The effects of weather phenomena on environmental toxins

[H-KQGE]

I thought that there should be a thread on this specifically, as the rapid changes across the globe will lead to more of the type of events described in the following article.

http://www.straight.com/news/651001/tornadoes-vacuum-spit-out-forgotten-toxins

Tornadoes vacuum up, spit out forgotten toxins

Abandoned lead smelters at risk from twisters, floods, and hurricanes
by BRIAN BIENKOWSKI on MAY 23, 2014 at 5:34 PM

When a mile-wide tornado roared through Joplin, Missouri, it killed 158 people and injured thousands. And it also kicked up toxic remnants from the city’s industrial past that are still haunting its residents on the third anniversary of the disaster.

“Trees were uprooted; houses were levelled. Everything underground was now on the surface,” said Leslie Heitkamp, Joplin’s lead inspector and remediation coordinator.

Before the tornado, the southern part of this city of 50,000 had almost no lead contamination, but afterward about 40 percent of yards were contaminated. “We’re still cleaning up yards every day,” she said.

Nine million tons of toxic waste

Starting in the early 1800s, people flocked to Joplin to mine lead. Despite a Superfund cleanup in the 1990s, the tornado had no trouble stirring up some of the nine million tons of toxic wastes left behind from hundreds of mines and 17 smelters.

As tornado season ramps up, and some natural disasters become more common across the United States, experts warn that storms and floods can bring smelters’ ugly past back to the surface.

A nationwide study of 229 shuttered smelters found almost 30 percent are located in areas prone to floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

“The potential for natural disasters stirring up forgotten toxics is huge,” said Dr. Robert K. Kanter, a professor of pediatric critical-care medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University, who led the research.

California has the most sites

California had 15 former smelter sites at risk from natural disasters, with Pennsylvania close behind with 14. New York and Missouri had the next two highest totals with seven and six, respectively, and Illinois had five.

Lead smelters, which mostly closed down in the United States by the 1980s, processed ore in a blast furnace to extract the metal. Lead particles, along with arsenic and other toxic substances, were emitted from the plants.

Low levels of lead reduce children’s IQs and are linked to attention and behavioral disorders, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The ideal solution would be to completely clean up former lead sites,” Kanter said. “But if that’s not possible, the solution is not to ignore and deny the possibility that a disaster will reveal it at the worst possible time.”

Hurricanes stronger and more frequent

Since the 1970s, U.S. hurricanes have been more intense and frequent. Thirteen of the past 17 years had “above normal” tropical storms and hurricanes, according to a 2012 report.

In addition, because of global climate change, the areas of the United States at risk of floods may rise up to 45 percent by 2100 due to rising seas and more severe weather, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Different disasters can have different effects on legacy contaminants, said Jean Brender, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Texas A & M University who was not affiliated with this study. Tornadoes and hurricanes would be more likely to cause airborne lead, depositing the toxics on soil. Children who play in the dirt are at risk, she said.

Some disasters carry away toxins

In addition, flooding could transport lead to surface water. Municipal water providers test for lead but private wells would still be at risk, Brender said.

It’s impossible to know what natural disasters will do to buried contaminants, Kanter said. After hurricanes Rita and Katrina, soil lead levels declined in 63 percent of census tracts in New Orleans. Apparently, floods carried away the contaminants.

But we can’t count on natural disasters always carrying toxics away, Kanter said.

“The point is, if a local community knows about a former industrial site and knows there are deposits there, that should be a focus for some planning, rather than wait for people and children to be exposed,” he said.

Officials unaware of old sites

More than 600 lead smelters, from small shops to large factories, operated in the United States between the 1930s and 1960s. Cleanup nationally has lagged behind because the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had been unaware of many old smelting sites. A recent USA Today investigation found that federal and state officials in most cases failed to check on or clean up the sites.

Former smelter sites that are designated as federal Superfund sites and are undergoing cleanup still carry danger, said Jim Gawel, as associate professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

“They essentially draw an artificial boundary around a site,” Gawel said. “But it’s not like the contaminants will magically stay within those boundaries.”

Emergency plans lacking

EPA spokesperson George Hull said the agency doesn’t have plans or research specific to the dangers of lead smelters and natural disasters.

The states deemed most at risk in the new report also have no emergency plans for smelters.

In California, the state Environmental Protection Agency has not done any preplanning for former lead smelters in areas prone to natural disasters, said spokesperson Amy Norris. Handling of hazardous materials post-disaster would take into account how the land was previously used, she said.

Pennsylvania also does not have any emergency planning specific to lead smelters during natural disasters, said Cory Angell, a press secretary with the state’s Emergency Management Agency. “We have an all-hazards approach to disaster planning, which would include any potential for lead contamination,” Angell said.

Proactive steps urged

Most former lead smelters in Pennsylvania in Kanter’s study are “cleaned up or in the process of being cleaned up,” said Kerry Leib, director of the Emergency Response Program for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Every county in Illinois has a local emergency planning coordinator who knows where former lead smelters are, said Kim Biggs, a spokesperson for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, in an emailed response. “Illinois EPA will consult with the coordinators in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency,” she said.

Brender thinks the states’ lack of emergency planning for smelters is a mistake. “With all of these former smelters, this study should be an impetus for us to be proactive,” she said. “Before these disasters happen, agencies should look into where the contamination is.”

Lead levels declined dramatically after cleanup

In Joplin, the EPA estimates that decades of lead processing created about 150 million tons of toxic wastes, with about nine million tons still remaining after a federal Superfund cleanup. Before the cleanup began in the mid-1990s, about 2,600 homes near former smelters and mining-waste sites had elevated lead in their soil. About 14 percent of Joplin children had blood lead levels above the federal health guideline at the time; after the cleanup, it declined to two percent.

Since the tornado, the rate of children with elevated lead levels has remained unchanged, Heitkamp said, probably because the ravaged area is mostly uninhabited.

Post-tornado builders must test and clean

Joplin has spent about $3.5 million so far to clean up lead where the tornado tore through, Heitkamp said. The city now requires that builders in the tornado zone test for lead and, if needed, clean it up before construction.

The people of Joplin are well aware of their industrial history and tornado risk, Heitkamp said. But that doesn’t mean the city can protect everyone from lead the next time one roars through.

“Unless we tested every individual property, to about five feet below ground, I really don’t think there’s any way to prevent this from happening on some level again,” Heitkamp said.

 

[H-KQGE]

The following articles don't contain the effects of weather on environmental pollution as in disasters, (right now) but from the above article used to kick-off this thread, mines known and "forgotten", floods carrying toxins, air pollution and more in this vein show that when the plague eventually arrives there really won't be anywhere to hide. And with a critical lack of knowledge and awareness on the part of the wider public in terms of diet and health crossed with 24-7 propaganda, the scenes depicted in paintings from the "dark ages" begin to look somewhat tame in comparison with what we can predict will happen to a relatively high degree.

Fracking.

A family in Texas, their health problems and attempts at holding the oil companies accountable for the volatile organic compounds (VOC) being spewed out with no regard for people and the environment.

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11269673

Fracking blamed for health problems
By Peter Huck

Bob Parr had visions a peaceful rural life with his new wife and her daughter on the undulating Texas prairie.

He had brought Lisa and her daughter Emma to his ranch outside Decatur, Wise County, 100km northwest of Dallas, in 2008.

It was a short-lived dream. Wise County sits atop the Barnett Shale in North Texas, one of the richest oil and gas fields in the US. Within a year gas wells began to mushroom around the Parrs' home as oil companies moved in, part of a loosely regulated hydraulic fracturing - fracking - shale boom that has funnelled US$7 billion ($8.3 billion) into Texas tax coffers since 2012. It has also brought misery to the Parrs and many other rural inhabitants.

By 2010, Lisa Parr was keeping a journal detailing breathing difficulties, dizziness, rashes, nausea, headaches, welts, lumps on her neck, nosebleeds and burning sensations.

"Our life turned into a nightmare," she said. "We were deathly sick, scared and didn't know what to do." During 2010-2011, the Parrs filed 13 complaints about their health concerns with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) which, with the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC), regulates the oil and gas industry. It proved a futile exercise. "No violations were found," the TCEQ responded to one complaint, even though inspectors found Aruba Petroleum, one of the companies that had drilled more than 100 wells within 3.2km of the Parrs' ranch, had discharged volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a toxic cocktail of chemicals known to cause the symptoms that plagued the Parrs. Although the TCEQ received 77 similar complaints from Wise County residents during the 2008-2011 period, nothing changed.


Life for the Parrs worsened. In July 2010 an investigator abandoned efforts to collect air samples from a plume emitted by an Aruba facility 85m from the Parrs', complaining of dizziness and a sore throat. Court records revealed VOCs and other agents that cause health damage. Aruba had run its site without a TCEQ air emissions permit. In April 2011 a TCEQ inspector found an Aruba site near the Parrs' house vented 2441kg of VOCs in under six hours, a tenth of the yearly permitted total.

In both cases the TCEQ fined the company. Yet nothing changed.

Finally, the Parrs filed a $66 million damages suit against Aruba and 10 other companies, alleging "inescapable assault" from toxic "spills, emissions, and discharges". On April 22 a Dallas jury found for the Parrs, awarding them $2.9 million after finding Aruba "intentionally created a private nuisance" that adversely affected the plaintiffs' health.

"The verdict is significant in the sense that it appears to be one of the first, if not the first, cases in the US, and certainly in Texas, where a family that claims to have been harmed by emissions generated by oil and gas production and development has won a court case," David Hasemyer, a reporter with InsideClimate News, told the Herald. Aruba contends its operations did not harm the Parrs.

Residents atop the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas have similar issues.

If the Parr verdict stands then other litigants, waiting in the wings, will likely sue. "I think there probably are lawyers out there digging into this right now, given the success in this case," says Thomas McGarity, an environmental law professor at the University of Texas. "Whether we see more cases filed depends to some extent on how this case fares on appeal."

In the past , complaints against fracking have involved threats to aquifers, excessive water use, trauma from living next to 24/7 industrial sites (constant noise and rising costs, such as rents) and increased seismic activity. Fears that airborne emissions are harmful opens a new front.

Aruba is expected to come out swinging if the case continues to appeal, backed by an industry determined to stop protests in their tracks.

As Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana, Pennsylvania and other states ride the national fracking bonanza, big money is at stake.

One major finding from the Parrs' case is just how ineffective regulation is in Texas, not least because the pro-industry TCEQ is run by political appointees. Some later work as lobbyists for the oil and gas sector.

The National Institute on Money in State Politics found the industry has channelled almost US$58 million into state political campaigns since 2000.

After the TCEQ imposed stricter emission standards in 2011 the legislature drafted a wrecking bill. "And within three months the bill became law and Governor Perry signed it," says Hasemyer. "The political will isn't there. In fact, the political will is very much on the side of the oil and gas industry."

The industry often self-audits emissions, the TCEQ does not always know how many fracking sites exist and fines are paltry. Between 2009 and last year the number of unplanned "emission events", that spew toxic fumes from fracking facilities, doubled from 1012 to 2023.

The TCEQ insists fracking is no danger to health and has just five monitoring sites on the periphery of the Eagle Ford Shale (35 sit atop the Barnett Shale) in case ozone emissions migrate into the San Antonio metropolitan region.

The city's ozone levels have repeatedly violated the Clean Air Act (enforced by individual states), risking economic sanctions from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Methane released by fracking is a greenhouse gas 34 times more potent than CO2, and studies from Cornell University, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveal methane emissions are far higher than thought. The NOAA found methane leaks in Colorado, which has more stringent regulations than Texas, were triple past estimates and the NAS found emissions 50 per cent worse. An Inspector General's report last year concluded methane emissions from fracking were "likely underestimated". The Cornell study concluded shale gas was dirtier than coal and oil due to methane's greenhouse gas footprint. Tellingly, the oil and gas business has exempted many production methods from EPA standards.

Meanwhile, the boom continues, with scant scientific evidence to measure possible health downsides, a situation that echoes the "downwinder" phenomenon when Americans were exposed to atmospheric radiation from 1950s atomic bomb tests. Except this time people routinely see and inhale noxious yellow-brown fumes that drift downwind from fracking sites.

"My sense right now is that we're driving in the dark," says Aaron Bernstein, associate director of the Centre for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University. Although more is known about the inheritability of environmental toxins, passed from parents to children, due to a paucity of hard data fracking's health effects remain unclear, making it hard to create a regulatory regime.

"Any extractive industry will have health effects," says Bernstein. "Many are well known. And we owe it to ourselves to make use of the knowledge we've gained from past suffering. To ignore that is folly. It really is short-sighted."

In Wise County, the Parrs, like others affected by a boom that has shattered dreams and turned lives upside down, want to sell their home. "But they're having a really difficult time," says Hasemyer. The jury found the Parrs' property had devalued by $275,000. Neighbours who went up against Aruba and settled saw their home's value plummet from $257,330 to $75,240 before they fled. As word of such personal disasters gets around few want their lives impoverished by frackers on their doorstep.

One of many, many stories, stories that for the most part won't be told in the near future because the dead "can't speak." And everyone else will be to concerned about their own reality that will come crashing down on their heads. Moving on to another shameless maneuver.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-louisiana-lawsuit-jindal-20140606-story.html

And people continue to allow themselves to be whipped up into a frenzy... and vote.

Louisiana governor signs law to block suits against oil industry

Louisana Gov. Bobby Jindal signed a bill Friday to quash a landmark lawsuit brought by a local flood protection agency that sought damages from the oil and gas industry to restore the state’s vanishing coastline.

Jindal signed the legislation -- which prevents government bodies in Louisiana from pursuing such litigation -- despite warnings from the state attorney general and nearly 100 legal experts. Critics of the law say it is so broad it could potentially imperil hundreds of other lawsuits against oil and gas companies, including litigation against BP for its role in the 2010 Gulf oil spill.

“I am proud to sign it into law,” Jindal said in a statement, calling the litigation “frivolous." The Republican said the law "further improves Louisiana’s legal environment by reducing unnecessary claims that burden businesses so that we can bring even more jobs to our state.”

The bill was one of at least seven championed this year by the Jindal administration's legislative allies to kill coastal-damage lawsuits brought by state agencies against the oil and gas industry, a pillar of Louisiana’s economy and a powerful force in its politics.

The state loses the equivalent of a football field of land every hour to the Gulf of Mexico, and has lost a quarter of its coastline since the 1930s. Partially repairing the coastline by 2050 would cost $50 billion, the state estimated.

A leading cause of the land loss is the system of canals that oil and gas companies have cut through fragile wetlands for decades, with the state’s approval, to haul equipment and install pipelines. Scientists say the dredging let salt water flow in, killing vegetation that kept the land from eroding. Without the buffer of these marshes and barrier islands, Louisiana's many low-lying coastal communities, including New Orleans, now have little natural protection from storm surges created by hurricanes.

In July 2013, the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, an independent board that oversees flood protection for New Orleans, decided that oil and gas companies should pay their share and voted unanimously to sue all 97 companies operating in the state for unspecified damages. Suits by several parish governments followed over the last year.

The bill Jindal signed would retroactively halt the board’s lawsuit. Legal experts from around the country warned that the bill’s language could also strip the state of its ability to sue oil and gas companies for future damage and could endanger litigation underway against BP. The attorney general, James D. “Buddy” Caldwell, agreed and urged Jindal to veto the bill.

The Louisiana Oil and Gas Assn., which has argued that the lawsuits are the work of “greedy trial lawyers,” welcomed the new law. “The passing of this piece of legislation represents the idea that greed will not trump hard work and determination,” said Don Briggs, the trade group’s president.

Lawyers for the flood protection board said they were considering suing the state over the law.


“Is there a single person in Louisiana who believes the governor is putting the state's interest ahead of his personal ambition?” said John Barry, a former member of the flood protection board and the driving force behind the lawsuit. “The attorney general, the president of Jefferson Parish, the New Orleans City Council and others all called upon the governor to veto the bill. I think he signed it today because they were just the beginning of a broad chorus from around the state and he wanted to cut that off before that chorus became deafening.”

Peru.
http://m.startribune.com/?id=262203551

Peru mining boom leaves highlanders behind

The Marzano-Velasquez clan lived a simple, pastoral life on a mountain that happened to sit atop the world's largest known copper-and-zinc deposit.

Article by: FRANK BAJAK , Associated Press

Updated: June 6, 2014 - 11:15 PM

SAN ANTONIO DE JUPROG, Peru — The Marzano-Velasquez clan lived a simple, pastoral life on a mountain that happened to sit atop the world's largest known copper-and-zinc deposit.

It wouldn't make them rich. Maria Magdalena Velasquez signed away her family's share of the windswept moorlands with a thumbprint in 1999. Like dozens of other Quechua-speaking families who sold their land to the international mining consortium, they thought the open-pit Antamina mine would lift their long-neglected highlands district from poverty.

Two decades ago, this rugged, mineral-rich Andean nation bent over backward to attract mining multinationals — and became Latin America's undisputed economic growth leader as a result. But the boom has been more of a curse for families like the Marzanos, who saw the $49,000 they got for their land quickly evaporate. Promises of jobs, decent schools and health care did not come true.

Instead, the people who live in the rural highlands have been battling one environmental disaster after another. Frustration over lax industry regulation has led to a growing fury of protests in Peru, with at least eight people killed by security forces at two mining projects in 2012. Of 81 active environmental disputes the government counted in April, a half-dozen involved Antamina.

The Marzanos are leading one of the protests, fighting what they consider the mine's continuing encroachment and unfulfilled promises.

The mine, owned by a consortium comprised of BHP Billiton, Glencore/Xstrata, Mitsubishi and Teck Resources Ltd., netted $1.4 billion in profits in the year ending in June 2013.

Half the 30 percent tax on its profits is distributed in its host state. The district of San Marcos, where the mine is located, is the country's richest — receiving about $50 million a year in royalties. Yet it has no paved highways, no hospital, and no water treatment plant. Nearly one third of toddlers suffer from chronic malnutrition — double the national average.

Beset by graft, San Marcos has cycled through four mayors in four years. The three ex-mayors were all charged with inflating public works contracts and giving jobs and kickbacks to relatives. The current mayor is under investigation for the same.

Antamina says it spent $314 million from 2007 to 2013 on infrastructure and "social inclusion" projects in the region — including in pre-natal and dental care, child nutrition and animal husbandry.

Asked why San Marcos residents nevertheless live so poorly, company spokesman Martin Calderon suggested such questions be "directed at the authorities, be they national or regional."

World Bank guidelines stipulate that in big mining projects such as Antamina the people relocated should end up with equal or better living standards. Yet the poverty rate in Peru's mining-scarred highlands is about 50 percent, double the national average.

Only one of Velasquez's nine children works at the mine, and all are fighting it. They curse its rock-loosening blasts, which hurl skyward a blood-orange dust that contaminates people, crops and livestock.

"It penetrates your skin, like ashes from a wood fire," said Lidia Zorilla, a 34-year-old farmer in Juprog as a dust cloud wafted over her.

Antamina official Mirko Chang said the cloud is not toxic. "It's earth, just the same as anywhere else," he said.

Villagers say the dust makes them sick.

Tests done from 2006-2009 by government health agencies at villagers' requests found elevated levels of lead and cadmium in people's blood and urine.

President Ollanta Humala said in a September interview with The Associated Press that he found the contamination claims against Antamina hard to believe, since it would not make sense for big multinational companies to risk "acting irresponsibly."

"They would have a lot to lose because Peruvian laws are very strict these days for mining companies that contaminate the environment," he said.

Many villagers believe a $1.5 billion upgrade Antamina completed in 2012 that its CEO said boosted production by 38 percent just means more pollution. They do not believe its claims that it is compliant with air and water quality standards.

And they have little faith in regulators or authorities.

In 2010, a prosecutor threw out an attempt to initiate criminal proceedings against Antamina based on the health studies.

In fact, no significant lawsuits related to pollution or public health have been successful against big mining in Peru, environmental lawyers say.

In Chile, environmentalists were heartened last year when construction was suspended on an $8.5 billion gold mine over downstream contamination. Mining companies have not faced such regulation in Peru, where the mining ministry approves environmental impact studies.

A fledgling environmental protection agency has flexed some limited muscle. It has fined Antamina a total of $487,200, mostly for a June 2009 leak of copper, zinc and lead into a river. Antamina is appealing that and other fines, to date paying $85,700 of the total assessed.

Peru has more than 7,500 mining waste sites, and mining companies are supposed to pay to clean them up. But a government list almost never identifies the polluter.

Reform from within has proven frustrating.

Ernesto Bustamante, a molecular biologist, was environmental protection chief at the mining ministry for four months in 2011. He had hoped to devise ways of chemically dissolving contaminants. Instead, he discovered a ministry with "little interest in remediation." Mining company employees routinely sneaked in to help edit environmental impact studies, he said.

Twice, he said he discovered major mining companies had gone ahead with expansion projects without permits.

Many ministry workers were on the take, Bustamante suspected.

"Technicians who made a little more than $1,000 a month were taking vacations in Paris."

Mining companies employees sneaking in to help edit environmental impact studies? Sounds like drug companies and regulatory bodies. I wonder, do the people causing these damages have a plan - a safe haven to escape to when TSHTF? There can't be enough room in bunkers for all the pathological types since, they're likely to wipe out those on "the outer circles" (or bottom of the pyramid) without the same clout. Do they even think about this?