Toxins
Cured-in-place pipelining sickens scores of people as popularity grows
Hazardous Waste Generators
A map of facilities that generate hazardous wastes in New York State. Copy and paste the EPA ID into Google to pull up the industrial facilities' annual hazardous waste disclosure and disposal report.
NPR
he derailment of a train carrying hazardous materials near a town in Ohio earlier this month has prompted environmental concerns and chemical fears for residents — even as state officials work to reassure them.
"From the very start of this, we have taken every step possible to assure that people's safety was first and foremost," Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, the director of the Ohio Department of Health, said at a Tuesday press conference.
And as authorities work to assess the damage and investigate the derailment, more information has emerged this week about the chemicals in the rail cars, a variety of contaminants and carcinogens. Some of the chemicals — five rail cars' worth of vinyl chloride — was intentionally burned off in a "controlled explosion" last week, which prompted a temporary evacuation of the area.
Here's what to know about the derailment and chemicals involved.
Air Force Research Laboratory Verona Research Facility | Lu Engineers
The United States Air Force conducted radar and related research and development at the Verona Research Facility for a 35-year period following World War II. The property includes over 500 acres of land developed with 27 buildings varying in size from small power houses to multi-story office and lab buildings up to 20,000 square feet. Operations on the property ceased by 1998 and the Site has been unoccupied since that time.
Lu Engineers, under direct contract with the USAF, has been investigating and remediating various portions of the NYSDEC listed Verona in active Hazardous Waste Site since 2000. During that time, we have remediated several soil and groundwater plumes including chlorinated solvents, PCBs, pesticides and motor fuel. We have remediated all occurrences of PCBs in electrical equipment and elsewhere and completed surveys, plans and specifications for asbestos abatement and demolition of the dilapidated structures on the property. We have also prepared bid documents and cost estimates to facilitate abatement and demolition. We are currently finishing the process of de-listing the Site with the NYSDEC and remediating the last of the hazardous building materials remaining. This work will facilitate transfer of the property by the USAF to the federal General Services Administration.
Inside FDA’s ‘forever chemicals’ catastrophe – E&E News
3M Knew About the Harms of PFOA and PFOS
NEWS THAT THE Environmental Protection Agency pressured the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to suppress a study showing PFAS chemicals to be even more dangerous than previously thought drew outrage this spring. The EPA pressure delayed the study’s publication for several months, and a similar dynamic seems to have been in play this July in Michigan, where Robert Delaney, a state scientist who tried to raise alarms about the chemicals six years ago, was largely ignored. Delaney, who delivered a report to his superiors about high levels of the chemicals in fish and the dangers they presented to people, has been heralded as prophetic. And both delays are being lamented as missed opportunities for getting critical information to the public.
But the dangers presented by these industrial chemicals have been known for decades, not just a few months or years. A lawsuit filed by Minnesota against 3M, the company that first developed and sold PFOS and PFOA, the two best-known PFAS compounds, has revealed that the company knew that these chemicals were accumulating in people’s blood for more than 40 years. 3M researchers documented the chemicals in fish, just as the Michigan scientist did, but they did so back in the 1970s. That same decade, 3M scientists realized that the compounds they produced were toxic. The company even had evidence back then of the compounds’ effects on the immune system, studies of which are just now driving the lower levels put forward by the ATSDR, as well as several states and the European Union.
The suit, which the Minnesota attorney general filed in 2010, charges that 3M polluted groundwater with PFAS compounds and “knew or should have known” that these chemicals harm human health and the environment, and “result in injury, destruction, and loss of natural resources of the State.” The complaint argues that 3M “acted with a deliberate disregard for the high?risk of injury to the citizens and wildlife of Minnesota.” 3M settled the suit for $850 million in February, and the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office released a large set of documents — including internal studies, memos, emails, and research reports — detailing what 3M knew about the chemicals’ harms.