MillWatch No. 2 December 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. 2 - December 1995

Sodium Hydrosulphite
Alkylphenols
BC Pulp Mill Monitoring Workshops
European Chlorine Industry Sues Soedra Cell
Oregon Environmental Law
EPA Dioxin Reassessment Passes Peer Review
Dioxin: Orange Resource
European Union Info Needed
Pulp, Paper And Power
If You Can't Beat Them

The Newfoundland and Labrador Environment Network is urgently looking for information on sodium hydrosulphite. A company called Hydro Technologies is proposing a sodium hydrosulphite facility in Newfoundland to supply the chemical, used as a bleaching agent in mechanical pulping mills, to the island's pulp mills. The company brand name is Hybrite. Apparently, there are no other such facilities in Canada.

If you have any information on the process or the chemical, please call Lori March at phone/fax (709)634-2520, Box 944, Corner Brook, Newfoundland, A2H 6J2 Canada

An Environmental Assessment of Alkylphenol Ethoxylates and Alkylphenols is a scientific assess ment of the environmental fate of common surfac tants, used in many industries, including pulp and paper. The compounds have been banned from domestic detergents in the UK and there appears to be a sizable amount of serious research about their environmental persistence in European rivers. The author, after an exhaustive literature review, concludes that although alkyl phenol ethoxylates degrade in the environment, their metabolites are persistent through most treatment systems, accumulate in the environment, bioaccumulate in organisms, are generally more toxic than the original compounds, and frequently end up as nonylphenols. The author concludes:

"By comparing environmental concentrations, bioaccumulation factors, and in vitro estrogenic effect levels, this report concludes that current environmen tal levels of alkylphenolic compounds are probably high enough to be affecting the hormonal control systems of some organisms. It is also possible that human health could be being affected."

* An Environmental Assessment of Alkylphenol Ethoxylates and Alkylphenols, A Michael Warhurst, January 1995. Friends of the Earth, 26-28 Under wood St., London N1 7JQ; ph: 0171 490 1555, fax: 0171 490 0881

If you are interested in finding out what the local mill is pumping into the water, air and land, in what is being monitored and how to access information and become involved in monitoring, then be sure to participate in the MillWatch initiative of Reach for Unbleached! There will be one-day workshops in nine BC mill towns over the coming year.

The purpose of the workshops is to focus on local concerns about pulp mill emissions, create improved communication between communities, industries and government and examine ways that local organizations can become involved in monitor ing. These one-day workshops are tentatively scheduled for: January 20, 1996 Nanaimo (Harmac) February 17, 1996 Campbell River (Fletcher Challenge) March 16, 1996 Crofton (Fletcher Challenge) April 20, 1996 Powell River (MacMillan Bloedel) May 4, 1996 Cranbrook (Crestbrook) May 25, 1996 Kamloops (Weyerhaeuser) June 15, 1996 Quesnel ( Cariboo, Quesnel River Pulp) June 22, 1996 Prince George (Canfor, Northwood) October 5, 1996 Squamish (Western Pulp, Howe Sound) November 29, 1996 Follow-up evaluation workshop.

In each town, MillWatch will work with a local organization as co-host and provide resources and information for citizen skill-building. Three local co-hosts have confirmed their participation: Georgia Strait Alliance for Nanaimo, Campbell River Environmental Council for Campbell River and East Kootenay Environmental Society for Cranbrook.

MillWatch is looking for co-hosts as well as facilitators and volunteers. If you are interested, contact Reach! or Stefan Ochman, Project Manger, ph/fax: (604)753-5402.

Soedra Cell has made the European chlorine industry furious with their provocative advertisement campaigns for their totally chlorine-free "Z pulp". One year ago, the readers of British, French, and Italian newspapers faced a giant photograph of a dirty toilet seat, when opening the paper. The text read: "Not even here should you use chlorine, so why in paper?"

The chlorine industry started to prepare for a court case. The Italians are in the lead; on 13 December Sodra Cell will appear in Italian court. Sodra is also exchanging letters with French lawyers.

"The Chlorine Industry feels threatened. The use of chlorine is decreasing, and they have been looking for opportunities to pinch us", says information manager Ulf Gunnarsson at Sodra Cell. He sounds more amused than worried.

In Great Britain, where the picture appeared in full-page format in papers such as the Financial Times, the ad has been condemned for lack of factual base. Not even this fact makes Gunnarsson worried.

"The desired result has already been achieved", says Gunnarsson and he adds that Sodra Cell has also received furious letters from the British organization of paper companies, Paper Federation. They accuse Sodra for damaging the entire paper sector, by pointing out certain paper qualities as environmentally unfriendly.

Gunnarsson takes this mildly as well, saying that Sodra Cell will continue the attack on the British market.

* Ulf Gunnarsson can be reached at +46-47089000. Miljoerapporten, Sweden, October 1995.

March 7-10 is the date of the fourteenth annual Land Air Water Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Eugene Oreg on. The conference provides a great opportunity for activists from throughout the Pacific Northwest to meet and ex change ideas, hosting 90 panels and over 200 speakers in four days. This year's theme is Contract with the Earth. Phone (503) 346-3828, fax 346-3985.

The final report issued by the Health and Exposures Panels of the Science Advisory Board regarding the dioxin reassessment is now available. Phone the SAB at: (202) 260-8414, or fax: (202) 260- 1889. (They will mail to Canada.)

An independent panel of scientists has given its general approval to the conclusions of a three year US Environmental Protection Agency study of the toxic chemical dioxin. That report concluded that there may be no safe level of dioxin and that the range of adverse health effects was much broader than just cancer. Now EPA's Science Advisory Board has found that:

• EPA was right to conclude that almost all dioxin currently found in the environment was created by human - i.e., industrial - sources.
• The agency was correct in finding that dioxin is properly classified as a probable human carcinogen, according to data from both animal and human studies.
• Dioxin can cause serious harmful effects on the immune, nervous and reproductive systems of humans. These non-cancer effects may be more serious than dioxin's ability to cause cancer.
• Dioxin, as EPA outlined, does have adverse effects on animals at levels of exposure far below those previously believed to be safe.

However, the committee also suggested EPA needed to do more work on the models used to extrapolate high-dose dioxin exposure of industrial workers, and on animal tests to low-dose average human exposures.

In its review of the pivotal chapter on Human Health and Risk Characterization, the Science Advisory Board committee praised EPA for focusing serious attention on non-cancer effects, examining dioxin and similar compounds together, and stating specifically that the new study found adverse health effects occurring at much lower levels of exposure than previously reported. But the panel pointed to three major weaknesses in the EPA tome:

• EPA failed to present scientific findings in a balanced manner and tended to overstate the evidence of danger. For example, the inference that humans are at risk from average current exposure levels of dioxin was based on populations that are at the high end of these average current exposure levels.
• Important uncertainties associated with EPA's conclusions were not fully recognized and subjected to analysis. For example, EPA consistently used conservative numerical values - those aimed at being more, rather than less, protective - for dioxin potency.
• EPA did not provide specifics about how much dioxin exposure would cause which of the many non-cancer effects identified in the report.

This section of the peer review report was written primarily by John Graham of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and William Greenlee, formerly of Purdue University and now with the University of Massachusetts at Worcester. In 1993 academic year, Greenlee received nearly $1 million in research grants from the American Forest & Paper Association, for a project called "Development of a Biological Basis for Dioxin Risk."

Two scientists with ties to national environmental groups had excused themselves from the SAB review of the dioxin study because the groups they work with had taken public stands on dioxin policy. EPA scientists will study the peer review team report and then issue a final dioxin report sometime next year.

* Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (email: slester@essential.org) and Charleston Gazette (Charleston, WV) October 1995.

This remarkable handbook, produced by the Green Party of the United States, is packed with articles about dioxin, its history, the history of those who discovered it was toxic, its use in war, the Times Beach story, and its uses. There are separate sections on the emission of the evil chemical through war, herbicides and pesticides, various types of incinerators, and a section on goals and strategies.

* Dioxin: The Orange Handbook for Toxic Activists, available for $7 US each, or 55 copies for $100 from WD Press, PO Box 24115, St. Louis MO 63130

Reach for Unbleached! is looking for a legible copy of the Criteria Document for the Eco-labelling of Photocopying and Non-impact Printing Paper from the European Union in 1995. Please contact us if you can help.

In July/August 1995 The Ecologist ran "Pulp, Paper and Power: How an Industry Reshapes its Social Environment," by Anita Kerski. Summary: The dispossession, deforestation and pollution caused by the pulp and paper industry is tied to a dynamic of ever-increasing scale, concentration and capital intensiveness which has characterized the industry since the Industrial Revolution. Crucial to this dynamic are attempts by the industry and its allies to refashion the political and physical infrastructure through which they work. Within this context, the article discusses the PR tactics used by the industry.

"In 1993, for example, Finnish consulting firm Jaakko Poyry began publishing a confidential quarterly intelligence report on environmentalist thinking and activities, aimed at a clientele of wealthy companies." Such firms advise pulp and paper corporations and their allies on how to offer financial support to environmentalist groups which need funding and "respectability", as well as how to go about putting critical individual environmentalists or former regulators on their payrolls.

"PR companies may also infiltrate environmental meetings in the guise of activists or 'housewives'... One such firm, the US's Burson-Marsteller, includes among its clients Scott Paper, TetraPak, Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment, Shell, the Government of Indonesia, and the British Columbia Forest Alliance (a forest industry front group created by Burson-Marsteller)."

Lise Lachapelle, president of the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, told the Fraser Institute in Vancouver in October that the industry wanted to make friends with environmentalists. She said "Environmentalists have dramatically articulated public expectations for preservation and sustainability. Customers have stated their explicit preference for environmentally friendly products." Lachappelle said the industry was changing, not out of altruism, but out of self-interest.

However, the biggest industry in Canada wants to be free to innovate without the restriction of regulations with questionable environmental benefits. (Vancouver Sun, October 1995). Presumably the industry wants greens to vet their new initiatives for market consumption: research on "closed-loop mills," an advisory environmental audit on manufacturing, recycling and worker health, and the industry-funded Canadian Standards Association standards for "sustainable forest practices," which give an official approval to clearcut logging and plantations.