News Coverage
Environmental Council offers food for thought
Published September 27, 2003
The Regional Environmental Council will hold its annual meeting tomorrow night at the Worcester Public Library, featuring a public panel discussion on an issue that will make some people think about their last meal.
A panel of knowledgeable advocates will be talking about the social and environmental impacts of the food supply and who controls it.
Topics will include issues facing organic farmers, the success of a new farm created on a vacant lot as part of the REC summer youth program, local hunger problems and issues facing the world food supply. Julie Rawson, a farmer from Barre who has played an important role in nurturing the organic farming movement in Massachusetts and New England, will provide her perspective on how people can help support sustainable local agriculture.
S'Ra DeSantis, a global justice activist and organic farmer in Vermont, will discuss local alternatives to the worldwide food industry and discuss some of the damaging aspects of the global food system. Jean McMurray, executive director of the Worcester County Food Bank, will lay out her views on hunger, its causes and some solutions.
Two members of YouthGROW, the organization's sustainable agriculture summer program, will discuss the first year of that effort, which had about a dozen young people from Worcester transforming a vacant city lot on Oread Street into a flourishing urban farm. Still being harvested, the garden has been producing eggplant, cantaloupe and other fresh fruits and vegetables for sale through local food co-ops and for donation to local food pantries.
Anyone getting hungry reading this might also like to know that the organization will serve samples of ''delicious, organic, locally grown food'' at the forum, which is free and open to the public.
The organization's business meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. and the speaking program begins at 7 in the Saxe Room. Some members of the U.S. Senate are not blaming EPA administrator nominee Michael O. Leavitt for the Bush administration's previous environmental policies, but a lot of environmental activists are objecting to the appointment.
A group of environmental advocates in Utah, where Mr. Leavitt served as governor, banded together to criticize his environmental record in advance of last week's hearings before the Senate Public Works and Environment Committee.
Members of the Sierra Club, the Utah Rivers Council, the Friends of Great Salt Lake and Families Against Incinerator Risk claimed he had an ''anti-environmental record,'' did a poor job enforcing laws against major polluters in Utah, and retaliated against state employees who offered opinions that advocated conservation.
Philip E. Clapp of the National Environmental Trust complained that Mr. Leavitt ''offered not a single concrete suggestion on how to restore the reputation of an agency badly damaged by scientific manipulation and back room deals with regulated industries.''
Mr. Clapp said he is the first nominee for EPA administrator over the last 30 years who didn't even try in testimony to assure the committee of his or her commitment to protecting the environment and upholding the nation's environment.
''That shows you how far the bar has been lowered in the Bush administration,'' Mr. Clapp said.
U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is meanwhile threatening a filibuster to block the appointment until the administration reveals which official was responsible for faulty public assurances that the air was safe in Manhattan in the weeks following 9-11.
Committee member James M. Jeffords, the Vermont independent, said he will not vote against Mr. Leavitt's appointment, even though he is very unhappy with the Bush administration's policies. He said he is hoping Mr. Leavitt will show some independence from the administration after it ran the last EPA administrator, Christie Whitman, out of Washington. ''I felt very sorry for his predecessor, who had to leave because she couldn't take it any more,'' Mr. Jeffords said.
While in Boston last week with U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, D-Worcester, at a press conference that featured sign-holding anti-Bush demonstrators, Mr. Jeffords said 5 million women in the country now have unsafe levels of mercury in their bodies, and 320,000 newborns are at risk for developmental and neurological problems from mercury exposure each year.
Nonetheless, he said, the Bush administration would eliminate mercury emission controls in its ''Clear Skies'' air-pollution program.
''A look at the fine print shows that 'Clear Skies' actually provides less protection than existing law. ... Clear skies will strip the Clean Air Act of the mercury air toxics rule that I like to call the Mothers' and Children's Mercury Protection rule,'' Mr. Jeffords said. Mr. McGovern called the mercury pollution problem ''a health crisis'' that the administration is ignoring. He is supporting a bill proposed by Mr. Jeffords, called the Clean Power Act, to cut pollution emissions from power plants, which Mr. McGovern said will save lives and save billions of dollars in health care costs nationally.
The Bush administration has claimed that the Clear Skies Initiative will boost energy supplies, help consumers with cheaper electric rates and provide new flexibility in finding ways for polluting power plants to meet clean air goals.
A study released last week has raised alarm about a widely used chemical that has turned up in women's breast milk. While the chemical, polybrominated diphenyl ether, is credited with saving lives as the most widely used flame retardant in the country, a study by the Environmental Working Group found significant levels in breast milk of all 20 women tested. An earlier study found the chemical in breast milk of all 47 women tested.
The group said the finding is of great concern because no studies have been done to determine what a safe level would be, and it is not understood whether people are absorbing the chemical through exposure to furniture, foam products and electronic equipment or by consuming food tainted with the chemical.
Two years ago, another study found that 21 out of 21 chinook and coho salmon from Lake Michigan had elevated levels of PBDE. Those levels are among the highest in the world, and six times higher than levels of the chemical in European salmon.
Virtually all of the PBDE used here is produced by the Great Lakes Chemical Co. of Indianapolis, a company with sales of $1.4 billion last year and that employs 4,600 people. Through Berkshire Hathaway, popular investor Warren Buffet owns almost 10 percent of that company.
The company did not respond to inquiries about what the study means to the manufacturer or whether it is searching for alternatives or other methods to keep the chemical from getting into people's bodies. Peter J. O'Toole of the Bromine Science and Environment Forum, an industry group representing companies that use and manufacture the chemical, said there are several forms of it in wide use. So far, none have been shown to have negative effects on humans and they are sold as nontoxic material.
Not in Europe, however. There, concerns about the chemical have already resulted in a ban on products that contain PBDE.
''In Europe, they used the precautionary principle,'' Mr. O'Toole said, and eliminated exposure to the chemical based on suspicion it could cause human health problems. California has also adopted a law to eliminate use of the most suspect forms of the chemical in that state by 2008.
Mr. O'Toole said Great Lakes Chemical has called for time to develop an alternative for its customers, but so far has not produced a substitute.
''Action is being taken to get good alternatives on the market,'' Mr. O'Toole said.