EcoLink Archive
O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7
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2nd Annual Ecology Center Fall Fundraiser |
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Public Health Watchdogs Target California Auto Lead Pollution |
The Cranky Consumer: Sea of Plastic |
Events
Ecology Center Day at Barnes & Noble
Shop, party, and donate to a great cause all in one day on Sat., Sept. 29, at the Barnes & Noble location at 3235 Washtenaw Ave. in Ann Arbor. Present a simple voucher at the time of any purchase in the store during the entire shopping day and a portion of the proceeds will go to the Ecology Center. Time it right, and you can also make the book-release party for Tracy Gallup’s “Tree Crazy.”
2nd Annual
Ecology Center Fall Fundraiser
Join us Thursday, November 8 for our Fall Fundraising Dinner in the Michigan Union Ballroom. For more information and tickets, contact Stephanie or call 734-761-3186 ext. 110.
back to topNews
Public Health Watchdogs Target
California Automotive Lead Pollution
The Center for Environmental Health (CEH-California), working with the Ecology Center, in late August initiated legal action to stop the sale of lead-based wheel weights in the state of California. Due to the threat of lead pollution to the state’s waterways from wheel weights that fall from cars and trucks, CEH notified the major producers of wheel weights and Chrysler, a leading automaker, that the lead-based weights are illegal under state’s safe drinking water law.
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“Lead from wheel weights poses a threat to safe, clean drinking water in California,” said Caroline Cox, Research Director for CEH. “Since affordable, effective alternatives exist, there is no excuse for the continued use of lead that can end up as a water hazard to people and the environment.”
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), about 65,000 tons of lead wheel weights are in use on cars and trucks in the U.S., and it is estimated that at least 3% of wheel weights fall off of cars and trucks. USGS states that the discarded wheel weights “drop to the road surface where they become abraded by vehicle traffic, eventually becoming dissipated into the environment by wind and storm water.” CEH estimates that approximately 500,000 pounds of lead was released into the environment in California in 2006 as a result of wheel weights being ejected from automobile wheels.
The Michigan-based Ecology Center has been working for several years to expose the problem of lead wheel weights. The Lead-Free Wheels program, run by the Ecology Center’s Clean Car Campaign, has brought growing attention to the viability of lead-free alternatives by targeting tire retailers and fleet managers and has developed a list of new cars made with lead-free wheel weights.
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“Many automakers have eliminated or are phasing out the use of lead wheel weights, but most tires in the U.S. are still balanced with toxic lead,” said Clean Car Campaign Director Jeff Gearhart. “In Europe and Asia, lead wheel weights have been replaced to protect people and the environment from unnecessary lead exposures. There’s no reason we should have lesser standards for protecting Americans from lead pollution.”
CEH initiated the legal action in California under the state’s “Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986,” commonly known as Prop 65. The nonprofit has a ten-year track record of using Prop 65 to stop toxic air emissions from polluting facilities and to protect children from hidden lead risks in consumer products, including vinyl baby bibs, lunchboxes, baby powders, children’s medicines, imported candies, and metal and vinyl jewelry.
While other automakers have eliminated or are moving away from the use of lead wheel weights, Chrysler continues to use the lead-polluting product for most of its new U.S. car models. In addition to Chrysler, CEH today sent legal notices to leading makers of lead wheel weights, who continue to sell their toxic products while at the same time making and marketing lead-free wheel weights as “an environmentally safe alternative to lead.”
“These companies know that lead is unsafe, yet they continue to sell lead-based wheel weights that can end up in our kids’ drinking water,” said Charlie Pizarro, Associate Director of CEH. “We intend to change this irresponsible corporate behavior and eliminate this hidden poison in California.”
back to topThe Cranky Consumer:
Sea of Plastic
By Brigit Macomber
The “North Pacific Gyre” has a romantic ring to it, doesn’t it? But go to this 10-million-square-mile slow-moving ocean vortex trapped between various ocean currents and you will see plastic debris, large and small, of every description sprawling to the horizon in every direction. Since learning of this it’s hard to get this image out of my head. And cranky doesn’t even begin to cover my feelings. Horrified, ashamed (even as I daily throw out my own share of the 185 pounds of plastic the average person discards annually) are a start.
The slowly circulating sea of plastic, which is now larger than the state of Texas, was discovered by Captain Charles Moore in 1997 while sailing home from Hawaii. Moore is probably not as thrilled to be the 20th-century discoverer of the Sea of Plastic as earlier famous “discoverers” of the Pacific Ocean and other great bodies of water and landmasses. Moore, who expects the floating plastic mass to increase 10-fold by 2010, refers to our times as the Age of Plastic due to plastic defining our era much as stone, iron, and bronze did previous ages.
All this petrochemically derived plastic — like tires, utensils, bags, toys, and bottles – does eventually break down in the oceans into tiny pieces through a process called photodegradation. But this takes many hundreds of years and the resulting tiny pieces are still, well, plastic. And to make the picture prettier it turns out these small plastic pieces, which contain toxins such as dioxin, also act like sponges, absorbing additional toxic chemicals, such as PCBs and DDT and concentrating them up to one-million times higher than found in ocean water itself. Shrimp, jellyfish, etc., then ingest these small pieces mistaking them for plankton. Larger animals eat the shrimp and larger pieces of plastic. And you can guess who eats these larger animals along with all the concentrated toxins.
Biodegradable plastic made from plants is a ray of hope for the oceans. But it only accounts for less than 1% of the more than 100 million tons of annual plastic production. Fortunately, more stringent recycling laws in other countries (God forbid the U.S. be one of them) are providing incentives for plant-based bioplastic research and development.
The Australian government, probably not coincidentally a country with one of longest plastic-littered coastlines, even sponsored government research resulting in what is rumored to be a vastly improved plant-derived plastic. They transferred the patent to a private firm for rollout. (God forbid the U.S. government should subsidize bioplastic research. Maybe God did forbid it? We’ll have to ask George about that.)
Biodegradable plastics are made to degrade when you want them to and (hopefully) not before. Unfortunately, plastics that break down when exposed to seawater dissolve too readily for most practical uses. Most bioplastics have to be made to hold up for days or weeks of exposure in water. Unlike petroplastics, they rapidly (for plastic) break down into carbon dioxide and water but they can still clog storm drains and choke sea creatures before dissolving. And some will dissolve only in a hot compost situation and therefore would be little improvement in the ocean environment.
Bioplastics are also relatively expensive. Environmentalists claim this is largely because life cycle costs are not factored into petroplastic purchase prices. Try explaining this to customers at Wal-Mart. Also, bioplastics made from corn, soybeans, etc., like ethanol, have the drawback of requiring significantly more water and energy to produce than petroplastics.
While offering much hope, and definitely part of the solution, bioplastics are not the panacea we are searching for here. Yes, look for bioplastic substitutes for plastic products you cannot do without. And there are many out there: garbage bags, mulch films, utensils, and cups made here in the good ol’ USA (by Biocorp) that even look like their plastic counterparts.
But alas, there ain’t no such thing as a free (plastic wrapped) lunch. To save the ocean, save energy, and save ourselves we will, because we must, cut our consumption of all throwaway products. Reusable bags, mugs, water bottles, take-out containers, will become the order of the day … What?! Are you waiting for a government mandate from George?
Oh, and one more piece of good news. Much of the ocean plastic starts out on local beaches. Organized or even haphazard, beach and river cleanups make a difference for our oceans. So, go walk on your local beach or riverbank, collect some trash, and throw it away in a, um, plastic bag.
Links
Plastic: Trash that Melts — Just Add Water
Making packaging greener — biodegradable plastics
Brigit Macomber is Finance Manager for the Ecology Center.
EcoLink — October 2007
An online publication of the Ecology Center
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