Green house gases - White House Office of Environmental Policy issues orders promoting use of recycled products and decrease in use of toxic chemicals by federal government - Editorial

WHILE Vice President Gore was re-inventing government, the White House's Office of Environmental Policy was floating a pair of presidential orders designed to produce more bureaucratic gridlock. It persuaded President Clinton to sign one of them. Dated August 3 and titled "Federal Compliance with Right-to-Know Laws and Pollution Prevention Requirements," the eight-page presidential order requires each federal agency to "establish a plan" for reducing the use of toxic chemicals by 50 per cent by 1999. Toxic chemicals are defined as 756 chemicals land compounds listed in various so-called Toxic Use Reduction (TUR) laws and include such terrifying things as aluminum, ammonia, benzene, chlorine, chromium, copper, phenol, silver, styrene, vinyl chloride, and various nickel and zinc compounds. In addition, the list covers virtually all the raw materials of the organic chemicals industry--benzene, ethylene, propylene, xylene, toluene, butadiene--and many of its intermediate and final products. Many of these are hazardous, but they are hazards we have learned to manage.

A second presidential order still being fought over covers recycling and use of "environmentally preferable products" by the Federal Government. That order originally included a section calling for the government to acquire "totally chlorine-free paper" by 1995. In fact, there is nothing inherently hazardous about chlorine. Most of us take chlorine in our drinking water, since it is the most commonly used germicide at municipal waterworks. But chlorine is being demonized by the environmental movement as a source material for various bogy products such as chlorinated fluorocarbons (CFCs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and DDT. Greens reason that if they can stigmatize and eventually ban the source chemical, they will abort all the downstream products.

But the move to end the feds' purchase of chlorinated paper products was a political over-reach by the the White House Greens. Virtually all U.S.-made printing paper and tissue products are made from Southern pine pulp that is very sappy and requires heavy chlorination to wash out the yellow lignins. By contrast paper manufacturers in Sweden, Finland, and Germany use less sappy woods such as birches and firs, and can easily convert to non-chlorine technology. The draft presidential order on paper was virtually a "Buy European" order. After vigorous lobbying by the Chemical Manufacturers Association and the American Forest and Paper Association, the White House put out the word it would drop the no-chlorinated-paper clause.

Far from abandoning the principle that hazardous substances can simply be listed and phased out in favor of other items deemed "environmentally preferable," however, the White House appears to be sticking with plans to institute "affirmative procurement programs" favoring federal purchase of such items. It proposes an Environmental Executive at deputy assistant secretary level or higher in every federal agency who would be responsible for running a continuous Green check on all agency activities.

Is this government activism necessary? Or even sensible? John D. Graham and George Gray of the Center for Risk Analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health point out in a paper that the idea that certain chemicals are inherently "toxic" is unscientific. All chemicals are harmful in certain conditions and concentrations. But there is no scientifically defensible method of declaring substances as "toxic." The various lists proposed by toxic-reduction advocates have "no sound and consistent technical basis."

Indeed, in a letter to President Clinton, they say: "The use of lists ignores the central tenet of toxicology that the dose makes the poison. All substances from table salt to asbestos can be toxic under some conditions of exposure. By ignoring the role of exposure and encouraging substitution of chemicals which are not on the list for those on the list, the TUR strategy may lead to

unintended and increased risks to health and the environment."

How so? Many of the unlisted substances have not been thoroughly studied. Once tested, they are likely to be listed too. So procurement policy will become a game of musical chairs, with procurement shifting from one untested substance to another.

Then again, if agencies are stopped from buying supplies by internal Green Police, the Federal Government may one day be left without paper and simply stop working. Well, think of a better idea.