Saginaw river sytem dioxin levels

[fishingwidow]

http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? ... /711150353
The discovery of the highest level of the feared chemical compound dioxin ever in the Great Lakes region has prompted the EPA to order an emergency cleanup in the Saginaw River in Saginaw and the state to issue new warnings about eating fish from the river.

The chemical hot spot was found in river-bottom sediment near a city park popular among shoreline anglers. Dow Chemical Co., whose plant in Midland was the source of the likely decades-old dioxin, found the chemicals as part of a larger sampling program.

In the wake of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's cleanup order, the Michigan Department of Community Health said late Wednesday that it was adding white bass to existing warnings on fish not to eat from the river and adding warnings for other fish.

Some fish are mainly bottom-feeders and accumulate more toxins than others. Health and environmental officials said Wednesday that eating fish from the river is, by far, the greatest risk for people from the dioxin.

The EPA's senior health adviser in Chicago, Milton Clark, said dioxin is highly toxic and may be more problematic in river sediment than in soils because it gets into the food chain.

The new hot spot is across from a Saginaw city riverfront park, Wickes Park, which has play areas for children and a boat launch. Locals say people often fish there.

Spots of dioxin have been found in rivers below Dow's Midland plant all the way out to Saginaw Bay, starting in 1978, but never at such a high level, EPA officials said. The agency issued three other emergency cleanup orders in June for three hot spots on the Tittabawassee River.

The company reported the preliminary results to the EPA last Friday. The sample came in at 1.6 million parts per trillion. The state requires a cleanup if dioxin is found near a home at levels above 90 parts per trillion, and the EPA's cleanup standard is 1,000 parts per trillion.
"This is an extremely high concentration," said Bob McCann, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

Until now, the highest level found in the Saginaw River was 32,000 parts per trillion. Since dioxin is in the middle of the river, its most harmful effects are likely for people who eat fish. Certain fish take up dioxins and it stays in the fatty tissue. When people eat the fish, it gets into their bodies.

The health effects of dioxin can include cancer, and the chemical can affect the reproductive and immune systems, the state health department said. It also can affect children's development and fetuses.

"Our primary concern is for people who may be consuming moderate to high amounts of fish from the Saginaw River system," said Clark.

People are advised not to eat white bass, carp or catfish from the river, said James McCurtis Jr., spokesman for the state health department.

Clark said a recent University of Michigan study showed that people who eat fish from the rivers in the area have higher-than-average levels of dioxin in their blood.

"We know people are being exposed to it," he said.

John Musser, spokesman for Dow, said the hot spot, like others along the river, comes from chemicals flushed into the river before World War I. Dow employees at that time flushed dioxin-contaminated waste into the river to dilute it.

"That was the standard at the time," he said.

Since then, the dioxin has migrated into rivers and the Saginaw Bay.

Musser said another sample 6 inches deeper showed a level of 2,400 parts per trillion, but the rest of the three dozen samples nearby were not high.

"That suggests it's not a large deposit, but we haven't confirmed that," he said.

Dow is working on a quick plan to get rid of the hot spot, which will involve heavy equipment and dredging, he said. Bad weather could interfere and make a fast cleanup impossible, he said.

Dow, the EPA and the state DEQ are negotiating a much larger, more comprehensive cleanup of the entire river system below the Midland plant.

Environmental groups have criticized those efforts, saying Dow is downplaying the toxicity of dioxin and resisting a cleanup.

"The time is long past due for them to step up and address this contamination, and to give us our rivers back," said Michelle Hurd-Riddick of the Lone Tree Council.

McCann, from the DEQ, said the area where dioxins are thought to be is about 50 miles long.

"We need to make sure Dow does a good job with its cleanup, without making the problem worse" by stirring up and further spreading the chemicals downstream, he said.

[Deadduck1]

That will also impact the diver ducks that are in the area! They eat off the plants and animals that inhabit those same areas! Thanks Dow!!!

[Hamilton Reef]

U.S.'s top toxic site here?
http://www.mlive.com/news/saginawnews/i ... xml&coll=9

[Hamilton Reef]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 26, 2007

Contact: Robert McCann
(517) 241-7397

November 28 Community Meeting on Dow Corrective Action Work

The Department of Environmental Quality and The Dow Chemical Company will be holding the next quarterly Midland/Saginaw/Bay City (Tri-Cities) Dioxin Community Meeting on Wednesday, November 28, at the Horizons Conference Center in Saginaw located at 6200 State Street. The meeting is open to the public and will run from 6:30 p.m. to 9:15 p.m. Staff from the DEQ, Department of Community Health, and Dow, with their consultants, will be available one-half hour before and one-half hour after the meeting for individual discussion with the public. Maps and other handout materials will be available for viewing and discussion.

Agenda items for the November 28 meeting include: Upper and Middle Tittabawassee River investigation work status and DEQ oversight comments; the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), removal actions in the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers and EPA/DEQ oversight comments; an update on the Michigan State University Ecological Study; and an update on the Natural Resource Damage Assessment. The final hour of the meeting is set aside for questions and discussion on these and other topics.

The meeting agenda and related documents will be posted to the DEQ Web site prior to the community meeting at http://www.michigan.gov/deqdioxin and may be accessed by clicking on the *DEQ/Dow Community "Involvement* and *Dow Off-site Corrective Action* Quick Links in the right navigation column. The next quarterly community meeting is scheduled to be held on February 7, 2008.

#####

*Protecting Michigan*s Environment, Ensuring Michigan*s
Future*

[Scrappy]

The Dioxin has been in the system since the early 1900's now all of a sudden this is a big health issue? Taking this stuff out of the river is going to make things worse than simply leaving well enough alone. Mark my words.

[Duke]

Stupid-sensationalist-sky-is-falling-idiot media. Jumped all over the dioxin 'hot spot' story, there were only about 8 billion articles regurgitated in every possible newpaper about that. But how much publicity has this gotten?:

'Hot spot' not so hot
http://www.mlive.com/news/saginawnews/i ... xml&coll=9[/url]


Admin Edited

[Hamilton Reef]

Typical stupid-sensationalist-sky-is-falling-idiot propaganda that all pollution is great and anything to destroy the environment is fine as long as they make their money and the next generation pays the price. Our sport fishery needs clean water, healthy marshes.


Admin Edited

[Scrappy]

I agree we need clean water but the pollution isn't happening now, it happened back in the early 1900's. Leave it be, you can't remediate this stuff without causing more damage. A Dioxin hotspot in 13 feet of water is no threat to anyone and hasn't been since it got there in the eraly 1900's. Don't believe all the crap you read in the papers.

[Duke]

This thread and the articles posted concern the dioxin 'hot spot' and nothing else. Each merely report the results of scientific analysis, which happen to be contradictory, nothing more.

[Steve Horton]

Not to get in between here but leaving the dioxin in the sediment will only release more of it over time. A river is a ever changing, dynamic system and, eventually, those toxins will be disturbed anyway. Removal of them, and other toxins such as the PCB's in the Manistique harbor, has shown to decrease the levels of such toxins in the organisms within the area within a shorter time frame than expected. Not my opinion, factual evidence gathered by the EPA. Removing it and capping it has become the viable option in alot of these situations when the funding is provided. Unfortunately its only the larger areas of contamination that get attention. No one even knows about all the other small, backyard dump sites that get discovered all the time and never make the press.

[Bomba]

Drove by it this morning on the way to work, they have the barge
and crane already in the river starting to "dig" it up......
I catch alot of walleye thru the ice in that spot, I hope i don't start to
glow and end up someday!

[Scrappy]

Since there aren't elevated dioxin levels in the fish and wildlife sampled so far and the stuff has been in the river since the early 1900's I still fail to see how any additional degredation can possibly have an appreciable inpact on wildlife in the future. That is aside from the politics involved spawned by the general public giving into the sensationalism that starts with our "friends" at the Lone Tree Counsil, the EPA and MDEQ. Gee, everyone wonders why the ecconomy is so bad and why businesses don't want to continue doing buiness in Michigan or otherwise relocate there. I also need to add here that these comments are my own personal opinions and not necessarily that of my employer.

[Steve Horton]

No elevated levels of Dioxin? Where is this data, I missed that. I'm under the impression that there are detectable levels of dioxin in ALL fish sampled from the great lakes. As well as lead, PCB's, Mercury, DDT (not as much anymore) Furan, among others. What is an elevated level anyway when we know that these toxins bioaccumulate in animals over time? I personally have sampled and analyzed walleyes from the St. Clair that have had a total mercury level above the EPA's safe limit of 1PPM, yet at that time, there was no consumption advisory for the river for walleye. Who do you believe? I believe that the state has under-reported the true levels of toxins in fish, and under-advised in order to try to preserve the sport fishing/eating economy, not hurt it. Personally, and I speak from opinion as well and I am not representing anyone but Steve - I don't think anyone should be eating a lot of fish taken from the Great Lakes, especially predatory or bottom feeders over 3 lbs. And I when I say personally, I mean I've already had one rare tumor removed that my urologist said could be caused by toxins in my diet, more specifically the walleyes I ate as a kid and young adult from the St. Clair River. I'm not a tree hugging environmentalist, I'm a moderate republican, LOL. I believe the media can hype all kinds of stuff for political gain. But, if there are toxins there, recent science has proven that its better to remove them than ignore them. I've done enough research on this kind of stuff to come to only that conclusion.

[Scrappy]

Steve not only do fish have dioxin levels in them but so does every human being on the planet including yourself. Dioxin is a natural by-product of buring things and results from almost every process utilized by man not the least of which is auto emissions. Everything we eat has levels of Dioxin in it. Dioxin is not the problem PCB is and you are mixing apples and oranges when you throw that into the equasion. Dioxins getting into the Saginaw Bay are not all coming from the Dow Chemical plant, they are coming from all over the place including run off from the road way where your car as well as mine contributes. Cleaning up hot spots in the river is not going to to help in the least with eliminating Dioxins from the Great Lakes, it is a drop in the bucket. Again, the dioxins have been in the river since the early 1900's so trying to remove the Dioxins now after all of these years is a waste of time, money and will have zero, yes zero, chance of reducing Dioxins, much less eliminating them from the Great Lakes. If you look at the studies done by U of M on animals and fish harvested along the Saginaw and Titt Rivers as part of this process you (this is public information readily available) you will see that the levels of Dioxin found are not a significant health risk. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, some of the animals harvested from the control area in the study had levels of Dioxins higher than those harvested from the Titt River watershed. The vast majority of Dioxin pollution was put into the waterways of this country long before industry, or environmentalists for that matter, understood the impact it was having on the environment. In fact, I believe Dow is the company that invented the ability to measure Dioxin levels in the first place and that wasn't all that long ago. To punish industry (and by direct correlation the economy) now for the sins of the past (before the issue was fully understood) is, in my opinion, short sighted and nothing but a political folly iniciated by tree huggers. Everyone likes to complain that big business is outsourcing overseas and fewer and fewer jobs are now avaialble to hard working Americans....I've seen that argument made on this Forum more times than I want to think about. Well maybe those same hard working Americans should stop making it impossible for US businesses to be profitable in this country because they have to spend millions or billions of dollars cleaning up things that aren't a significant risk to health and don't need to be cleaned up.

[Cyberlunge]

Scrappy-

Come on Man !! your going to take away our American way of life if we cant overcompensate for sins of the past. We have to have atonement for the things we never even did, Hey anybody want to go to the casino??

I know (I think) that the reason they had to stop dredging certain harbors was due to the amount of crap stirred up, it far exceeded what gets turned by the occasional bottom contact from a freighter, sad but as you say are we really helping by picking up a grain of sand off a beach? Another way for somebody to toot their horn by removing one tree and failing to see the remaining forest for what it is. millions more trees....


Kevin