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April 17, 2005

To: Commissioner Sam Brentano

Commissioner Janet Carlson

Commissioner Patti Milne

From: Carroll D. Johnston

Subject: Toxic emissions from the Waste-to-Energy Facility

Please reject the recommendation of the Solid Waste Management Advisory Council (SWMAC) to increase the amount of out-of-county infectious medical waste that can be burned at the Waste-to-Energy Facility (WTEF) in Brooks.

Executive Summary of Reasons to Reject the Recommendation:

1) Medical waste is rich in substances that will increase the amount of toxins (mercury, dioxins, and cadmium in particular) that are emitted from the WTEF's smokestack and that accumulate in the ash.

a) The WTEF has already emitted hundreds of pounds of mercury and significant quantities of other toxins, but no efforts have been undertaken by any government body to assess their impact on people and the environment. (Studies elsewhere provide good reason to believe there is a significant negative impact on citizen health from these emissions.)

b) Those who advocate for an increase in medical waste incineration have presented no valid, scientific evidence to indicate that such an increase would be safe.

2) Approval of an increase in medical waste incineration sends the wrong message (i.e., "Do as we say, not as we do") to citizens who are being asked to stop burning toxin-emitting waste in backyard barrels.

a) SWMAC members should never have been forced by County staff into an "either-or" choice with regard to funding for efforts to reduce toxic emissions.

b) SWMAC members were basically told that no additional efforts to reduce toxic emissions would be taken unless they agreed to an increase in medical waste incineration to pay for those efforts.

3) Allowing a 1,000-ton increase in medical waste incineration now provides a legal rationale for Covanta to increase the amount much, much more when the County's contract with them ends in 2014.

4) Trusting our regulatory agencies' assurances about the safety of the WTEF's toxic emissions ignores past history when government bodies who were supposed to protect citizens from the mental retardation effects of leaded gasoline, the cancer-causing effects of asbestos and tobacco, and the debilitating effects of dioxin-contaminated pesticides failed to do their jobs for decades.

Medical Waste Is Rich in Toxin-Producing Substances:

Throughout the SWMAC deliberations about the medical waste incineration limits there was broad agreement that medical waste incineration produces toxic emissions. This fact appeared to be ameliorated in the minds of the SWMAC members by arguments that the WTEF's filter system captures a very large percentage of the toxins before they go up the smokestack. What concerns many of us in the community is the fact that a small percentage still does get emitted and some of those toxins accumulate layer upon layer year after year. Eventually, even small amounts begin adding up to large amounts that are being deposited in our lakes, ponds, and soil.

Consider that less than an ounce of mercury that undergoes the natural transformation in lakes or ponds to methyl mercury can contaminate the fish in an entire lake to the point that they are dangerous to eat. This is especially true for pregnant women whose unborn babies can develop neurological damage from the mercury. The several hundred pounds of mercury that the WTEF has been documented to emit since its inception sound quite dangerous in that context. Never mind that the carbon filters that were installed a few years ago reduced the mercury emissions to around 40 pounds per year; the mercury is still accumulating year after year in lakes and ponds downwind from the WTEF.

The bioaccumulation of dioxins and furans make them even more insidious because not only is there more of it in the Willamette Valley each succeeding year, but it also has the natural tendency to concentrate in living tissue. It does not get excreted as some toxins do, but instead it builds up in fatty tissue because it is fat soluble. This includes the milk fat that is consumed by breast-feeding babies.

The dioxins in the jungle defoliant, Agent Orange, that were spread over Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s are still causing large numbers of fetal deformities, still births, cancers, and other tragedies several decades after the spraying of Agent Orange stopped. Although the concentrations of dioxins from the WTEF are much smaller than they were in Vietnam, no one has actually demonstrated that they are somehow safe. Just because we haven't linked increases in cancers in Marion County to a specific cause does not exempt the WTEF as one possible source.

Sending the Wrong Message:

SWMAC members were persuaded to increase the medical waste incineration limit by the promise that resulting funds could be used to educate the public about the dangers of burning toxin-producing plastics in backyard barrels, about the need to separate PVC plastics out of the WTEF waste stream, and about other laudable actions that citizens can take to help reduce the amount of toxins that reach our bodies from County waste. However, the only option SWMAC was given for funding such a commendable program was the revenue that could be generated by burning more out-of-county medical waste. They were told that citizens would not stand for any other source of County money to be used for those purposes, but to the contrary I have found a lot of citizens who insist that other sources be used.

If the County Commissioners agree to the SWMAC recommendation, you are essentially saying that it is OK for the County to burn more toxin-producing substances so revenues can be generated to convince other citizens to not do so. That makes just as little sense to me as selling cocaine to fund a drug treatment program.

Laying the Groundwork for Even More Medical Waste Incineration:

The decision to recommend a 1,000-ton increase in the medical waste incineration limit reminds me of the Middle East story about allowing a camel to get its nose under the edge of the tent. Pretty soon you have the whole camel inside the tent.

Medical waste has long been seen by the incineration industry as a lucrative source of revenue as evidenced by articles in their trade journals back in the 1990s. It was already a billion-dollar industry back then and has no doubt grown since then. When Covanta's contract with the County ends in 2014, what is to stop them from turning their WTEF into the solution to medical waste problems for hospitals far and wide? Marion County might well become "medwaste central" for the entire Northwest.

By voting to increase the medical waste incineration limit by 1,000 tons now, you would be endorsing their increases by tens-of-thousands of tons in 2014 and beyond.

Placing Trust in Regulatory Agencies:

Environmental and corporate history in America is replete with examples of health disasters of monstrous proportions that resulted from corporations' ability to fend off for decades the regulations that eventually curbed their abuses. Scientists knew for many years that leaded gasoline was gradually dumbing down American children by causing brain damage to hundreds of thousands of them before legislation was finally enacted to outlaw the addition of lead to increase octane ratings. It took large outpourings of attorney's fees and huge class action lawsuits by the victims of asbestos-caused cancer (or their surviving family members) before that public health menace was finally brought under control. The changes in the government's approach to the tobacco industry is familiar to all of us, but that battle took many decades before the corner was finally turned.

Now we are asked to believe that our State and Federal regulators are providing adequate limits on the toxins that are allowed to be emitted from the WTEF. In spite of scientific data from other states that show lakes being polluted to dangerous levels by incinerator-generated mercury, our regulators have taken no action to determine whether that has happened here. Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) staff told me very specifically that it is not their job to determine whether those emissions are causing any adverse health or environmental effects. So whose responsibility is it?

Tests conducted as part of a college student's project on a non-predatory fish caught in a reservoir near Silverton several years ago showed elevated levels of mercury. This reservoir is downwind from the WTEF. Past studies suggest that predatory fish, such as bass, caught from the same reservoir would probably contain mercury levels several times as high as the non-predatory specimen that was tested. Yet no one in authority has followed up to see whether that is true nor have they tried to isolate sources of the mercury by studying other bodies of water in the area downwind from the WTEF.

My trust in government action was extremely eroded as I observed the non-responsiveness to the plight of myself and thousands of other Vietnam veterans who were adversely affected by the dioxin in Agent Orange. The effects of dioxin on Vietnam veterans was almost totally ignored for many years and continues to be denied by our Federal government in significant ways as these veterans each year are dying prematurely or suffer severely disabling maladies. Even the children and grandchildren of veterans were adversely affected by the genetic mutations caused by dioxin. (Just ask Glenn Zimmerman, a current SWMAC member who provided a personal example of that fact in a recent SWMAC meeting.) Yet our government continues to provide a smokescreen of "deniability" to the corporation that manufactured Agent Orange and to itself by not officially admitting any connection between Agent Orange (dioxin) and all but the most egregious cases of damage that have been scientifically validated beyond all doubt.

If ten years from now it is somehow demonstrated that one of your grandchildren lost ten IQ points because of toxic contamination from the WTEF, would you feel charitable and forgiving toward the authorities who failed to investigate and prevent it? A scientifically valid study was done near the Great Lakes several years ago. It found that pregnant women who ate fish that were contaminated by toxic pollution in that area had children whose IQs were up to ten points lower than would normally be expected for that population. How do you suppose those women felt about that news?

The toxins now being emitted by the WTEF have the same potential as the ones in the Great Lakes study. Should we smugly assume that because no one has actually investigated the effects of WTEF pollutants that none have occurred? Are authorities skirting the question because they fear the answer might be bad? How many children were unnecessarily damaged for a lifetime by leaded gasoline because authorities chose the path of denial? How many adults died of cancer before authorities finally held tobacco companies accountable? What will you choose to do about investigating the effects of WTEF pollutants?

I propose that Marion County take the lead in getting adequate scientific studies done to determine the extent to which our local environment has been contaminated by WTEF emissions. This could be done by contracting directly with scientists who are qualified to conduct such studies, or the County could petition the Oregon Health Division to see whether they could provide the necessary resources to get this done. Whatever method is used, I believe that it is important to find answers soon. If children are being harmed, we need to know. If further increases in medical waste incineration are planned by Covanta for the next decade, we need to be able to provide valid data to governmental regulators about any negative health or environmental effects this would cause.

Please do all that you can to ensure the health and safety of Marion County children and adults. Start by voting against the SWMAC recommendation. Then continue from there to initiate investigations into the effects of toxins that have already been emitted from the WTEF and to eliminate future toxic emissions.