Good Morning Gina,
Yesterday my step-daughter and her boyfriend came over to
tie-dye some t-shirts. With lots of
space to spread out they went to work.
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| Fit to be Tie-Dyed! |
It is very impressive to see the level of concern –
serious concern – teens and “twenties” have for environmental issues. It seems they have too much too worry about.
So when I joked about selling PCB-free shirts they kind
of looked at me and asked “how harmful are PCBs?” and “we don’t have to worry
about them anyway right?”
Well, we know PCBs are harmful and we know that there are
direct and indirect ways of being contaminated by PCBs.
1)
Obvious
Ways: exposure to PCBs, ingesting PCBs
2)
Less
Obvious Ways: exposure to “invisible” PCBs, ingesting non-legacy PCBs,
breathing volatized PCBs
Why Worry?
The answer to that one can fill – and has filled – a lot
of column-inches! A summary courtesy of
Elizabeth Grossman (emphasis mine):
“Polychlorinated
biphenyls (PCBs) were commercially manufactured in the United States from about
1930 until 1979, when their production was banned under the Toxic Substances
Control Act (TSCA) because of concerns about their extreme environmental
persistence, ability to bioaccumulate, and adverse human health effects.
PCBs were used in numerous industrial and consumer applications, most notably
as insulation fluids in electrical transformers and generators but also in
products including fluorescent lamp ballasts, caulk, and carbonless copy paper.
These now-discontinued manufactured chemicals have received a great deal of
attention in terms of research and environmental remediation. But
other, lesser-known PCBs continue to be generated and released into the
environment, not from intentionally created commercial products but as
unintentional by-products of manufacturing processes including, according to
recent studies, those used to make certain pigments used in dyes, inks, and
paints.
“PCBs do not
occur naturally, and once in the environment they can last for decades. Until
recently, PCBs that were being detected in the environment were thought to come
entirely from “legacy” sources. Yet developments in analytical technology have
given researchers a better understanding of PCB sources, of the patterns of
individual PCBs (or congeners) that are being detected environmentally, and the
fate of PCBs in the environment—how they move between soil, sediment,
water, and air. These advances have also enabled the detection of
individual congeners at very low levels and the identification of many new and
ongoing sources of PCBs beyond those resulting from historical commercial
mixtures.
“Recently,
manufacturing by-product PCBs have been identified in wastewater, sediments,
and air in numerous locations. They have also
been positively identified in testing of new products colored with such
pigments, so it is clear these PCBs are not occurring as a result of legacy
commercial mixtures. “What is emerging is an increasingly complex picture of
the prevalence of nonlegacy PCBs alongside the persisting environmental
presence of legacy PCBs, and a concurrent and likewise complex picture of how
PCBs can affect human health at very low levels of exposure.”
Elizabeth Grossman, a Portland, OR–based
environmental and science writer, has written for Environmental Health News,
Yale Environment 360, Scientific American, The Washington Post,
and other publications. Her books include Chasing Molecules and High
Tech Trash.
UH
OH. They really are out there. So then we ask, does exposure to these PCBs
matter? Again, Grossman:
“PCBs
have also been identified as endocrine disruptors and shown to have adverse
effects on the endocrine system, particularly on thyroid hormone function. They
are also associated with skin and eye problems, liver toxicity, and adverse
effects on the immune, nervous, and reproductive systems as well as on blood
pressure and blood cholesterol levels. Prenatal and childhood PCB exposure has
been associated with behavioral and cognitive problems. Among the PCB health effects now under
investigation are their impacts on brain functions that control behavior,
language, learning, and memory. Certain PCBs have been identified as
carcinogens.”
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| "please, sir, may I have another?" |
KNOW ANY POLITICAL FIGURES WHO MAY SUFFER FROM PCB
EXPOSURE?!?!?!?
Quick summary of known
effects on humans:
·
Endocrine disruptors
·
Skin and eye problems
·
Liver toxicity
·
Blood pressure and blood
cholesterol levels
·
Adverse effects on the
immune, nervous, and reproductive systems
·
Cancer…of course
I Googled some of these
ailments and clicked on “images.” Pretty
disturbing stuff. Here is all I could
bear to share:
Okay, it is bad. We know.
That’s why, when identified, we remediate. Besides reading my letters, PCBs can give you
many of the same symptoms of a thyroid disease.
I know, I KNOW!
Some days I feel like Jimmy
Carter – likable-but-annoying – in his cardigan telling the American people
that we faced the “moral equivalent of war” vis-à-vis energy in the
mid-70s. But COME ON GINA, this IS
IMPORTANT.
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| Let's do it for the kids! |
SO LET’S MOVE TOWARD MORE SUCCESS RATHER THAN "MONITORING FAILURE" IN THE UPPER HUDSON
RIVER!
