NEWS: Government Science Scandal on Pulp Mill Pollution

Question:

[Greenpeace Press Release from Environet -- Redistribute Freely] GREENPEACE EXPOSES GOVERNMENT SCIENCE SCANDAL ON PULP MILL POLLUTION TORONTO, Canada January 27, 1993 (GP) Greenpeace Canada today accused federal researchers of using exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims in order to protect the pulp and paper industry from regulation in Ontario, British Columbia, and federally. Greenpeace produced scientific documentation which refuted the claims made by Environment Canada staff. Greenpeace also disclosed that one Environment Canada researcher has recently lobbied Ontario Environment Minister Ruth Grier on behalf of the Ontario Forest Industry Association. The environmental group urged the Minister’s office to keep its commitment to passing a "zero discharge" regulation. The regulation is now pending. Greenpeace is demanding that Environment Minister Jean Charest reopen federal pulp mill regulations and stop any further participation of federal civil servants in industry lobbying. Based on unpublished claims that have not been reviewed by the scientific community, Environment Canada researchers have been claiming in the press for over a year that "new science" shows that regulating organochlorine discharges is without cause and would be a waste of money. (Organochlorines, including dioxins, are by-products created when chlorine is used to brighten paper- making pulp.) Greenpeace has surveyed scientists in the field and has found that the claims made in media reports, public debates, and published statements are without scientific foundation. The key element of the research program, conducted by Dr. John Carey and others – studying how one fish enzyme reacts to organochlorines – has been found to be a flawed research practice. In a written critique, Dr. Paul Johnston, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and a member of Greenpeace’s science advisory unit, called Dr. Carey’s conclusions "highly questionable". "What has been made public of John Carey’s research provides absolutely nothing robust to substantiate the claim reported by the press. Furthermore, the release of scientific conclusions in the absence of supporting data is a practice to be entirely deplored." Dr. Jack Vallentyne, former co-chair of the IJC Science Advisory Board and Environment Canada scientist, concurred that the case against chlorine had not been undermined by Dr. Carey’s work. "There is a wealth of research that shows that organochlorines are inherently harmful to diverse forms of life, including humans," said Dr. Vallentyne. "Dr. Carey’s work does not challenge that overall conclusion." Copies of statements provided by Dr. Johnson and Dr. Vallentyne were sent today to Jean Charest in support of a demand to establish a Board of Review under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, with the purpose of reopening the federal pulp mill regulation. Copies were also sent to B.C. Environment Minister John Cashore, who last year passed a regulation to eliminate organochlorines, and to Ontario Environment Minister Ruth Grier, whose party committed to do the same in August of 1991. "Environment Canada has been using bad science to play a political game for over a year," said Gord Perks of Greenpeace. "It’s time Environment Canada stopped acting as public relations flaks for the paper industry and got on with the job of protecting the environment."

Response:

[Greenpeace Press Release from Environet -- Redistribute Freely] BACKGROUNDER The day before the federal government announced its 1991 federal pulp and paper regulation, it organized conference calls for environmental groups and journalists. In those calls, Environment Canada staff sought to persuade the media and environmentalists that new scientific discoveries had led them to back out of prior commitments to regulate the discharge of organochlorines. Over one year later no scientific paper has been published by any scientific journal anywhere which substantiates this claim. The vast majority of data and findings have never been made available to the public, despite requests from scientists, government agencies, and public interest groups. Greenpeace has taken what information it has been able to gather about the "new" science and asked several scientists to review it. We have also reviewed the use of Dr. Carey’s work and found that despite his inability or unwillingness to publish his data in a refereed journal he is able and willing to assist the pulp and paper industry in their lobbying and in the media. THE "NEW" SCIENCE The so-called "new" science is based on the identification of elevated levels of a liver enzyme called EROD in fish exposed to effluents from pulp mills, some using chlorine-based bleaching processes and some not. The assumption was made that this indicated that some unknown non chlorinated chemical was responsible for toxic effects on fish. Further, it is claimed that other laboratory testing shows that, while both bleaching and non-bleaching mill effluents produced liver enzyme effects, fish injected with organochlorines showed no effects. Based on these claims, Environment Canada staffers John Carey and Ralph Daly have concluded and publicly argued: * that the proven toxic effects of pulp mill effluent on fish are not caused by organochlorine discharges but rather by some other hypothesized substance which they term "Chemical X". * that pulp mills using chlorine dioxide have less effect on fish (and therefore on the environment in total) than pulp mills using no chlorine-based bleaching chemicals. * that money spent eliminating chlorine from pulp mills will drain resources from cleaning up the source of "Chemical X". CRITIQUE 1. There is no research in the scientific literature that supports the above claims and conclusions. Much of the research used to support the conclusions of Dr. Carey and others has not been published and, therefore, has not been subject to the review and scrutiny of his scientific peers. The use of unsupported scientific conjecture by government officials to politically influence regulatory decisions is a deplorable abuse of accepted scientific processes. 2. The EROD liver enzyme in fish is not and has never been the basis for ecological and health concern over chlorine bleaching in the pulp and paper industry. Rather, concern over severe organochlorine contamination of the Great Lakes and other ecosystems stems from the established evidence that these chemicals cause reproductive, developmental, immunological, and hormonal toxicity in wildlife and humans. These effects are often more severe in offspring than in the exposed organism itself. Also of concern due to organochlorine exposure are cancer and genetic mutations. A large body of evidence from Scandinavia supports the conclusion that organochlorine effluents from pulp mills have caused severe effects on fish populations. The EROD effects Dr. Carey has investigated have little or no relevance to these other long-term, multi-generational effects. Dr. Carey’s contention that there is no correlation between chlorine bleaching and the EROD liver enzyme does nothing to undermine this well-documented basis for concern. 3. Dr. Carey’s use of the EROD liver enzyme as the primary indicator of ecological effects is not defensible, because the EROD enzyme is a non-specific change that responds to many factors other than chemical stimuli. For instance, increased EROD levels may merely indicate a change in temperature or in the reproductive condition of a fish. In addition, decreased EROD levels can indicate liver damage caused by chemicals or other factors. Thus, a fish exposed to chlorinated mill effluents may have a lower EROD response not because those effluents are, as Dr. Carey suggests, less toxic but because they are in fact more toxic. Due to the lack of a specific relationship between EROD and chemical toxicity, Dr. Carey’s use of EROD comparisons to make conclusions about chemical toxicity are indefensible in the absence of controls on all other EROD-related factors. 4. In some of his experiments, Dr. Carey manipulated pulp mill effluents to remove the most toxic chemicals. Dr. Carey used only the "high molecular weight fraction" of mill effluents, removing the low molecular weight portion that includes the most toxic chemicals in mill effluents. The higher-weight fraction that Dr. Carey did use is recognized as relatively non-toxic; over time in the environment, however, these large molecules are transformed into more toxic, lower-weight molecules. Using the least toxic fraction of organochlorine effluents as a basis to conclude that the entire effluent is non-toxic is clearly indefensible. 5. Dr. Carey’s conclusion that money spent on chlorine elimination would be better spent eliminating the hypothesized "Chemical X" betrays a poor understanding of emerging pulp mill technology. The only way to eliminate effectively all biological effects of chlorinated and non-chlorinated chemicals in the mill effluent is to implement closed-loop systems in which waste waters are recycled rather than discharged. A number of mills are working towards such systems, which are possible only when chlorine — which is highly corrosive — is not introduced into the mill equipment. Thus, preventing ecological effects from the non-chlorinated chemicals in pulp mill effluents also requires that chlorine be eliminated from the bleaching process. THE POLITICS OF POISON Dr. Carey’s exoneration of chlorine-based bleaching on the basis of the unpublished findings and unsupported conjecture has been put to political use in the following ways: * In 1991 Environment Canada released a formal assessment of the environmental impacts of pulp mills using chlorine. The report noted many impacts on the environment which resulted from specific organochlorines. Shortly thereafter the government set up conference calls to persuade journalists and environmentalists that there was no reason to regulate organochlorines. Dr. Carey’s research was given as the reason, though it had never been mentioned before. The following day Ottawa released its regulations and Dr. Carey was offered as the spokesperson to the media. * Following the decision by the B.C. government to ban organochlorines from pulp mill effluents, Dr. Carey was featured on a W-5 show which was critical of the decision, again based on his unpublished work. * Over the past year, Dr. Carey’s work has been cited by IJC Science Advisory Board co-chair Ralph Daly (also Dr. Carey’s Environment Canada superior) as supporting a reconsideration of the IJC’s April 1992 recommendation to phase out industrial chlorine use. During this time, Mr. Daly has jointly led an IJC sub-committee that is reviewing the chlorine phase-out with Dow Chemical’s IJC representative. * In December 1992, Dr. Carey met with Ontario Minister of the Environment Ruth Grier as part of an Ontario Forest Industry Association delegation which was lobbying the Minister not to ban organochlorine discharges. * On December 23, 1992 both Dr. Carey and Mr. Daly were quoted in a front page news article where they made the argument that Dr. Carey’s work showed organochlorine regulation is unnecessary.

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Filed under: Lobbying

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