The rapid and extreme growth which overruns communities
leaves little time for these communities to plan effectively for that growth. . . . We are developing "spread city"--it is neither city, suburban, or rural, it is just an amorphous spread.
Robert H. Freilich, testimony, U.S. Congress, 13 May 1971
Dangerous Duplicates
Brenda Smith's health problems, including headaches, high blood pressure, and sensitivity to perfumes, began in 1981 and have grown progressively worse during the past 17 years. Smith, 49, believes her health problems can be traced to her job as a service representative for Bell Atlantic in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where she frequently worked with carbonless copy paper (CCP). "Carbonless copy paper is the culprit," Smith says. "We handled CCP and breathed its fumes, but no one warned us about it."
Smith, who was fired from her job at Bell Atlantic in 1993, is one of several plaintiffs who have filed product liability lawsuits against the Mead Corporation, Appleton Papers, Inc., Moore Business Forms, Inc., and other CCP manufacturers. The plaintiffs, who claim they have developed formaldehyde sensitization and have suffered deterioration of their allergic, immunologic, and respiratory systems, are seeking $3 million in compensatory damages.
Introduced commercially in 1954, CCP is used to make multiple paper copies of an original document simultaneously. The paper is coated with microencapsulated droplets of colorless dyes and solvents that break when pressure is applied through writing or typing. The released dyes form an image on the backing sheet, copying the writing without the use of carbon paper.
"CCP is a pervasive presence in the workplace," says Charles Schmidt, an associate in engineering in the department of environmental engineering at the University of Florida at Gainesville, who has been studying CCP. "It's cheap and an easy way of copying mundane items like invoices, office forms, and credit card receipts."
"The number of environmental health complaints about CCP is both disappointing and frustrating," says Henricka Nagy, a toxicologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). "At this point, we really can't do much about the issue because we don't have much science to explain it." Reports about adverse effects in workers exposed to CCP began appearing in the scientific literature in the late 1960s, and NIOSH has since reported symptoms anecdotally associated with its use. Symptoms attributed to exposure by touch include eczema, tingling, dryness, irritation, redness, and itchiness of the skin, while those attributed to inhalation exposure include asthma, headaches, fatigue, hoarseness, throat tickle, joint pain, nasal congestion, and respiratory tract irritation.
But despite numerous studies, CCP's environmental health effects still remain a controversial issue in the scientific literature. While several researchers have concluded that some people are affected by the chemicals released in using the paper, CCP manufacturers and other scientists say past studies, including a 1987 investigation by NIOSH, have failed to find a link between CCP and worker illnesses. According to a Federal Register notice posted 21 February 1997, "On June 12, 1987, NIOSH published a Federal Register notice (52 FR 22534) requesting comments and secondary data on the toxicity of carbonless copy paper. At that time, it was determined, based on the submitted information, that insufficient data were available to conclude that the relationship between the exposure to carbonless copy paper and suggested health effects was a causal one."
No standards for recommended exposure limits exist for CCP, although there are OSHA permissible exposure limits, NIOSH recommended exposure limits, or American Conference of Environmental Hygienists threshold limit values for most of the active ingredients contained in CCP. In the past three decades, the published scientific literature has identified numerous chemicals and other substances used in CCP's manufacture, including resin, kaolin, starch, styrene, mineral oil, sanatasol oil, butadiene latex, hydrogenated terphenyls, aluminum silicate, organic dyes, diaryl ethanes, alkyl benzenes, isoparaffins, diisopropyl naphthalenes, dibutyl phthalate, aliphatic compounds, and aromatic compounds such as alkyl substituted biphenyls, although polychlorinated biphenyls have not been used since the early 1970s.
"CCP is a complex issue because we can compile a list of 1,000-plus chemicals that can be used in its manufacture," explains Rick Niemeier, a senior scientist and toxicologist at NIOSH. "There is no magic formula [for the manufacture of CCP] and it's all proprietary." However, Robert Tardiff, president of the Bethesda, Maryland-based Sapphire Group, a scientific research firm that deals with risk management issues, asserts that "several dozen compounds, certainly less than 100, are used in the manufacture of CCP coatings used in the United States."
Schmidt says his CCP study (not yet published) revealed that potentially dangerous chemicals are being used to make CCP, and that these chemicals can escape into the air as well as penetrate the skin. Schmidt found that biphenyl oil, one of the substances found in the microcapsules, flows out when the tiny bubbles are broken, either when the paper is handled or when a person writes on the top sheet. Moreover, further tests indicated that the biphenyl oil can be absorbed through the skin and could possibly help further the penetration of other compounds, such as formaldehyde, dye cursors, and hydrocarbon solvents. Schmidt says, however, "I can't really say whether CCP is causing environmental health problems. . . . It would be up to a toxicologist to take my findings and make a determination."
In the summer of 1997, the Mead Corporation, a major CCP manufacturer, asked Tardiff to review the scientific literature on their product. Tardiff spent four months doing the study. "Mead asked me to provide a dispassionate third-party analysis," Tardiff explains. "All of the available data I examined indicate that CCP, as [it] currently is being used, is unlikely to have injurious consequences for humans."
The studies of both Tardiff and Schmidt now form part of more than 14,000 pages of scientific literature relating to CCP that are currently being studied by a task force headed by Niemeier. In February 1997, NIOSH posted a notice in the Federal Register requesting comments on the possible adverse health effects of working with CCP. The task force started the review in September 1997 and expected to take six months to complete its charge, but Niemeier reveals, "It's going to take longer because the docket has been flooded with information."
As for the health problems of Smith and the other plaintiffs who have filed CCP law suits, Niemeier says, "I suspect that they may be a little more sensitive than the general population, but the problem is that many of the symptoms said to be associated with exposure to CCP are very similar, if not identical, to indoor air quality problems. Is it an issue of CCP, indoor air quality, or multiple chemical sensitivity? I honestly can't say at this point."
A Winning Partnership
Since 1973, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement has honored significant scientific achievements by international scientists in all disciplines of environmental study and protection. At a time when concern over environmental degradation was only just beginning, John and Alice Tyler established the prize in hopes that it would inspire people across the world to understand the importance of protecting the environment.
The 1998 Tyler Prize has been awarded to Anne H. Ehrlich and Paul R. Ehrlich, both of Stanford University in California, for their individual and joint work on elucidating and publicizing the relationships between population size, resource consumption, socioeconomic equity, and the environment. The Ehrlichs were also cited for their contributions toward heightening public awareness of issues such as the environmental effects of nuclear war, toxic and radioactive waste, and pesticide pollution in agriculture. The award, presented on 17 April 1998 in Los Angeles, California, consists of a shared cash prize of $200,000 and a gold medallion for each winner.
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Environmental achievers. Anne H. Ehrlich and Paul R. Ehrlich are the recipients of the 1998 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.
Source: The Tyler Prize |
Paul Ehrlich's early studies on butterfly populations led to the development (with environmental scientist Peter Raven) of the concept of coevolution--a process of interdependent, reciprocal evolutionary events among plants and animals that are ecologically entwined--and a theory of population regulation among animals, which the Ehrlichs extrapolated to humans, thereby helping to assess the impact of human populations on the environment. "By taking their findings into the public realm and the political arena, [the Ehrlichs] have influenced more than a generation of scientists and policy makers as well as helped shape public opinion about the environmental impact of overpopulation," says Robert P. Sullivan, chair of the committee that selects the prize winners.
Anne Ehrlich, a senior research associate in Stanford's biological sciences department and associate director of the university's Center for Conservation Biology, has taught a course on environmental policy since 1981. She currently serves as a member of the boards of directors for the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California; the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Crested Butte, Colorado; the Ploughshares Fund, based in San Francisco, California; and the Sierra Club, also based in San Francisco. In addition, Ehrlich serves on advisory boards for several organizations. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received an honorary doctorate degree from West Virginia's Bethany College in 1990.
Paul Ehrlich is the Bing professor of population studies and a professor of biological sciences at Stanford. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His Stanford laboratory is currently working in several areas, including the dynamics and genetics of natural populations of Euphydryas butterflies, avian communities (especially in agricultural landscapes), and populations of various endangered organisms, as well as policy research on endangered species and the preservation of genetic resources as they relate to human populations and the environment.
Together, the couple have authored over 30 books, including 1968's The Population Bomb, which predicted the worldwide effects of overpopulation and called for developed nations to set a global example by curbing family sizes. The 1990 follow-up book, The Population Explosion, examined the consequences of human population growth over the intervening 22 years. Currently, the Ehrlichs are working on a series of newsletters, titled Ecofables: Ecoscience, that address myths about humanity's relationship to the environment using scientific facts. Together, the Ehrlichs have shared several honors, including the 1994 United Nations Environment Programme's Sasakawa Environment Prize, the 1995 Heinz Award for Environmental Achievement, and the 1996 Distinguished Peace Leader Award, given by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
Science in Seattle
As mandated by the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the U.S. EPA is working to develop and implement a testing program to identify the potential for pesticides and other chemicals to alter the function of estrogen and other hormones. The EPA is scheduled to present a screening program to Congress in August 1998, with the program to be implemented in August 1999. The Endocrine Disruptor Screening and Testing Advisory Committee (EDSTAC) was formed to advise the EPA on a testing program. Representatives of each of the four working groups within EDSTAC--covering the areas of principles of screening and testing, priority setting for screening and testing, screening and testing methodologies, and communication and outreach--shared the status of the development process with attendees at the Society of Toxicology's (SOT) 37th Annual Meeting, held March 1-5 in Seattle, Washington.
The SOT is a professional organization of scientists representing academia, government, and industry dedicated to education and training in toxicology. The session on the EDSTAC program was one of the most popular among the nearly 5,000 scientists from around the world who attended this year's meeting. "This session was heavily attended because of the nearing release of the [EDSTAC's] final recommendations," says Robert Kavlock, director of the EPA's Reproductive Toxicology Division, who served as chairperson of the workshop session. "This is probably one of the more significant testing requirements coming out of the EPA in recent years, especially because of the number of chemicals it could potentially impact."
Among other research presented at the annual meeting was new information on the role of genetic polymorphisms and repair deficiencies in environmental disease. Scientists presented research that suggests that genetic polymorphisms, which are variations in the sequence of DNA, and deficiencies in enzymes responsible for DNA replication and repair play a role in determining susceptibility to environmentally induced diseases such as bladder and colon cancers.
Several scientific sessions also addressed particulate matter and air pollution. For example, one session focused on the challenge of developing rapid short-term tests to assess particulate toxicity. Presenters discussed research on current testing methods and new directions for test development, and discussed a trend in inhalation toxicity testing toward identifying and developing increasingly sensitive biochemical tools. "The database for these methods is growing, and as they meet the guidelines for acute inhalation testing, they will provide more relevant and powerful data for use in risk assessment," says Daniel Costa, chief of the EPA's pulmonary toxicology branch, who co-chaired the session.
Questions about cotton. The EPA may be reevaluating its ban of the use of the herbicide bromoxynil by cotton farmers.
A related session on the toxicological impacts and human health risks of wood smoke took a regional focus. Many residents of the northwestern area of the United States engage in wood-burning, and measurements taken during winter in Seattle show that 80-85% of residential particulate matter at night is attributable to wood smoke. "Combustion of wood smoke is a major public health problem," panelist Michael Lipsett, an assistant clinical professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco said during the session. Although wood smoke is the oldest human form of air pollution, the database of information on its health impacts is very sparse, said Lipsett. He and other experts discussed research efforts and the health effects associated with exposure to wood smoke, which include exacerbation of asthma, increased risk of pneumonia and bronchiolitis in children, and other chronic obstructive disease-like syndromes. Naydene Maykut, senior air quality scientist at the Puget Sound Air Pollution Control Agency in Seattle, discussed past regulatory strategies for reducing wood-burning, and emphasized that, while regulations have been fairly successful, annual fine-particle concentrations still approach the EPA standards, and further regulatory efforts are needed.
The SOT annual conference planning committee seeks to strike a balance between basic and applied research among the many specialty sections within the society, such as neurotoxicology, epidemiology, and risk assessment, says SOT president Steven Cohen, a professor of toxicology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. "The goal of the annual meeting is to bring the best science to our members and to get our members engaged in intellectual discourse about the science," Cohen says. He hopes that the conference gets scientists excited about their work and motivates them to move the state of the science forward, so that they will return to the conference each year with more data and new models. The number of conference attendees is increasing as science improves and interest in toxicology grows, Cohen says. The SOT's 38th Annual Meeting will be held 14-18 March 1999 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Bromoxynil Ban
In December 1997, the U.S. EPA effectively banned the use of the herbicide bromoxynil by cotton farmers, stating in a 9 January 1998 press release that the agency "has serious concerns about the developmental risks it poses to infants and children." The herbicide, manufactured by Rhone-Poulenc Ag Company of Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, is marketed with bromoxynil-resistant cotton seed, sold by Stoneville Pedigreed Seed of Memphis, Tennessee, as a system for allowing cotton farmers to control weeds without affecting the cash crop. Without the herbicide, the system has no value. Prior to the December decision, the EPA had allowed bromoxynil-resistant cotton to be planted on approximately 400,000 acres--about 3%--of U.S. cotton acreage in 1997.
The EPA's action was based on the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act, which requires the EPA to ensure that there is a "reasonable certainty of no harm based on the aggregate dietary risk of all registered uses" of the chemical. The agency was concerned that humans, especially children, would be exposed to bromoxynil in the food chain. The stems and leaves that remain after cotton is ginned (known as "gin trash") are often used to feed livestock, which may later be eaten by people. The oil from cotton seeds is also used in cooking oil, says Lynn Goldman, assistant administrator of the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances at the EPA. In regulating bromoxynil, the agency imposed an additional 10-fold safety factor on top of its standard policy requiring that exposure to pesticides must be 100 times less potent than the concentration shown to cause birth defects and cancer in laboratory animals. This effectively banned the chemical's use.
"We were pleased the agency recognized the hazardousness of this herbicide and decided not to expand its use any more into cotton," says Jane Rissler, a senior staff scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, DC. Rhone-Poulenc, however, claims its data show bromoxynil poses absolutely no health threat. "Our risk assessment shows there's over a 1,000-fold margin of safety," says Margaret Cherny, vice president of regulatory affairs and communications for the company.
According to the EPA, when lab animals are exposed to the herbicide it causes fetal deformities and death. In preliminary industry studies reviewed by the EPA, the herbicide also poses over twice as great a risk of liver cancer in humans than allowed by EPA standards. Cherny says Rhone-Poulenc measured bromoxynil residue in the gin trash and concluded "there's not a problem there." The company has also offered to set up a program that would prevent trash from bromoxynil-resistant cotton from being fed to animals.
According to weed scientists, bromoxynil-resistant cotton offers an important weapon against such plant pests as cocklebur and morning glory. Daniel Reynolds, an associate professor of weed science at Mississippi State University, says using bromoxynil is better than alternatives, because it is used only on weeds that have sprouted. Without bromoxynil, he says, cotton farmers will have to put blanket, prophylactic applications of pesticides on soil before planting. "We'll see more reliance on those herbicides that have longer persistence in the soil," he says. "We have the potential for more surface water contamination [because of runoff]." But Goldman argues that bromoxynil may pose a greater risk to human health than alternative herbicides.
The issue of bromoxynil's use on cotton is not completely decided. The EPA is reviewing new data on bromoxynil's toxicity submitted by Rhone-Poulenc. "The decision that was made in 1997 was made under an incredible amount of time pressure," says Goldman. "We have had considerably more time since then to look at the data [demonstrating the health concerns about bromoxynil]." The EPA has told Rhone-Poulenc that the initial judgment of bromoxynil's cancer potential may have been too conservative. In a December letter to the company, Goldman wrote that the initial conclusion "may overestimate cancer risk. We expect further refinements may reduce the cancer risk estimate."
The December ban was the first time EPA scientists have implemented the additional safety factor guidelines required by the Food Protection and Quality Act. The EPA is asking the independent Scientific Advisory Panel for the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act to examine the scientific basis for the agency's decision on bromoxynil. Bromoxynil is also used on a variety of crops including wheat, corn, and peaches, and the EPA intends to examine bromoxynil's use on those crops as well.
A Well-Planned Site
As the general population grows, so grows the demand for living space. City planners, government officials, and private citizens are scrambling to find sustainable ways to support increasing numbers of residents. Planners Web, an Internet site located at
http://www.plannersweb.com, provides guidance and useful tools for what it calls "citizen planners," such as members of local planning commissions and zoning boards.
The site offers many free resource pages, including the Sprawl Resource Guide, which is accessible from the home page. The guide lists hyperlinks to several major issues associated with urban sprawl. The link to Sprawl in the News provides newspaper articles from around the United States that discuss sprawl. For example, an article from the Raleigh, North Carolina, News & Observer includes an animated map illustrating sprawl over the last few decades. The Causes & Impacts of Sprawl link contains articles from various publications that address topics such as the origins and consequences of urban sprawl as well as sprawl-related myths that block reform, such as misconceptions about property rights and loss of local control.
The Problems Associated with Sprawl link provides examples of sprawl-associated problems such as land consumption, costs to local government, increased auto dependence and fuel consumption, inner city/racial impacts, and a feeling of loss of a "sense of place." Information found in the land consumption section includes links to the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Urban Retrospectives Research Program Web site, which provides graphics that show how urbanization occurs over time, and Earthshots, another USGS Web site, which provides satellite images of environmental change.
In addition to presenting the problems of urban sprawl, the Sprawl Resource Guide also attempts to provide the latest information and research on solutions. A link to Strategies for Dealing with Sprawl provides an extensive list of published articles highlighting research on sprawl and examples of various regional efforts to address the problem. Four groups of strategies are highlighted--creating a sense of place or community, preserving open space and farmland, concentrating growth and investment, and transportation priorities. A link to What's Happening Across the U.S. details efforts in various states.
From the Planners Web home page, users can access "top ten" lists on subjects of interest to planners such as recycling, air pollution, use of public transportation and carpooling, threatened land resource areas, and growth potential in metropolitan counties.
From a legal perspective, the "Takings" Resource Guide, accessible from the home page, provides information on government acquisition of private land and the property rights movement, and offers legal background, news, articles analyzing property rights issues, and position statements on the topic by various organizations.
The Impacts of Information Technology Resource Guide, available through the link to Shaping Our Communities: The Impacts of Information Technology, provides background on information technology and a unique look at how telecommunications and information technology will potentially impact communities. For example, the link to Business Location & Its Impacts provides a hyperlink to an article on telecommuting and auto use, which contains estimated statistics on the reduction of fuel use and auto emissions resulting from telecommuting. A link under Insights on Where We're Headed examines potential land use impacts of telecommunications.
The site also provides a quarterly publication, the Planning Commissioners Journal, which is available for a charge. Past journal articles are available on-line free of charge, and a keyword search of these articles is available.
Last Updated: June 2, 1998