Elemental enemy - environmental hazards of chlorinated chemicals

Sierra, Jan-Feb, 1995 by Paul Rauber

It was, perhaps, the data about shrinking penis size that finally got policymakers to seriously consider banning chlorinated chemicals. For the past half century, evidence has been piling up on the hazards of the large class of compounds known as "organochlorines," including DDT, dioxin, and PCBs. First they were linked to chloracne, then to cancer, and most recently to a wide range of disruptions of the reproductive and hormonal systems of animals and humans.

It is these last lurid effects that have finally caught the popular imagination: boys born to mothers exposed to PCB-contaminated cooking oil in Taiwan with significantly shorter penises than those in a control group; male alligators in Florida's Lake Apopka exposed to the DDT-breakdown product DDE with penises one-half to one-third the normal length; 70 percent of female rhesus monkeys exposed to dioxin with endometriosis, a painful inflammation of the uterine lining. And, according to the EPA's 1994 Dioxin Reassessment, the average body burden of organochlorines in the U.S. population is already enough to cause harm.

Unfortunately, the same stability that prevents organochlorines from decomposing in the environment has also made them cornerstones of modern industrial chemistry. Among many other tasks, they go into thousands of plastic products; form the basis of most herbicides and pesticides; and serve as degreasers and paint strippers. Chlorine is commonly used to bleach wood pulp to make paper white, but it leaves behind an organochlorine soup. When chlorinated products are manufactured or incinerated, other compounds--often including deadly dioxins--are released into the air or water, contaminating vegetation and starting their way up the food chain. A hallmark of organochlorines is their tendency to bioaccumulate, and to pass from one generation to the next through the placenta. They are, in this respect, the molecular version of Original Sin.

One of the first public agencies to speak out on chlorine was the U.S./Canada International Joint Commission on the Great Lakes (where chlorinated chemicals are poisoning subsistence fishers and rendering terns and gulls essentially hermaphroditic). The IJC recommended strong medicine: phasing out all chlorine and chlorinated chemicals--not just particular poisons like DDT and PCBs--as soon as possible. This demand is echoed by the American Public Health Association, Greenpeace, and, most recently, the Sierra Club. "We cannot address this problem one chemical at a time," says Club President J. Robert Cox. "Regulation of these chemicals as a class is the only way that we can adequately address this issue."

It is the call to phase out all chlorinated chemicals that really gives industry the heebie-jeebies. The EPA's Dioxin Reassessment, which industry had fondly hoped would give it a clean bill of health, showed instead that dioxin and other chlorinated compounds are much more dangerous than was previously thought. Frantic that the public and policymakers will draw obvious conclusions from the steady accumulation of damning evidence, the Chemical Manufacturers Association has bankrolled a $5-million public-relations effort to persuade us that individual chlorinated chemicals should be considered innocent until unequivocally proven guilty. That doesn't mean, however, that it is offering to test each of the estimated 11,000 organochlorine compounds--an impossible task, as Tufts University biologist Ana Soto points out in Garbage magazine: "There aren't enough rats in the world to assess individual compounds and what their combined effects might be."

The chemical industry's other major argument turns on the ubiquity of its poisons: a total U.S. phaseout of chlorine, it argues, would cost $102 billion annually. Yet the vast bulk of organochlorines could be scrapped for far less. "Eliminating 95 percent of chlorine use would cost only $20 billion," writes Joe Thornton, a research analyst for Greenpeace (which has been at the forefront of the issue for years). The industry's own estimates show that most of the expense applies to sectors using small amounts of chlorine, such as pharmaceuticals and water purification. In most other areas, affordable alternatives are readily available and are, in fact, increasingly being employed. It's now a question of whether we'll phase out chlorine before it phases out us.

Resource

EPA Administrator Carol Browner has the political authority, if not the political will, to start phasing out chlorinated chemicals. Call her at (202) 260-4700.

The Sierra Club has assembled a packet of materials for activists interested in getting rid of chlorinated poisons. To obtain it, call Brett Hulsey at (608) 257-4994.

Greenpeace has produced a number of publications as part of its Chlorine-Free Campaign. These include Joe Thornton's Achieving Zero Dioxin: An Emergency Strategy for Dioxin Elimination, and The Medium Is the Message, a report on its campaign to persuade Time magazine to switch to chlorine-free paper. To order, call Greenpeace at (202) 319-2402.