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BY CHRISTINE KRALY
ckraly@nwitimes.com
219.662.5335 | Monday, April 21, 2008 | (2 comment(s))
The federal EPA Toxics Release Inventory, or TRI, can be an overwhelming, number-burping beast.
The results of the TRI often are cited with little to no explanation, as was the case last summer during the height of the controversy over the BP Whiting Refinery wastewater permit.
And yet the federal government and environmental regulators offer the TRI as the "best available" tool to communicate to the public the levels at which industries are polluting in communities throughout the country.
For each company industrial site, a concerned member of the public can surf through federal data to determine the amount in pounds of various reportable chemicals that site releases into the air and waterways.
U.S. Steel Gary Works was reported as the biggest polluter, dumping more than 1 million pounds of pollution into Lake Michigan in 2006 by the count of the TRI database.
But what does that really mean? What is the impact on our safety and the quality of the waters in which we swim, fish and from which we drink?
The Times pulled data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's TRI for all facilities that discharge anything either directly into Lake Michigan or into one of the hundreds of waterways within its basin. At least 68 facilities release more than 40 pollutants into the Lake Michigan basin.
But as experts and the EPA note, proper use or reporting of the TRI requires greater context and a deeper analysis.
A closer look at the chemicals in the TRI and how they are reported helps paint a more complete picture of what's really happening in Lake Michigan.
What's in a chemical?
TRI numbers are meaningless without explanation, said Alfred Beeton, former director of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"Numbers are numbers, but that doesn't mean that they're polluting," Beeton said.
He said he was neither shocked nor concerned by the pollutants or their volumes being discharged into the basin by individual facilities as discovered in The Times' computer-assisted probe of Lake Michigan discharges.
"What may be dangerous for one body of water may not be dangerous in a larger body, like Lake Michigan," Beeton said.
The EPA makes this point in its public report explaining TRI, saying "some high-volume releases of less toxic chemicals may appear to be more serious than lower-volume releases of highly toxic chemicals, when just the opposite may be true."
Take nitrate compounds, for example. Those compounds are the result of a chemical mix of nitrogen and oxygen and can be separated from water.
Nitrate compounds comprise the overwhelming majority of discharges from Lake Michigan basin facilities reporting to the TRI. It's the chemical most dumped by Indiana's biggest polluters, except BP in Whiting, and constitutes 97 percent of releases from top-ranked industrial discharger U.S. Steel Gary Works.
The compounds generally are not toxic or dangerous to aquatic life, said Duane Schuettpelz, water resources manager for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Regulators have adopted limits for nitrate compounds in drinking water, but not as discharges in wastewater permits for industries.
But nitrate compounds can be toxic to humans, some experts have concluded.
High nitrates in drinking water can lead to "blue baby" syndrome, so called for its symptoms of blueness around the hands, feet and mouth. Infants, especially those bottle-fed, are the most at risk, the World Health Organization warns.
A Times-sponsored lab analysis of drinking water from various communities in Northwest Indiana and Illinois shows safe levels of nitrates in region tap water.
U.S. Steel environmental area control manager Gregory Mackley conceded that excessive nitrates can cause algae blooms, which could lead to fish kills and human illness from eating contaminated fish.
But U.S. Steel officials say the nitrate concentration at the site's largest source, its coke plant, is below the 10 parts per million drinking water standard.
Dangerous metals
Nitrate compounds aside, lake basin facilities dump much smaller amounts of chemicals typically considered more dangerous to human or aquatic health, the Times investigation shows.
Of the nearly 3 million pounds of chemicals dumped into the Lake Michigan basin in 2006, a little more than 6 pounds was mercury or mercury compounds.
Mercury has not been proven to cause cancer but poses other health problems from exposure to large amounts. High levels of methylmercury -- a compound mixed with carbon -- can permanently damage the lungs, brain and kidneys, and are toxic to human and animal fetuses, some scientists have concluded.
People can be exposed to mercury a number of ways, including consuming mercury-contaminated fish or drinking contaminated water.
U.S. Steel discharged less than 1 pound of mercury into the Grand Calumet River, a tributary of Lake Michigan. Other sites dumped more than the steelmaker, including a Citgo refinery in Lemont, Ill., which dumped the most -- about 1.5 pounds.
A lab analysis of tap water samples from various communities in Northwest Indiana and Illinois showed safe levels of mercury.
Cadmium, a cancer-causing metal, has the same water concentration limits as mercury under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Only one facility, the ArcelorMittal Indiana Harbor West plant in East Chicago, dumped cadmium, at 7 pounds for the year.
Determining risk
But there is more to determining toxic risk than simply how much of a pollutant has gotten into water, said Michelle Watters, environmental health medical officer for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Evaluating possible health effects includes assessing whether someone has been fully exposed to a dangerous substance. Watters' agency bases its values on assuming that a person has been completely exposed.
"You wouldn't want to swim in (Indiana Harbor)," she said, for instance. "You would not find that pleasant, but it's not necessarily harmful.
"Are you inhaling it? Are you having a contact with it in a way that could result in a health effect?"
When considering lake water, it's important to remember that even if someone swallows it, it's usually not directly at the source of pollution.
"We don't have that front line at the actual source line," Watters said. "You're not drinking it straight out of that pipe."
Watered down
A better gauge of whether a facility has dumped a potentially harmful amount of a chemical is whether the facility has exceeded its concentration limit of the substance, Beeton said.
Concentrations are established by regulators to ensure discharges from facilities are diluted enough so as not to be potentially toxic.
"You could be dumping 100 tons of something," Beeton said. "But if the concentration is always below the limits, they're complying. As long as the amount meets the state (regulations), you can't really accuse them of doing anything wrong."
The Times randomly chose to pull discharge monitoring reports from May and December 2004 and 2005 for a handful of Northwest Indiana facilities.
The reports show the companies usually met concentration limits of various chemicals, with occasional breaches, often with ammonia.
December 2004 was a calm month for BP, with the company meeting its concentration limit for ammonia at one of its outfalls every day. Then on Dec. 31, it exceeded it by four times the limit.
Even with the upset, the refinery still met its required monthly ammonia concentration. Beeton called daily results more significant than overall averages.
"You can be a pretty good actor all year, but one day or two of high discharges, and you could kill fish," he said. "Once a month, maybe that's not so bad."
The following December, the same BP outfall violated its daily ammonia concentration three times, exceeding the monthly limit.
In May 2004, Cargill in Hammond exceeded its daily ammonia concentration three times but still met the monthly limit.
U.S. Steel Gary Works monitoring reports from the time period show no problems meeting concentration limits at the plant. But the plant surpassed its concentration levels of benzo-a-pyrene at least six times in 2007, IDEM records show.
In one case in February 2007, the plant more than doubled its allowed concentration of benzo-a-pyrene, a compound that absorbs into sediments and can lead to cancer after long-term exposure. The company attributed the violations to inadequate treatment at the coke plant's treatment facility.
Cumulative impact
Though individual releases by industry may not be imminently dangerous to residents and their water, the public should be concerned about the sum of what is being released into the lake, day after day, year after year, Beeton said.
Individually, the sites may not damage water quality, he said. But they are all releasing at the same time, flowing into the same body of water.
The overall effect could be damaging over time, he said.
The National Water Quality Monitoring Network released a pilot study of Lake Michigan in February, lending credence to Beeton's concerns.
"Pollutants that enter the lakes are retained and recycled in the system and can become more concentrated with time," the report says.
"Not everything's bad," Beeton said. "But when you start looking at the cumulative impact, there may be a cause for concern. Just like for humans, eating too much isn't good."
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Neves wrote on May 3, 2008 8:26 PM:
concerned wrote on Apr 20, 2008 7:13 AM:
So does this mean the polluters of Lake Michigan take in more water (from the same source) for their "processes" than what is needed, only to dilute what they are discharging? The polluters can always be in compliance if they dilute it enough before discharging. "