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No. 10 June 1997 News for All Interested in Featuring News, Analysis, Resources and Contacts |
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MillWatch table of contents
MillWatch No. 10 - June 1997
Maine Fight for TCF Loses
Chlorine Free Paper Bill
Indonesian Giant Mills
Even in Mongolia
Nalco Buys Ciba's Enzymes
Florida Charges Tissue Companies with Price Fixing
Fort James
Bring On the Bucket Brigades!
More Dioxin
Sludge Appeal
On Flyash and On ClO2
Thanks this issue to Laurie Valeriano of Washing ton Toxics Coalition, Miranda Holmes of Georgia Strait Alliance, Carol Foote, Darrell Geist of Montana Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers, Lisa Finaldi of Green peace International, Jay Ritchlin, Natural Resources Council of Maine.
In June, the Maine legislature rejected a bill which would have required the state's pulp and paper industry to move to totally chlorine free (TCF) bleaching.
Immediately afterward, the legislators accepted a bill which requires non-detect of 2,3,7,8,-TCDD by the end of 2000, and non-detect for 2,3,7,8,-TCDF by the end of 2002 as well as no difference in dioxin in fish upstream and downstream from the mills by 2002. Maine's seven kraft mills said that they will have difficulty meeting even these requirements due to uncertainty about furans in different processes with chlorine dioxide bleaching.
The TCF bill, sponsored by a wide coalition of citizens' groups and spearheaded by the Natural Resources Council of Maine, failed by a vote of 115 to 30. It was strongly opposed by NLK Consultants, the Alliance for Environmental Technology (an industry association composed largely of suppliers of sodium chlorate, the feedstock for chlorine dioxide) and International Paper.
* Natural Resources Council of Maine and the Alliance for Environmental Technology
A bill that would direct Michigan state agencies to purchase "chlorine-free" paper products was passed in May by the Consumer Protection Committee of the Michigan House of Representatives. The bill requires 10% of the state's paper purchases in 1998 be manu factured without the use of chlorine-based bleaching agents as long as the paper is affordable and meets other state specifications. The required purchase amount would rise 5% yearly until 50% is reached.
"This legislation would reward companies which utilize clean paper-making techniques and help make the state an environmentally conscious consumer," said Alicia Culver, Coordinator of Ralph Nader's Government Purchasing Project. "The bill is intended to stimulate markets for chlorine-free paper, making these products more available to consumers," Culver said.
The bill defines "chlorine free paper' as paper products that have been manufactured without the use of chlorine or chlorinated compounds. 'Elementally Chlorine Free' papers, which is the industry term for papers bleached with chlorine dioxide, are excluded. The definition does, however, include recycled paper made in a chlorine-free process, even though the paper being recycled may have originally been chlorine bleached. The legislation is similar to policies which have been implemented in the states of Oregon, Minnesota and Vermont, as well as the cities of Chicago, Ann Arbor and Seattle.
* Ecology Center of Ann Arbor, May 1997 ph: (313)663-2400, fax (313)663-2414,
* Government Purchasing Project, (202)387-8030
NGOs in Indonesia are trying to halt the development of a giant pulp mill, PT TEL, in South Sumatra, Indonesia. The $1 billion plant at Simpang Belimbing is intended to start with a production of 500,000 tonnes of pulp from mixed tropical hardwoods, rising to 1 million tonnes annually when acacia and eucalyptus plantations come on line to supply 4.5 million cubic metres of wood a year.
Although the mill has passed an Indonesian Environmental Impact Assessment, the results have not been made public, and many of the farmers forcibly evacuated from their rubber plantations to make way for the mill have not been compensated.
Indonesia plans to increase pulp production from 1995 levels of 2 million tonnes to 11.1 million tonnes by 2010, with 16 new mills. International and Indonesian NGOs have co-operated to hold two major semi nars aimed at pressuring the pulp industry into replacing the chlorine-based bleaching at the country's 65 operating pulp mills with TCF (Totally Chlorine Free) and TEF (Totally Effluent Free) technologies.
* Down to Earth, International Campaign for Ecological Justice in Indonesia, 59 Athenlay Road, London SE15 EN UK; email: dte@gn.apc.org; ph/fax: +44 171 732 7984
South Korea's Ssangyong Corp. and the Shinmoorim Paper Mfg. Co. plan to invest $350 million US to build a 150,000 ton kraft pulp mill in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
* Asia Pulse, April 1997
The Nalco Chemical Company has acquired world-wide exclusive rights to the pulp and paper enzyme business of Ciba Specialty Chemicals, Inc., Switzerland. The agreement includes Nalco's exclusive right to use Genencor's pulp and paper enzyme applications laboratory in Finland for research and development.
Nalco expects to further advance enzyme technology and expand its use to pulp and paper mill customers throughout the Pacific region, Europe, Latin America and North America.
Nalco Chemical Company is the largest manufacturer and marketer of water treatment and process chemicals and services in the world, with 1996 sales of $1.3 billion. in more than 120 countries.
* Nalco Chemical Company, May 1997
In May Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth filed suit against 10 manufacturers of toilet tissue and other sanitary products, charging them with fixing prices of products sold to large-scale buyers. Butterworth says the price of wood pulp declined 18 percent since 1989 while the wholesale price of commercial sanitary paper increased by 41 percent.
Those named in the civil complaint include Kimberly-Clark, Scott Paper, Georgia-Pacific, Bay West Paper Corp., Cascades Industries, Encore Paper, James River, Marcal Paper Mills, Wisconsin Tissue and Fort Howard.
Butterworth, renown for his anti-tobacco suits, says the companies sell a combined total of nearly $9 billion worth of sanitary paper products annually.
* United Press International, May 1997
The proposed merger of James River Corporation and Fort Howard has been approved by both companies' boards of directors. James River, with sales of $5.7 billion a year in consumer products, packaging, and business, printing and converting papers, owns 60 plants in North America and Europe. Fort Howard had 1996 sales of $1.6 billion in commercial tissues and specialty products produced in 5 plants, including three in the US. The new company, Fort James, will reinforce James River's current position as the world's second largest tissue maker, after Kimberly Clark.
* Pulp & Paper, May 1997
Community Based Air Sampling: How to Make and Use Your Own Air Sampling Equipment (Septem ber 1996, $10)
This brochure is a complete technical manual on how to build an air sampling bucket to get reliable data on gaseous pollutants. The buckets, designed by an air quality engineer, can be run by local volunteers, and the samples sent to a lab for analysis.
The brochure includes step-by-step procedures for organizing the volunteers, building the buckets at a cost of about $200 US each, a detailed parts list and instructions, quality control practices, an explanation of the Chain of Custody Record, an appendix on "Communicating with the Analytical Lab, " and a list of technical resources on air toxics.
The buckets can be used to test for Volatile Organic and Inorganic gases, and gases containing sulphur compounds. They cannot measure particles such as heavy metals, soot, or dust, or toxins which attach themselves to particles, such as dioxins.
Regulatory agencies may not accept your findings, but the results can be used to get agencies to do follow up testing. The local newspaper or the neigh bours might help with the pocket expenses.
The folks at the National Oil Refinery ACTION! Network have packaged this practical how-to kit in a way that makes the work simple and accessible for community groups, and they offer to help if your organization has other questions or suggestions. Highly recommended.
* National Oil Refinery ACTION! Network, 500 Ho ward Street, Suite 506, San Francisco, CA 94105; ph: (405)243-8373; fax (415)243-8980; email: cbesf@igc.apc.org
Almost five times as much dioxins and furans seem to be deposited annually on the earth's surface as industry is known to emit. Scientists from Indiana University base their estimates on soil sampling from 107 sites around the world and say that 12,500 kg are emitted annually, not the 2,480 kg. accounted for to date by known emissions. The scientists say either there are more sources of the toxins than are known, or the known sources are producing dioxins in greater variation than currently understood.
* Enviroline, Sept. 1996 via Alberta Environment Network News, Nov/Dec 1996
In April, local activists and Reach for Unbleached! lined up together to appeal a permit granted to MacMillan Bloedel's Powell River mill in British Columbia Canada. The permit would allow the mill to commit "experiments" with their industrial waste, spreading green liquor (lime) dregs on a disused golf course, and using grate ash as road bed for a logging road which runs near a school.
Arguments against the experiment, in no particular order, include:
The mill had no information to offer about how this wet material would be contained in dump trucks while it was hauled to the site, nor about annual rainfall, control of runoff from the experimental sites, or even groundwater level.
The Company said in its own documentation that this experiment was the thin edge of the wedge, to get the regulators and the people accustomed to the idea of spreading pulp mill waste around the countryside.
Reach for Unbleached! says it is time for a Sludge Moratorium, to force the mills keep their solid waste in industrial landfills until they can prove that the material is good for the environment and the soil.
I would like to comment on two articles that were in the February MillWatch.
SOLID WASTES APPEAL: Wood chips and hog fuel are two different materials. Chips are produced by cutting logs into small pieces and are used to manufac ture pulp. Hog fuel is a waste that is composed of bark and sawdust which is burned in a power boiler to produce steam and electricity. As is pointed out in the article logs are typically stored in saltwater along the B.C. coast which then contaminates the bark with salt. It is this salt that can form dioxins under certain conditions when the hog fuel is burned in a power boiler. The dioxins then become concentrated in the flyash that is removed from the combustion gasses. In older boilers water is used to transport the flyash to the effluent treatment system. It is through this route that the dioxins are passed to the primary and secondary sludges. Newer installations, such as the boiler that we are presently building, use a dry flyash collection system and thus do not allow these ashes (and the accompanying dioxins) to enter the effluent system.
CLO2: The "Health Effects of CLO2" article attempts to summarize a very well written paper titled "Nasal Pathology and Ultrastructure in Patients with Chronic Airway Inflammation Following an Irritant Exposure" by Meggs et al. A couple of points from the paper:
However, the authors also specifically caution:
In other words, we do know that acute exposures to irritants such as those cited in the paper can result in respiratory problems. Depending on the exposure, these problems can be long term and may be life-long. However, we only have an idea, not firm evidence, that the acute exposures can make individuals more sensitive to low level, chronic exposures. The safety principle of minimizing exposure to dangerous goods is a high priority - whether at home or in the work place.
* Drew Kilback, MacMillan Bloedel, Powell River