MillWatch No. 1 October 1995 News for All Interested in Clean Pulp and Paper Production Featuring News, Analysis, Resources and Contacts

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MillWatch table of contents

MillWatch No. 1 - October 1995

Zero Dioxin For New Mill On The Ohio
Dioxin Information
Chlorine-Free In California
On Dioxin
Powell River, British Columbia Pulp Beat
Accident Response
What's Coming Down About What's Going Up (A Little More Dioxin Won't Hurt You)
Stack Emissions Numbers
Symons Study On Air Emissions
World Wildlife Fund's Hormone Copycats

The West Virginia Division of Environmental Protection has decided to rewrite the permit for the massive new pulp mill on the Ohio River to allow zero discharge of dioxin. The previous permit was about to be taken to court on the grounds that it was too lenient and did not protect human health or the environment. The US Environmental Protection Agency had just released data showing fish in the vicinity of the new paper mill already had levels of dioxin of between 4 and 30 ppt.

The Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW) is offering a listserv on the chemical dioxin. The purpose of the dioxin listserv is to:
1) distribute scientific and other information on dioxin;
2) connect people who are working on dioxin;
3) alert people of events and activities that are scheduled around dioxin issues; and
4) provide a means for people to communicate on dioxin and get involved in CCHW's Stop Dioxin Exposure Campaign.

CCHW has launched a nationwide campaign to stop dioxin exposures. This listserv will allow subscribers to share information on dioxin and provide a means to communicate about campaign activities and connect activists and scientists who want to support the campaign.

To subscribe, send a message to: listproc@essential.org containing the one line: "subscribe dioxin-l <Your Name>". In addition, all postings will also be available at CCHW's gopher site at: gopher://gopher.essential.org/11/ftp/pub/cchw.

Environmentalists joined officials at the re-opening of the Louisiana-Pacific mill in Humboldt California in February to celebrate the mill's chlorine-free status. The mill was rebuilt after extended litigation from surfriders under the Clean Water Act forced a clean up. At that point management decided to go chlorine-free, and cut its daily water use. 1995 production was reported sold out in March.

* Econews, March 1995

Dioxin is one of the most toxic chemicals known. A report released for public comment in September 1994 by the US Environmental Protection Agency clearly describes dioxin as a serious public health threat. The public health impact of dioxin may rival the impact that DDT had on public health in the 1960s. According to the EPA report, not only does there appear to be no "safe" level of exposure to dioxin, but levels of dioxin and dioxin-like chemicals have been found in the general US population that are "at or near levels associated with adverse health effects." The EPA report confirmed that dioxin is a cancer hazard to people; that exposure to dioxin can also cause severe reproductive and developmental problems (at levels 100 times lower than those associated with its cancer causing effects); and that dioxin can cause immune system damage and interfere with regulatory hormones.

Dioxin is a general term that describes a group of hundreds of chemicals that are highly persistent in the environment. The most toxic compound is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin or TCDD. The toxicity of other dioxins and chemicals like PCBs that act like dioxin are measured in relation to TCDD. Dioxin is formed as an unintentional by-product of many industrial processes involving chlorine such as waste incineration, chemical and pesticide manufacturing and pulp and paper bleaching. Dioxin, the primary toxic component of Agent Orange, was found at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY and was the basis for evacuations at Times Beach, MO and Seveso Italy.

Much of this new research into the health effects of dioxin was undertaken in response to industry challenges to EPA's findings on the toxicity of dioxin in 1991. Now, 3 years later, dioxin was found to be more dangerous than ever. Copies of the EPA Health Assessment report may be obtained by contacting: CERI/ORD Publications Center, USEPA, 26 W. Martin Luther King Drive Cincinnati, OH 45268 USA (513) 569-7562; fax (513) 569-7566.

* Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste

Mike Gerrard, the Conservation Officer with BC Environment who has been investigating MacMillan Bloedel's Powell River Mill spill of 600,000 litres of liquid chlorine dioxide since last October, told MillWatch that his report will go to an environmental Crown Attorney for the BC government in mid-September. It will be up to the Crown Attorney to decide whether charges will be laid. The ClO2 was hosed into the ocean through one of the mill's regular outfalls, averting catastrophe to the surrounding town and the Sliammon First Nation Reserve which lay downwind. A consultant's report, commissioned by the mill, which claimed there was no evidence of environmental damage, was withdrawn while some of the charts were changed, at the insistence of Ministry staff. Meanwhile, the mill goes to court in mid-September on charges of discharging waste without a permit, due to a spill of untreated effluent which occurred in early August 1994 when a pipeline broke.

In July, the BC Environment Ministry accepted the pulp industry Industrial Hazardous Chemical Handling Task Force report on how to handle dangerous situations. The government press release says the recommendations include:

• 11 recommendations for individual mills, upgrading emergency response plans and evaluating "risk assessment planning."
• hazardous material training, and an annual emergency response exercise.
• a risk assessment workshop in Vancouver this fall, and
• a technical manual of information for chlorine dioxide spills, to be funded by the Council of Forest Industries and the Canadian Chemical Producers Association.

Clean up of the Powell River spill was retarded by the lack of availability of sufficient sodium thiosulphate which neutralizes ClO2. Environmentalists had expected that as a result of the episode, the industry would be required to stockpile the chemical for emergencies in BC.

In BC, at least two coastal mills, the Fletcher Challenge mill at Elk Falls near Campbell River and MacMillan Bloedel's Powell River mill, have conducted "Risk Assessments" of one chemical, dioxin, emitted from one part of the mills' operations, the power boiler. That is where wood chips (called hog fuel), sludge from the effluent treatment ponds, and ash are burned. Coastal pulp mills burn chips made from logs which have been immersed in salt water, producing what is called salty hog fuel.

Naturally, since chlorine, carbon rings as in wood fibre, and heat are the ingredients required to produce dioxin, the mills have been concerned about this practice. Not too surprisingly, both risk assessments have declared that the practice of burning salty hog fuel and secondary treatment sludge poses no health risk to people in the surrounding communities. In fact, the risk assessments basically explain that the towns and food chain are already so contaminated by dioxin that a little more from the stacks will make no difference. In the case of Campbell River, after some complicated theoretical attempts to model air disposition from the stack in the absence of wind patterns for the area and to average exposures over individuals' lifetimes, the Risk Assessment concludes that dioxins from the stack "likely do not put the local populace at risk."

There are many problems with the study:

• Acceptable exposure levels are based on Environment Canada and Ministry of Health levels set before the new research which informed the US EPA Dioxin Reassessment, by which standards they would be considered about a thousand times too high.
• Wind patterns are based on information from two airports, rather than real data about wind direction between the mill and the town. Further, although the consultants did a special assessment for the residents of the Cape Mudge native community on Quadra Island, the consultants disregarded wind pattern information from Cape Mudge Lighthouse, situated close to the village and on the same shore, because it was different from the patterns at the two airports.
• The study did not assess high short-term exposures, such as during summer air inversions, nor the suspected higher impact on children, babies and fetuses.
• Most significantly, the risk assessment ignores the probability that most of the "background" levels of dioxin in the soil, air, and seafood near the mill in this small town are also likely to come from air and water emissions of the mill. The background levels are estimated to be so high, and the contribution from the stack so low, that the addition of a small amount more of contaminant appears negligible.

This theoretical evaluation does produce some interesting results, as Environment Canada's press release points out: "The background intake from normal diet ... was estimated in the range of 2.7 to 9.1 picograms TEQ (toxic equivalent) per kilogram of body weight per day ... The boiler emissions are estimated to contribute an additional intake in the range 0.004 to .13 pg TEQ/kg/day, with an average of 0.01 pg TEQ/kg/day. Health Canada's guideline for acceptable daily intake is 10 pg TEQ/kg/day ... The proportion of the acceptable daily intake attributable to the boiler emissions is in the range 1/100 to 1/1000." The federal ministry also notes that "In the Campbell River area, consumers of very high fish diets can theoretically consume up to 15.7 pg TEQ/kg/day," with fish accounting for 13.4 pg.

* Institute for Risk Research, University of Waterloo Ontario. Health Risk Assessment of Airborne Dioxin and Furan Emissions at the Elk Falls Pulp Mill. April 19, 1994.

* CanTox Inc, Vancouver British Columbia. Summary Report: Human Health Risk Assessment of Wood Residue Boiler Emissions from the Powell River Facility of MacMillan Bloedel Limited, May 3, 1994.

The Elk Falls Risk Assessment is based on measurements derived during a million dollar study of actual stack emissions during test burns of hog fuel and sludge. This study showed that many emissions of chemicals of concern occur from the power boiler, and that dioxins and furans are not only present in the sludge, but are also formed in the stack, whether or not sludge is added. More dioxin comes out than goes in, while sulphur dioxide, hydrogen chloride and polyaromatic hydrocarbons are greatly increased from the addition of sludge, but captured by emission control devices. Polychlorinated biphenyls also appear to be created in the stack emissions.

* Summary Report Evaluation of Stack Emissions and Waste Streams from the Combined Burning of Pulp Mill Waste Residues and Hog Fuel in a Power Boiler. Prepared by Bovar-Concord Environmental, Calgary Alberta for Fletcher Challenge Canada and Environment Canada, May 1994. Project no. 9200124.

This thick technical document, prepared by consulting engineering firm H. A. Symons for the BC Ministry of Environment, outlines the various processes and equipment used in the pulp and paper industry. It provides a clear explanation of the processes and pinpoints the sources of air emissions. In a kraft mill, the engineers say these are: blow gases from cooking wood chips in the digesters; bleach plant vents (chlorine, chlorine dioxide, chloroform); the chlorine dioxide generator (chlorine, chlorine dioxide); evaporation during chemical recovery for the black liquor (TRS, Total Reduced Sulphur, from black liquor out of bleach plant); particulate from the lime kiln; the treatment ponds which are a "diffuse source of air emissions which are generally poorly characterised"; and the power boilers.

The report then examines in detail, in relation to each type of equipment for each step of each kind of pulp and paper production, excluding fibreboard, the following categories of air pollutants: carbon monoxide, chlorine, chlorine dioxide, nitrogen oxides, opacity, particulate, sulphur oxides, total reduced sulphur, trace air contaminants, and volatile organic compounds.

It notes where data is lacking, and where new technology can improve the situation. Cost estimates for installation are provided, as well as a comparison of international regulatory regimes.

* A Technical Background Information Document on Pulp and Paper Mill Air Emissions, (P5517A) prepared by H.A. Symons for Ministry of Environment Lands and Parks of British Columbia and Environment Canada, October 1994

The World Wildlife Fund's Canada Toxicology Program has put out a special issue of the Eagle's Eye which summarizes the information about "Toxics that Tamper with Hormones," with charts on reproductive and endocrine disruptive chemicals and effects. WWF is also offering an information kit for $5 and a 20-minute video, Hormone Copy-cats, featuring Dr. Theo Colborn, which can be borrowed for free for meetings and discussion groups, to "put the endocrine disruption issue on your group's agenda."

* Contact World Wildlife Fund Toxicology Program, 90 Eglinton Ave. East, Suite 504, Toronto, Ont. M4P 2Z7.

MillWatch is produced every 2 months by the Reach for Unbleached! Foundation of Canada to connect people and resources working on pulp and paper issues. If you have information, experience, or problems you want to share, this forum is meant to spread the word, but it needs your help. Write to us!

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