This Friday EPA will release a long-awaited report on the distribution and effects of dioxin compounds.  The report reveals that these substances are 10 times more dangerous than EPA believed in 1994.  They are carcinogens with no safe exposure level.  
 
Dioxins and the related furans sorb to sediment and are found throughout the Lower Columbia River.  The river is considered "water quality limited" partly due to the presence of these nefarious chemicals.  The release of dioxins into the river is still permitted within limits, but the EPA report indicates non-point sources, such as river sediment, are likely responsible for most current dioxin distribution. One concern with the channel deepening plan (and also with some maintenance dredging practices) is that dioxins in disturbed sediment will add to the current load in the river system.  The acts of dredging and blasting stir up sediments; discharge into the flow lane redistributes even more toxins.  Imagine also the impact of dumping millions of tons of dioxin-laced sediment in the near-shore ocean.
 
Events are planned in 26 states on Friday to call attention to the dioxin crisis.  We participated in a full-page ad in the New York Times Monday.  For your information, I'll paste a press release CDOG is issuing related to the dioxin report.  The full report can be found at http://www.chej.org/.  
 
Peter Huhtala
Executive Director
Columbia Deepening Opposition Group
PO Box 682, Astoria, Oregon 97103
(503) 325-8069
huhtala@teleport.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 9, 2000

CONTACT: Peter Huhtala (503) 325-8069 - Executive Director, Columbia Deepening Opposition Group (CDOG)


Dioxin In Our Food: A Public Health Emergency
178 Groups Call on Clinton-Gore Administration to Adopt a Dioxin-Free
Diet for Polluters

CDOG Links Dioxin Crisis to Channel Deepening Plan


Astoria, Oregon -- This year, according to a new USEPA report, a minimum of 4,000 people in the United States will get cancer from dioxin, at least ten new cases every day. Dioxin will also cause an unknown number of children to be born with birth defects, suppressed immune systems and learning disabilities. Adults will develop diabetes, endometriosis and heart disease because of dioxin exposure.

"Northwest residents are getting sick from dioxin in fish, meat, eggs and dairy products. Even breast milk is being contaminated by this dangerous chemical," said Peter Huhtala, executive director of the Columbia Deepening Opposition Group. "This is a food poisoning crisis - a public health emergency - that demands action from the Administration. Yet, here in the Columbia River Estuary we face a federal channel deepening plan that will make the situation worse."


The new EPA report, leaked last month to the Washington Post, is based on more than 5,000 scientific studies on dioxin, an unintended by-product that is created when chlorine and chlorine-containing chemicals are manufactured and when chlorine-containing materials are burned. Beginning in the 1930s with the growth of the industries that make and use chlorine, dioxin levels in the environment rose sharply until the 1970s. According to EPA, the largest sources of dioxin releases to air are the burning of municipal waste, medical waste and hazardous waste in incinerators and cement kilns.

Since the 1970s, dioxin levels in the environment have declined. According to the new EPA report, improvements in combustion and emission controls on incinerators, the closing of a number of incineration facilities, elimination of most open burning, phase out of leaded gas, and bans on PCBs, the herbicide 2,4,5-T, hexachlorophene and restrictions on uses of pentachlorophenol led to this decline.

EPA's report fails to mention a dominant factor in the decline of dioxin levels: community activism. For example, the popular opposition to incineration, the largest source of dioxin, has blocked the building of at least 191 incinerators and led to the closing of 59 operating
incinerators. Before the EPA banned 2,4,5-T, many communities had won local ordinances prohibiting its use. Community activism has convinced many pulp and paper mills to adopt dioxin-eliminating measures.

"Most of the pulp and paper mills in the Columbia Basin are still allowed to dump dioxin into the water. Decades of discharge have left sediments in the river laced with outrageously toxic substances," said Huhtala. "We suspected that dredging and dumping this stuff would be a problem. Now we learn that dioxin is far more dangerous than EPA initially imagined."

The ports of Portland, Vancouver, St. Helens, Woodland, and Kalama are the local sponsors for a plan to deepen the Columbia River shipping channel over a 100-plus mile stretch from the ocean to Portland. The US Army Corps of Engineers estimates that over 20 million cubic yards - equivalent to 2 million 10-yard dump truck loads - of sediment would need to be dredged and blasted to accomplish the deepening. This sediment would be placed in sites along the river, poured back into the flow-lane of the Columbia, piled on islands in the estuary, and dumped in the ocean just on the river's mouth.

In a 1991 Reconnaissance Study every sediment sample in the Lower Columbia River contained dioxin. Resident fish, including carp, peamouth chub, and large-scale suckers, are under health advisories from Astoria to Bonneville Dam for high concentrations of dioxin.

"The fish are getting the dioxin from feeding on creatures that live in the sediment," said Huhtala. "Dioxin accumulates in their bodies and magnifies as it goes up the food chain. Once it reaches predators like eagles and otters and humans, the effects can be disastrous."

"The hypocrisy is inexcusable," continued Huhtala. "EPA acknowledges that dioxin may be the most dangerous man-made chemical, then allows the Corps to dredge and blast and dump it in our faces. EPA is actually preparing to designate an ocean dumpsite, just a few miles from shore, that could be used for untested river sediments. Help me understand!"

EPA has proposed what is known as the Deep Water Site, an area of about 14-square-miles beginning about 5 miles off the beaches of Clatsop County, Oregon. The site would be available for dredgings from the mouth of the river and from other projects in the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. The Corps of Engineers have declared all sediment from the Columbia River federal navigation channel to be acceptable for ocean disposal under their exclusionary guidelines.

"We can hope that this report gives the governors of Oregon and Washington pause. Citizens need to ask our political leaders if they are willing to protect public health," said Huhtala.

"EPA Administrator Carol Browner recommends that we solve the dioxin problem by eating more fruits and vegetables," added Aaron Huhtala, CDOG activist and student at Astoria High School. "Now, eating more fruits and vegetables is good advice. Personally, I choose a vegan diet. But you can't eat your way out of the dioxin problem. Instead of telling us to go on a dioxin-free diet, the Clinton Administration should put dioxin-polluting industries on a strict diet aimed to get dioxin out of the environment. They should not be promoting a project guaranteed to expose us to more dioxin."


More information on the EPA's dioxin report and the dioxin-free diet for polluters is available on line at http://www.chej.org/ or by calling (503) 325-8069.