The
Times is launching an electronic newsletter called Saginaw Bay Watershed
Watch.
It
will include an expanded version of this Green Scene column in e-mail format,
all the environmental stories that run in the paper, and a calendar of events
going on in the 22-county Saginaw Bay Watershed….Michigan’s largest. To
subscribe send an e-mail to sbww@bc-times.com C’mon do it! Be engaged……….This
watershed needs all our voices to restore it, to protect it and to ensure we
have fishable swim-able waters for future generations.
Dioxin, Public Health and Food for Thought
The following 2 articles were forwarded to me by physicians who found them relevant to the debate we are mired down in regarding the human impacts of Dow’s dioxin/furan contamination in our watershed. A debate uncalled for given the thousands of independent studies demonstrating the impact of dioxin on human and ecological health. We need look no further than our backyard to see how, as the article so well states, the debate over science has become a debate over policy. We know it is in Dow best interest to manufacture uncertainty, it’s right out of the tobacco industry handbook- create doubt and insist on more and more research. At the end of the day it
The bigger question is
who is permitting the debate over public policy with regards to this
contamination. Are we to believe that there is so little independent science to
support dioxin’s impact on humans that we can afford to be engaged in a debate
with Dow to the detriment of public health and cleaning up our rivers? Of course
there isn’t. The link to the
article from the Journal of Public Health is below---- the snips so relevant to
our issue and Dow’s PR game.
Manufacturing
Uncertainty: Contested Science and the Protection of the Public’s Health and
Environment
David Michaels, PhD, MPH and
Celeste Monforton, MPH
Snip:
Opponents
of public health and environmental regulation often try to “ manufacture
uncertainty by questioning the validity of scientific evidence on which the
regulations are based,…………
Snip: This
strategy of manufacturing uncertainty in antithetical to the public health
principal that decisions be made using the best evidence available….
http://www.defendingscience.org/upload/Michaels-Monforton.pdf
Dioxin Alters
Normal Ratios of girls and boys
Reuters
News Service
Oct
18th 2007
TORONTO (Reuters) - More girls than boys are
born in some Canadian communities because airborne pollutants called dioxins can
alter normal sex ratios, even if the source of the pollution is many kilometers
away, researchers say.Dioxin exposure has been shown elsewhere to lead to both
higher cancer rates and the birth of more females.Researchers at the
IntrAmericas Centre for Environment and Health say their findings, released this
month, confirm the phenomenon in Canada.The study also reveals the health risks
of living within 25 km (15.5 miles) of sources of pollution -- a greater
distance than previously thought, they said.http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN1836384520071018
EPA right in urging Dow to speed up work
Midland Daily News
Richard Karl, Superfund Division EPa
October 23, 2007
Snip:
Your
editorial of Sept. 17th entitled "Our View: EPA should finish its work" suggests
that because the agency's dioxin reassessment is not yet completed, dioxin
toxicity remains open to serious scientific debate. This is simply not
true.
Snip: EPA has extensive scientific
knowledge on the toxicity of dioxin. Thousands of peer-reviewed scientific
studies have been published. No matter how you look at dioxin, one fact remains
indisputable: dioxin is a highly toxic compound. In fact, EPA's reassessment of
the most recent science indicated that dioxin is a more potent toxic chemical
than previously believed. A recent University of Michigan study funded by Dow
Chemical revealed that people consuming fish from the Tittabawassee River,
Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay have higher than average levels of dioxin in their
blood. Any increase in the
dioxin levels of fish consumers is a health
concern.
http://www.ourmidland.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=18946502&BRD=2289&PAG=461&dept_id=578054&rfi=8
Best Regards,
Michelle Hurd Riddick
Lone Tree Council