UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, May 1, 1900
5A
A flammable gas that can be fatal if in air-borne concentrations of 3,000 parts per million. Ammonia is irritating to the eyes, nose and respiratory tracts in smaller doses.
Ammonia —
The pollutants: Examples of released chemicals and their effects
A lethal kind of alcohol that can cause blindness in smaller doses.
An extremely flammable and cancer-causing compound that burns the skin and eyes and can depress the central nervous system — the most dangerous of all pollutants released.
Amounts released in Douglas County in 1993:
Ammmonia: 1,317,750 pounds
Ethylene oxide: 3,760 pounds
Methanol
508,843 pounds
The Dirty Half-Dozen
Lawrence-area industries-cleanup or cover-up?
Continued from Page 1A
said Jacquelyn Ferguson, EPA Region 7 environmental engineer. "For the business, it is like throwing away raw materials; so it is in the business's best interest to conserve chemicals."
Brian James / KANSAN
Also, Ferguson said many companies changed their processes, and now use chemicals that are not on the required reporting list.
The lists also made pollution bad public relations.
Karl Birns, KU professor and former Kansas Department of Health and Environment employee, said public pressure was a factor in reductions, particularly with large companies, because the reports became a yardstick by which the community could measure a company's efforts.
"It brought things out publicly and allowed companies to see that they were having problems," he said.
"The law increased their level of visibility." Bims said. "The companies wanted the ability to reduce emissions to get out of reporting, and become less visible."
Allan Holiday, technical supervisor for Farmland's Lawrence plant, agreed.
"We lowered our TRI emissions because we wanted to do it," he said. "And improve our image if we can."
They modified the way they operate equipment, and quit selling a dry nitrogen fertilizer because the drying process left behind polluted water which had to be drained off as waste.
"The TRI program gives you specific goals to shoot for," Holiday said. "That's what the EPA saw and we saw."
Because of its efforts, Farmland received two awards from the EPA. One was for sharing a new cleanup system with competitors around Kansas and the United States.
Several Douglas County companies have been participating in a joint effort to clean up their emissions since 1990. About six large Douglas County polluters are enrolled in the 33/50 program, a program to voluntarily reduce their toxic emissions by 33 percent by this year and by 50 percent by 1995.
Farmland, Inc. is ahead of schedule, but another participating company, Davol Corp., seemed to be sliding backwards in the 1993 data.
Their toxic emissions, mostly ethylene oxide and ethylene glycol, two of the nastier chemicals on the list, jumped from 22,000 pounds in 1990 to 170,000 in 1993 — an increase of almost 800 percent.
But in 1983, about 135,000 pounds of Davol's ethylene glycol were never released into the environment, and were transferred to a recycling center. Ethylene glycol can be used and reused by corporations for different processes.
Chloroflourocarbons, or CFCs, and ethylene oxide — two chemicals which accounted for the rest of Davol's emissions — have in fact been
reduced steadily in accordance with the 33/50 program.
Dan Scheck, plant manager for Davol, said the company made costly changes to eliminate its need for CFCs and added acid-based scrubbers to its plant to reduce the amount of ethylene oxide it needed.
"At that time our production volume increased tenfold," he said.
He said the chemical was not a suspected carcinogen.
But Scheck disagreed with toxicologists from the University of Kansas Medical Center on just how dangerous ethylene oxide was.
"Of the epidemiological studies that I have seen, none of them support that," he said.
Between 1990 and 1993, FMC Corp. did not make significant reductions in toxic emissions. Paul Studebaker, FMC environmental manager, said that since 1993 the plant has added a scrubber, and that he plans to reduce methanol emissions.
T the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act has some holes in it.
The law does not outlaw the toxic chemicals, it merely requires that companies report their emissions. That means a major spill by a company of one of the chemicals on the reporting list would
not be punishable under the law, but failing to report the spill could get them in real trouble.
Companies report the emissions with no independent intervention. And many companies don't even bother to report emissions. The punishment for non-compliance is nothing more than a small fine the equivalent of a mouthwashing with some toxic soap.
Karl Birns, lecturer in environmental studies and former manager of the Kansas Right-to-Know program of the KDHE, said the program was "soft reporting," and the gov-
sions being emitted from year to year. The rest come from non-manufacturing companies — like farm fertilizers that pollute the Kansas River.
Under the law, companies with fewer than 10 employees are not required to report their emissions, and companies using less than 10,000 pounds of a chemical on the reporting list are not required to report at all, he said.
He said smaller community companies such as self-service car washes, auto customizers and metal finishers held and emitted toxic chemicals, but not enough to report to the EPA.
"That's not a real major problem, at least that we are aware of," she said.
But, Ferguson said, most companies do report as required.
The maximum fine for not reporting emissions is $25,000, but Ferguson said the EPA would rarely go to that level.
"The companies don't want that against them, especially with the public knowing," she said. "We consider the size of the company and their ability to pay."
But the EPA could fill some of the holes in the law.
Ferguson said the EPA was concentrating on adding chemicals to the reporting requirements. As a result, 286 new chemicals have been added to the required reporting list for 1995.
She said that adding businesses other than manufacturers would be the next step in making the law more solid.
Service-type businesses, dry cleaners, mining companies and local municipalities, such as the Lawrence wastewater treatment plants, could be
"It's a 'Have you stopped beating yourwife?' kind of question."
Birns also said the toxic emissions on TRIs accounted for only about 10 percent of all emis-
"Unless something led the government to believe the company's figures were not correct, they would just throw the numbers into the computer," Birns said.
ernment had no way to know whether a company was reporting accurately or not.
KarlBarms
former manager of the Kansas Right-to-Know program, on why it is difficult to assess improvement in pollution management
Baruch has become an eminently monitored by the Clean Air Act and have to report some emissions to the PPA.
Jean Waters, air toxic engineer with the Pollution Prevention Institute at Kansas State University, said businesses that emit more than 10 tons of a certain chemical or 25 tons of a mix of chemicals would have to get a permit from the KDHE for emissions. "They have to pay to pollute," she said.
underthese standards
Has pollution in and around Lawrence lessened, or are there dangers hidden inside factory canisters, hidden drain pipes and farmers' fields?
"Data is not really available to give a quantitative answer to that kind of question," said Karl Birns. "It's a 'Have you stopped beating your wife?' kind of question."
n't drink the water.
T the Kansas River slips through town quietly. It looks healthy enough from the bridges that cross it, but everybody knows not to drink the water.
By Paul Todd Kansan staff writer
Whv?
Kansas waterways are in a sorry state
Farmland Inc. still dumps diethanolamine, ammonia and ammonium nitrate into the Kansas River. Fact is, Farmland accounts
the amount of pollutants dumped into the Kansas and Wakarusa rivers has not shown the same reductions as the air around Lawrence.
In fact, the Kansas River is in sad shape.
And although the total amount of reported toxic releases into the water around Lawrence lessened in three years, the decline was not nearly as drastic as the decrease in air pollution.
for all the pollutants dumped into the river that were reported to the EPA in 1993 - almost 660,000 pounds of toxic chemicals.
Fish from the river can be consumed only in very limited quantities because of pollution. Chlordane, a chemical pesticide no longer used by farmers, is still in the river in high quantities, and it accumulates in fish tissue.
But the chemicals that Farmland dumps into the Kansas River are not what makes late-night dips in the river a health hazard.
According to a 1994 Kansas Department of Health and Environment report, 97 percent of the streams in Kansas do not "support all designated uses," which include domestic water supply, recreation and aquatic life support. The main reasons for this are dangerous chemicals from farming, industrial discharge and feedlots, and suspended and dissolved sediments in the river because of dredging and damming.
The Kansas River is only an indicator of the water quality problems in Kansas.
Atrazine, a fertilizer, also collects in high quantities in the river.
"It ought to be a major source of embarrassment for the state," he said. "And it ought to make them angry and demand change."
that because 97 percent of the water in Kansas did not meet designated use requirements under the Clean Water Act, the Council on State Governments has ranked Kansas 50th in the nation for overall water quality.
Bill Craven, state lobbyist for the Kansas Natural Resource Council and the Kansas Sierra Club, said
And if matters were not murky enough, on April 18, American Rivers, a national river conservation organization, placed the Kansas River on its list of the 10 most endangered rivers in America.
Craven was present to hand out the dishonors in Burcham Park, next to the Kaw.
Total emissions from the top pollutants
Below is a list of the companies that released a large amount of pollution into the environment in Douglas county from 1990 to 1993. Farmland Industries, Inc. released the most pollutants of any company during that time.
Brian James / KANSAN
The air above Mount Oread is actually pretty clean, at least by Environmental Protection Agency and Kansas Department of Health and Environment standards.
The KDHE, however, does not have a conclusive air quality report on just how healthy the air is.
A drive down Kansas Highway 10, at 10, can look
By Paul Todd Kansan staff writer
drive down prairies night way 10 at night can look like a scene from a Sherlock Holmes movie. But all that fog seeping from the Farmland plant is just that — fog.
"I is the air safe and everybody could breathe it with no effect." Greg Crawford, public relations officer for the department of health and environment, asked.
The answer is probably not, but only people with specific problems with certain chemicals in small doses could be affected by Lawrence's air he said.
Karl Rozman, professor of pharmacy and toxicology at KU Medical Center, sits on the national committee that determines healthy limits for chemicals.
He said ammonia, the No.1 pollutant in the air around Lawrence, was dangerous only in large doses.
The body makes a lot of ammonia anyway, and it can process ammonia much easier than other chemicals, he said.
"The threshold limit value is 25 parts per million," he said. "Nobody should be exposed to a higher value than that."
The threshold value limit is the amount of the chemical that a person could be exposed to for eight hours a day, seven days a week without harmful effect.
Rozman said the threshold for ethylene oxide is only 1 part per million. The chemical has caused cancer in laboratory animals and is a suspected human carcinogen. If air or water had a large amount of ethylene oxide mixed in, and a person breathed or drank it, it would be like drinking antifreeze. Rozman said.
Ethylene oxide, produced mostly by Davol, Inc., is much more toxic.
But the 4,000 pounds of ethylene oxide that Davol emitted last year into the air is not even close to a toxic amount when released into air and wind during an entire year, he said.
Lawrence is no Denver when it comes to air pollution. Douglas County's problems come at ground—and water—level.
Air and water pollution in Douglas County. 1990-93
990
3. 5 million
[Total amount in brackets]
3. 0 million
[3,310,118]
1992
2. 5 million 2.0 million
1993
Air pollution
1. 5 million
Water pollution
[2,335,745]
1. 0 million
[959,639]
[652,145] [659,600]
[817,468]
500. 000
[817,468]
Brian James / KANSAN