Lindane Dumps & Superfund
- US Superfund Sites
- Love Canal
- The Best Landfill Liner: Hdpe.
- A Gold Standard For Control of Toxics.
- For Sale: Homes With View of Superfund Site
PESTICIDE DUMPING IN EASTERN EUROPE
One German firm has tried to solve their waste disposal problem by exporting
outdated pesticides to Albania, calling the shipments "humanitarian
aid." Schmidt-Cretan of Hanover, Germany claims that the products, banned
for use in Germany because they contain mercury, dioxins and lindane, are for
active use and are not waste. This claim has been rejected by the Albanian
Agriculture Ministry, as the chemicals had already passed their expiration date,
thus making them waste In addition, some of these products, currently held in
storage, are banned in Albania as well as the European Community. A Greenpeace
toxic waste expert estimates that disposing of such waste in Germany costs
DM5,000-11,000 (US$6,600 to US$18,260) a ton. The company has refused to take
back more than 400 tons of the pesticides seized so far.
Source: Agrow, November 6 and December 4, 1992.
Excerpt from: http://db.rtk.net/E2899T26
The Best Landfill Liner: Hdpe.
Excerpt from:Peter Montague. "The Best Landfill
Liner: HDPE." RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #117 (February 21, 1989), pg.
1. [From: Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403;
phone: (410) 263-1584; internet: erf@igc.apc.org.]
In addition to many individual chemicals (mentioned below), Phillips lists
two major classes of chemicals that are not compatible with HDPE: aromatic
hydrocarbons, and halogenated hydrocarbons. The basic aromatic hydrocarbon is
benzene (a major component of gasoline); others are toluene (also called
methylbenzene), and the three xylenes (o-, m-and p-xylene). Others include
naphthalene (moth balls), and pdichlorobenzene (also moth balls). These aromatic
hydrocarbons "permeate excessively and cause package deformation,"
says Phillips.
Another class of compounds incompatible with HDPE is halogenated
hydrocarbons. The most familiar names here are carbon tetrachloride, chloroform,
DDT, aldrin, dieldrin, lindane, 2,4-D, 2,4,5-T, trichloroethylene,
trichloroethane, perchloroethylene, and so forth. The full list is very long and
growing all the time as chemists find new ways to attach chlorine, fluorine,
bromine and iodine atoms to carbon and hydrogen.
The Phillips booklet lists many individual household chemicals as
incompatible with HDPE.
Appendix I of the Phillips booklet lists the following chemicals under the
heading "can cause stress cracks" in HDPE:
Acids: acetic acid (1% to 10% solution); aqua regia.
Foods & food products: cider, lard, margarine, vinegar, vanilla extract.
Household toiletries and pharmaceutical products: detergents (standard);
detergents (heavy duty); dry cleaners; hair oil; hair shampoo; hair wave
lotions; hand creams; iodine (tincture) ("embrittlement may occur after
prolonged exposure"); lighter fluid; nail polish; shaving lotion; shoe
polish (liquid); shoe polish (paste); soap; wax (liquid and paste); amyl alcohol
100%; carbon tetrachloride; chlorobenzene ("softening and part deformation
will occur"); chloroform ("softening and part deformation will
occur"); cyclohexanol; ethyl alcohol (also known as booze); methyl alcohol
(a component of shellac); propyl alcohol.
Oils: castor; mineral; peppermint; vegetable; pine.
Industrial chemicals: amyl alcohol 100%; chlorobenzene; chloroform;
cyclohexanol; ethyl alcohol; methyl alcohol; propyl alcohol.
So much for stress cracks. What about common chemicals that can permeate
through HDPE? Phillips says "permeation is considered a physical migration
of a product through the container walls." Chemicals that will permeate a
plastic film will often also physically damage it. Appendix I of the Philips
booklet lists the following chemicals (giving the permeation in parentheses):
Household toiletries and pharmaceutical products: lighter fluid
("high"); nail polish ("4% loss per year"); shoe polish
(liquid) ("high"); turpentine ("8.5% loss per year").
Industrial chemicals: acetone ("3.4% loss per year"); amyl acetate
("4% loss per year"); amyl chloride ("high"); benzene
("high"); carbon tetrachloride ("80% loss per year");
chlorobenzene ("high; softening and part deformation will occur");
chloroform ("high"); ethylene chloride ("high; softening and part
deformation will occur"); gasoline ("high"); toluene ("high;
softening, swelling, and part deformation will occur"); trichloroethylene
("high; softening, swelling, and part deformation will occur").
http://db.rtk.net/E3462T132
A Gold Standard For Control of Toxics.
Excerpt from:Industrial Discharge Pipes
Dumping industrial poisons into the drinking water supplies of 5 million
people is entirely legal, so long as you request a permit to do it. How does our
government decide how much dumping is OK and how much is too much? On the video,
a representative of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
(DEC) explains that they dole out river dumping permits by first deciding how
much waste the entire river can "assimilate," then they divvy up this
"assimilative capacity" among the various dumpers. This explanation is
followed immediately on camera by a representative of Environment Canada, which
is Canada's equivalent of our federal EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), who
explains that many chemicals such as PCBs, dioxin, and the pesticides Lindane
and Mirex aren't "assimilated" or degraded at all by the River. They
merely flow downstream and settle in Lake Ontario, where they build up year
after year, slowly accumulating and concentrating in food chains. This aspect of
the problem is not considered by New York state officials.
In addition to using "assimilative capacity" to apportion dumping
permits among the dumpers, New York DEC and our EPA also use "risk
assessment," we are told on camera. For each chemical that a company wants
to dump, the government decides how much of that chemical will kill one in a
million people (this is considered an "acceptable risk.") They then
license the polluter to dump sufficient quantities of poisons to kill just that
many citizens and no more. However, Professor Ross Hume Hall from McMaster
University appears on camera pointing out that no one really knows how much of a
chemical causes what effects; and, he points out, each "risk
assessment" is carried out as if the human body only encountered that one
chemical alone. Despite large gaps in our knowledge, and despite incorrect
assumptions, governments routinely use risk assessments to make life or death
decisions that are binding on the citizenry.
http://db.rtk.net/E3541T132
ONLINE: The RTK NET Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 3, Winter 1994
FOR SALE: HOMES WITH VIEW OF SUPERFUND SITE
by Nancy Watzman
The headline on the flyer screams "ABSOLUTE AUCTION," by order of
the Farmers Home Administration. There's a dim aerial photograph showing what
appears to be an orderly pattern of buildings with a hint of ocean on the
horizon. These are the houses--"3 Bedrooms, 1 Bath Covered Carport . .
."--of Ciudad Cristiana in Humacao, Puerto Rico. They are, boasts the
flyer, "located near some of the most beautiful sandy beaches in the world.
. . .Major resorts in the area are only a short distance away."
THE FINE PRINT
An even shorter distance away, however, is one of Puerto Rico's nine Superfund
sites, Frontera Creek. The flyer says nothing about the creek, which flows next
to the housing development and is still waiting for cleanup. Nor does the flyer
say anything about the factories across the street--the ones that dumped lindane
(a pesticide), mercury, phenol, phthalates, chemical solvents, lead and zinc
into the creek in the first place. No where does the flyer state that it was
this toxic pollution that prompted Hernandez Colon, then governor of Puerto
Rico, to evacuate Ciudad Cristiana in 1985 and relocate residents in a new
village, Vista Hermosa. The aerial photograph, too, is misleading in suggesting
a well ordered place. A visit to Ciudad Cristiana in late September showed the
remains of small concrete homes set in rigid rows now softened by lush green
overgrowth. Scrawny stray dogs wandered in and around the buildings. Only the
numbers painted on the sides of homes by the auction company signaled that
anybody at all had been to the houses lately.
As with Love Canal, the government is busily trying to auction off these
homes--and people are buying. In a couple of auctions held this year, developers
and some individuals have been buying these remains of homes at bargain basement
prices, sometimes as little as $5,000 a piece.
For the former residents of Ciudad Cristiana, the ones who have been fighting
for over a decade for recognition of the damages they suffered from toxic
exposure, the auctions show an audacity barely to believed. "They are just
not accepting that the houses being resold are contaminated and
uninhabitable," says Jose Supulveda, a community leader from Vista Hermosa,
who used to live in Ciudad Cristiana.
excerpt: http://db.rtk.net/E5835T129
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