims for illnesses related to chemical exposure.
According to Burgess, a number of occupations, including manufacturing jobs that use solvents and corrosives, can expose workers to harmful levels of chemicals. "We'll be collecting data to allow us to understand better the situation in which chemical exposures occur," he says. These data provide information about a number of parameters, including demographic characteristics, pre- and post-exposure health assessments, the source and extent of exposure, and the diagnosis for chemical illness.
In addition to managing individual cases, Burgess and his colleagues will be closely watching the status of chemical exposures in general. "We'll be looking at a critical mass of patients," he says. Within a year, he hopes, the staff will be well on its way to developing diagnostic tests for evaluating specific chemical illnesses. Though many of the center's patients suffer from easily defined ailments such as occupational asthma, peripheral neuropathy, and dermatitis, some suffer from a less specific amalgam of symptoms, often classified as multiple chemical sensitivity.
Besides fulfilling clinical and research goals, the center will likely have a far-reaching impact on public policy in the state, Burgess says. Burgess and Shuster point out that the center's practical influence already extends beyond medicine by recommending protective equipment and work-site modifications to prevent returning workers from becoming ill again.
Battling EMF Reports
The debate on the health effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) rages as contradictory reports call for different standards. A draft report of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) calls for exposure limits to minimize potential health hazards associated with EMFs, but it's unclear whether the prematurely publicized recommendation will survive peer review. Meanwhile, on October 9 in Sweden, government researchers offered a somewhat different assessment of the EMF problem, saying health risks don't warrant exposure limits.
According to the unofficial NCRP report, new day-care centers, schools, playgrounds, houses, and other structures should not be built in areas where ambient or "background" EMFs exceed the two-milligauss (mG) level. Furthermore, the report says, ambient EMFs near existing structures should be reduced to the 2-mG level, or at least "as low as reasonably achievable" (ALARA), within the next 10 years.
"Though not unanimous, the predominant view of the committee is to recommend the ALARA approach," the draft report states, adding that research findings "are sufficiently consistent . . . to suggest plausible connections between [extremely low-frequency] EMF exposures and disruption of normal biological processes, in ways meriting detailed examination of potential implications in human health."
NCRP President Charles B. Meinhold is urging policy makers to disregard the draft EMF report, which was leaked to the news media before clearing peer review. Chartered by Congress in 1964, the private, nonprofit group convenes committees of volunteer scientists to review existing literature and advise government agencies on various radiation issues, explains James Spahn, a senior staff scientist at the NCRP. Like all NCRP documents, the EMF report will be subjected to an extensive peer-review process, Spahn adds.
While NCRP officials are scrambling to downplay the leaked report, it's being praised by the U.S. EPA, which provided $235,000 worth of funding for the study. "This is the first comprehensive review of the world's literature on extremely low-frequency EMFs," claims EPA Project Officer Joe Elder.
But Elder can't predict whether the report will influence U.S. policy because the EPA is no longer primarily responsible for EMF research. In October 1992, Congress shifted EMF research to the U.S. Department of Energy and the NIEHS, by establishing the Electric and Magnetic Fields Research and Public Information Dissemination (EMF RAPID) Program. Dan VanderMeer, NIEHS director of program planning and evaluation and manager of the EMF RAPID Program, says the NCRP draft report won't grab his attention unless peer reviewers give it the green light. "We're not going to do anything until we have a final document," he says. "The NIEHS official position is that there are inadequate data to make any recommendations about EMF exposure levels."
W. Ross Adey, chair of the 11-member NCRP committee, declines to say much about the draft report, although excerpts appeared in the July/August 1995 issue of Microwave News. "The report speaks for itself," says Adey, a neurologist and chief of research at the Pettis Memorial Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.
In a 1993 interview with EHP, however, Adey said EMFs have clearly been shown to alter basic cellular activities. For example, he said, EMFs can disrupt the function of calcium ions, which carry signals to the interior of cells, where growth and metabolism are controlled. Also, EMFs may interfere with communication or "whispering" between cells, he said. Biological studies, Adey said, suggest that EMFs may co-promote tumor growth by working in tandem with chemical pollutants.
The draft NCRP report says numerous epidemiological studies in the United States and Europe "indicate a positive association between childhood cancers and exposure to magnetic fields" stronger than about 2 mG. Strong EMFs have also been statistically linked to increased rates of adult leukemia and brain cancer among workers in certain industries, the report says. Though biological studies have not yet revealed an "unequivocal link" between EMFs and cancer, the committee says, animal and tissue models "are consistent with an initiation-promotion (epigenetic) model of tumor formation." In light of such findings, the committee concludes, EMF exposure should be drastically reduced.
Achieving a 2-mG goal could prove extremely challenging, however, since household appliances generate much stronger fields, at least on a periodic basis. An electric shaver, for example, may produce up to 600 mG of electromagnetic energy, according to public information prepared by the NIEHS. People living within 50 feet of a 115-kilovolt electrical transmission line might be subjected to a 6.5-mG field on a continuous basis, the NIEHS says, and a 500-kilovolt line could pump out 29.4 mG at the same distance.
Thomas S. Tenforde, a vice president for the NCRP and chief scientist in the health division of Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory, says a 2-mG ambient exposure limit "would really shut down some technologies," such as electric trains. "There are limits to what one can consider for the sake of safety without going back to the Dark Ages," adds Tenforde, who will help review the draft report on EMFs.
Nevertheless, Constantine J. Maletskos, an NCRP consultant and executive secretary for the report, believes the EMF report will ultimately be approved--perhaps within the first half of 1996. Because NCRP reports are scrutinized by 75 council members and other experts, however, the review process can result in "vast changes," the NCRP's Spahn cautions.
Whether or not the 2-mG recommendation makes it through review, the EMF debate is destined to continue as additional reports are made public. For instance, researchers at the National Institute for Working Life (NIWL) in Stockholm say studies reveal a "credible but weak" association between certain cancers and EMF exposure, reports Kjell Hansson Mild, an associate professor for NIWL in Umeå. Based on a 1995 literature review published in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention, Mild says, the advisory group endorses "prudent avoidance" of excessive EMFs, but steers clear of recommending exposure limits.
The National Research Council expects to release a status report on the EMF RAPID initiative within the next few weeks, reports John Zimbrick, director of the NRC's Board on Radiation Effects. Another NRC report on potential EMF health effects should be distributed by January or February 1996, Zimbrick says.
Also in January, the EPA hopes to release an EMF report focusing on cancer risks. Robert McGaughy, a staff member at the EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment, says the report contains no recommendations, but conclusions about cancer risks are "similar" to the NCRP report.
Robert L. Park, a physicist and spokesperson for the American Physical Society (APS), is harshly critical of Adey and the draft NCRP report. Park, who dismissed EMF safety fears in an April 1995 statement prepared on behalf of the 45,000-member APS, lambasted the NCRP draft in a September 29 letter to the editors of Science. The NCRP document "was leaked by its authors," Park charged, "precisely because they knew its prospects for adoption by [the NCRP] lie somewhere between slim and zero."
Adey is angered by Park's allegations, and he hotly denies any involvement in the news leak. Louis Slesin, editor and publisher of Microwave News, confirms that "Adey did not leak the report, nor did any member of the committee." Described by VanderMeer as "highly respected" in his field, Adey insists that the biological evidence of EMF health effects can no longer be ignored by U.S. policy makers. Another NCRP committee member, David O. Carpenter, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Albany, agrees, saying "the evidence is sufficiently strong" to warrant regulatory action.
New legislation to limit EMF exposure seems unlikely, however. Congressman George Miller (D-California) had proposed legislation several years ago to ban new schools and day-care centers in areas where EMFs exceed 2 mG. But that proposal was abandoned, according to Daniel Weiss, a spokesperson for Miller. "We gave up on that issue," Weiss says, citing "the inconclusiveness of the evidence."
Nor does it seem likely that the EMF issue will be resolved in the courts. In California, Marie Covalt of Orange County is suing the San Diego Gas & Electric Company, charging that high EMF levels have made her home uninhabitable. Fifteen leading scientists, including at least nine physicists and six Nobel laureates, filed an opinion on behalf of the power company, arguing that "no serious danger to health due to exposure to normal intensities of low frequency electromagnetic fields has been established." Epidemiological surveys have failed to rule out all potential risk factors, the scientists say, and biological effects aren't consistently repeatable.
Getting the Lead Out
For law enforcement officers, fear of "taking some lead" may now extend beyond their aversion to being shot in the line of duty. Officers and sportsmen alike have become increasingly concerned about the safety of outdoor firing ranges where small lead particles from the fragmentation of bullets can contaminate nearby air, soil, and water. One recent effort, however, may have produced the nation's first self-cleaning firing range.
In recent years, a number of firing ranges across the country have been closed, largely due to military cutbacks. According to Jerold Johnson, a U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) engineer, the military is concerned about lead from the closed ranges entering the surrounding environment. The majority of lead at these ranges comes from lead bullets fired during practice sessions: lead particles--and particles of other less toxic heavy metals such as copper and zinc--are created as the bullets strike other spent bullets lodged within a berm (the area behind the targets where the bullets land). "The main problem is not breathing the dust outside," says Johnson. "It's the lead particles getting into the soils and water."
The ultrafine lead particles can be carried by wind and collect in nearby soil. There they can be taken up by plants. A USBM report showed levels of lead in vegetation growing in contaminated soil was 100 times that of background soil samples. Lead in soil can also have adverse health effects on wildlife in the region of the shooting range. Of most concern, however, is groundwater that becomes contaminated when rainwater percolates through the lead-laden soil.
Short-term exposure to lead, one of the most widely distributed environmental neurotoxins, can cause a series of problems in adults including eye, throat, and nose irritation; headache, fever, and chills; and muscle aches. Long-term exposures can result in loss of appetite, weight loss, vomiting, irritability, fatigue, dizziness, insomnia, and visual impairment. In children, the effects of lead exposure may have much more profound consequences including impaired neurological development.
A study conducted by the Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center that characterized military shooting ranges around the country revealed that the buildup of bullets at the target and in the berms constitutes a major source of metal (mostly lead) contamination. Long-term use (years of firing thousands of bullets) of the berms resulted in lead levels of about 1% by weight of the berm; isolated pockets often held over 30% lead by weight. This lead level, determined by the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure test, exceeds the EPA criteria of 5 parts per million (ppm). The study also reported concentrations at the berms as high as 23,000 ppm for lead, 1,620 ppm for copper, and 290 ppm for zinc (background levels at the sites were listed as 16, 30, and 90 ppm respectively).
This past October, construction of a "green" firing range, designed to be safer for humans and the environment, was completed at the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office site. Deputy Nicholas J. Roberts spent four years researching how to contain the tiny lead particles on the range in an environmentally sound manner. Roberts consulted the local USBM agency, which had worked to clean military sites around the country.
With the USBM information, Roberts and his partner Leigh Kilpack built a catch system for the lead particles. The range's new berm consists of large cement containers filled with bags of coarse-grained sand (conventional ranges use soil). The sand keeps the bullets from fragmenting as much, so there are fewer ultrafine lead particles. The berm's special design also makes it easier to remove the sand bags so that spent bullets can be removed when the bags are full.
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Building a better berm. A new firing range apparatus prevents lead from entering the environment.
Photo Credit: Nicholas Roberts
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In addition, a special piping and trap system is used to capture any contaminated precipitation that flows through the berm area. As the water trickles through the berm into the groundwater, it is treated with a special ion exchange method to remove lead and other metals. In the system, potentially contaminated water travels through the berm to a pipe and into a tank filled with special pellets developed by Tom Jeffers at the USBM. These pellets are made of peat moss, which has a high attraction to lead and other metals, surrounded by a porous plastic that allows the water to come in contact with the peat moss. "The peat moss has active sites that absorb the metal," explains Johnson. "Once the peat moss pellets are saturated with the metal, we can strip away the metal with a strong acid process." The beads are then put back into the tanks, and the stripped-away metal is recycled.
The new system is being used by most of the law enforcement groups in the Salt Lake County area and many groups in other areas. The USBM and the sheriff's office are currently monitoring and performing sampling at the range to determine an appropriate schedule for cleaning the beads and berms. According to Roberts, the system, which cost only several thousand dollars and is safer than removing lead-contaminated soil, provides a good solution to a widespread problem. "It's not an elaborate, expensive system," he says. "It doesn't need any [generated] power, and everything stays there on the range. And what comes off the range is 100% clean."
EHPnet
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is one of 17 research-based institutes within the National Institutes of Health (NIH). One fact that has often been spotlighted is the NIEHS's unique location outside of the Washington, DC, metro area (where the remaining institutes are located). The NIEHS is now spotlighting its newest location on the World Wide Web at URL: http://www.niehs.nih.gov. At this site, users may benefit from the knowledge and expertise of NIEHS scientists studying the interrelationship of environmental factors, individual variability and genetic susceptibility, and age in human health and disease.
The NIEHS site offers an extensive array of public health information, research grant information, contract activities, research databases, environmental health news, the NIEHS library, and more. From the NIEHS home page, users can access additional institute home pages through hyperlinks. The Biology Home Page hyperlink allows access to a number of laboratories and programs through the Scientific Database Server including the National Toxicology Program (NTP) database. The NTP also has its own home page where users can obtain information on receiving publications such as the Biennial Report on Carcinogens and the NTP Annual Plan. The home page of the Laboratory of Quantitative and Computational Biology provides information on topics such as risk assessment and molecular modeling.
Users interested in research opportunities with the NIEHS can access the NIEHS Contracts hyperlink, which provides an electronic bulletin board of all current research and development requests for proposals (RFPs). Users may register on-line to receive information and amendments to current and future RFPs. A hyperlink to the Grants Management Branch leads users to a listing of current grants available from the NIEHS. Access to the NIEHS Superfund Basic Research and Training Program provides information on the projects, researchers, and institutions involved in this program. Training opportunities are also available through a link to the NIEHS Summers of Discovery Program.
Hyperlinks to two other sites highlight the NIEHS's commitment to providing accurate and timely environmental health information. The NIEHS EnviroHealth Clearinghouse hyperlink is now available to inform users on accessing this service. EnviroHealth provides answers to questions about current environmental health and related issues and directs users to scientists with specific expertise in different areas. The on-line version of Environmental Health Perspectives offers a sampling of research and news from the journal as well as subscription and submission information.
Last Update: May 1, 1997