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Special Report - GE Trees Taking Root in the Forest Industry

US National Academies New Study Confirms Dioxin is Toxic

After 15 Year Delay, 5th Study Finds Chemical Causes Cancer, Developmental Problems & Birth Defects

Press Release Tuesday, July 11, 2006

( Campbell River, BC) - The National Academies (NA) released a controversial report today in the United States confirming what numerous scientific panels have concluded over the past 15 years - dioxin is a potent cancer-causing chemical even at very small levels. Dioxin can cause developmental and immune effects at levels close to those currently found in the American and Canadian population.

“This just goes to confirm what has been scientific consensus for decades now, despite the denials of chlorine-based industries that have been effectively stalling the release of the EPA’s controversial dioxin reassessment for 15 years,” said Delores Broten, Senior Policy Advisor for Reach for Unbleached, BC’s pulp watchdog organization. “Not only is the pulp and paper industry heavily reliant on the chlorine industry for the production of bleached paper, but the use of salty hog fuel on the west coast dramatically increases the emissions of dioxins into the environment. ”

“Dioxins emissions are one of the key concerns for coastal pulp mills,” concurred Rob Wiltzen of the Crofton Airshed Citizens Group. “It’s well established that coastal pulp mills are a special concern for dioxins emissions while the regulation and testing regime is completely inadequate to ensure environmental and public health.”

Pulp mills are obligated to test for dioxin emissions once per year, soon to devolve to once every two years while studies show that dioxin emissions are highly variable. Salty Hog fuel is the bark and wood waste from coastal logging operations that transport and store logs in salt water. The salt is absorbed into the wood waste that is then burned as fuel in the pulp mills, producing emissions of dioxins and furans among other by-products in the combustion process.

"Although the NA review has confirmed that dioxin is a carcinogen, the EPA Dioxin Reassessment concluded this several years ago and recent studies have added additional weight to this conclusion," stated Dr. Richard Clapp, Professor of Environmental Health at Boston University School of Public Health. "Furthermore, there does not appear to be safe 'threshold' for dioxin's carcinogenic effects. Dioxin also causes many other health problems even at low levels, such as developmental problems in children, immunologic problems in children and adults, reproductive problems in adults, and diabetes."

Every North American eats dioxin when they consume fatty foods, and nearly every citizen has measurable levels of this chemical in their body. Dioxin contamination is particularly high in areas with dioxin sources like incinerators, smelters, pulp and paper mills, chemical factories or other industries that use chlorine.

"The first health assessment of dioxin was in 1985," said Lois Gibbs, Executive Director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ). Gibbs's struggle to clean up dioxin in her Niagara Falls NY community at Love Canal has been credited with launching the grassroots environmental health movement. Enough is enough—let's get on with establishing health protective regulations around dioxin discharges and clean ups," said Gibbs.

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For more information: www.chej.org/ dioxin

The Paper Sludge Story

Recycling in Ontario Shows the Dark Side of Green

by Mary Ann Pearson.Originally published in the Ontario Daylily Society Newsletter, October 2005

A MillWatch Special Report, sponsored by Reach for Unbleached and published in the Watershed Sentinel, May 2006

In late 2005, the BC Ministry of Environment announced its intention to allow landspreading of pulp mill sludge with no requirement for permits and with minimal monitoring. The BC Code of Practise met great public concern and is now being reconsidered. Communities in Ontario have already been around that block over the sludge from paper recycling. Here is their story.

On a frosty morning in early December 2004, the trucks came. We heard them rumbling down our rural Cayuga road at 5:30 a.m. We heard the tailgates slamming after their contents were emptied onto a farm field a little to the west of us opposite our property. The white unnamed 18-wheelers kept coming and going up and down the road all day, the next day and the day after that.

What was this pile of rapidly accumulating dark grey material with a bluish tinge and an odour of vomit? After neighbours became alarmed, a nearby resident inquired and was told it was “Nitro-sorb,” a mixture of paper sludge, compost and lime touted as a “soil amendment.”

A quick survey of paper sludge on the internet indicated that most safe water advocates considered it an “environmental disaster.” Different colours soon appeared in the pile, white, brown, reddish-orange, and were mixed in by bulldozers.
Over one thousand tonnes of paper sludge waste are produced every single day from recycling operations in Ontario and it all has to go somewhere.

The stockpile grew to the size of a hockey arena....More