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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One German firm has tried to solve their waste disposal problem by exporting outdated pesticides to Albania, calling the shipments "humanitarian aid."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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