Environmental▼News trout and eels taken from various points along the United Kingdom’s Skerne and Tees rivers were generally higher than their total concentration of PBDEs. The total concentrations of HBCDs in the trout muscle ranged from 1.34 to 6758 ng/g (wet weight). Allchin’s group found the highest concentrations downstream of a HBCD manufacturing plant, where the level in the most contaminated eel was 10,275 ng/g (wet weight). HBCD levels are also high near tex-
tile plants in Belgium, according to de Boer. The toxicological studies conducted on HBCD thus far show that it may inhibit the activity of the CYP1A gene in the liver, which means that it might interfere with the body’s ability to detoxify harmful substances, says Dan Ronisz, a biologist interested in biomarkers who conducted studies at Göteborg University in Sweden. Other studies show that HBCD may be a peroxisome proliferator, which means
that it could cause liver cancer, he says. Haruya Sakai of the Yokohama City University School of Medicine and colleagues in Japan have also shown that HBCD interferes with thyroid action at the cellular level, stimulating thyroid response element-mediated transcriptional activation. To move ahead, scientists need more information on toxicology, but it is already clear that HBCD is not a good alternative for PBDEs, de Boer says. KELLYN BETTS
Data gaps limit success of national indicators 60 Number of outbreaks
The U.S. EPA’s Draft Report on the Environment 2003 includes the first results of its indicators project, a two-year collaborative effort to describe the condition of the nation’s environment and pollution’s effects on human health. While the scientists who reviewed the report have high praise for the agency’s effort, they say that so far the indicators paint an incomplete picture. “The report’s greatest contribution may be that it highlights the enormous lack of usable national data on the environment,” one scientist says. The draft, released in June, contains the latest scientific data on the nation’s air, water, land, human health, and ecosystems. It is intended as a communications tool for the public and Congress, and was created with input from more than 30 federal agencies, about 20 states, and research groups, says Kim Nelson, director of EPA’s Office of Environmental Information. EPA staff incorporated many of the indicators in a report on ecosystems from the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, released in September 2002. However, public controversy over a chapter on climate change that was removed at the behest of the White House skewed media reporting on the document. “There is a lesson to be learned within that controversy,” says Robin O’Malley, senior fellow with the Heinz Center. “Reports that otherwise are very good can be tainted, or marginal-
Noncommunity Individual Community
50 40 30 20 10 0
2 4 6 8 0 2 4 6 8 0 2 4 6 8 0 197 197 197 197 198 198 198 198 198 199 199 199 199 199 200 Source: Based on data presented in Craun, G. F.; Calderon, R. L. Waterborne Outbreaks in the United States, 1971–2000. In Drinking Water Regulation and Health; Pontius, F. W., Ed.; Wiley: New York, 2003; 40–56.
Number of reported waterborne disease outbreaks per year and by type of water system. Noncommunity water systems either regularly supply water to at least 25 of the same people at least 6 months per year, such as office buildings, or provide water at locales that people only visit, such as gas stations. Individual water systems are not regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act and serve less than 25 people. Community water systems serve 25 or more people year round.
ized … by the appearance of or the reality of interference for political reasons,” he says. Others said that the numbers in the EPA draft indicating the high quality of drinking water nationwide were exaggerated. One of the project’s goals was to present a brief set of national environmental indicators that would become as familiar to citizens as the Gross Domestic Product is in illustrating the nation’s economic health. But that, Nelson says, is not likely to happen. Others working on environmental indicators agree. “The environment is [composed] of such a myriad of things, and I’m not smart enough to know how to coalesce these into one or two or three things,” says Peter Preuss, director of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment and the
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person who spearheaded work on the technical document. The draft also points out research gaps, particularly improved monitoring, according to scientists inside and outside of government. The completion of the draft makes clear the lack of national data on pesticide applications and residues and of nonpoint source water pollution, Preuss says. There could be improvements in how drinking water is monitored, as well as more specific data on chemical releases. The Toxics Release Inventory, for example, reports annual air releases, but companies don’t report whether these releases occurred in one large batch or were emitted in many small batches over the year, Preuss says. The report “clarifies what some of the critical data gaps
30 years, total emissions of 6 principle air pollutants have decreased by nearly 25%, although more than 133 million people live in areas where monitored air quality in 2001 was unhealthy because of high levels of at least one major air pollutant. Rates of annual wetland losses have decreased from almost 500,000 acres annually in the 1970s to less than 100,000 annually since 1986. But the quality of the wetland losses looks bleak: In key parts of the country, valuable wetlands are still being lost, the report notes. The project was launched in 2001 at the request of former EPA Administrator Christie Whitman, who had led a similar effort as governor of New Jersey (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2002, 36, 265A). The draft can be downloaded at www.epa. gov/indicators. —CATHERINE M. COONEY
News Briefs California city strives for 1 MW of solar power A group of residents in Sebastopol, Calif., have set a goal to bring 1 megawatt of solar energy capacity to city residences, businesses, and municipal buildings by 2005. In late August, local government, advocacy groups, and industry assembled to educate consumers and offer discounted equipment in support of the first-of-its-kind cooperative. Several other towns in California may follow, according to Dan Pelligrini, president and CEO of Cooperative Community Energy, a solar energy group that is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. For more information, visit www.ccenergy.com/news/ solarsebastopol.html.
Multiple stressors behind Lake Erie decline
Canada
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Oxygen-starved zones are appearing in Lake Erie more often and earlier in the season.
Lake bottoms naturally develop hypoxic zones with low levels of oxygen in the summertime, but hypoxic zones have occurred in Lake Erie more often and earlier in the season than they did in the 1980s and the early 1990s, says Jan Ciborowski, an aquatic ecologist at the University of Windsor in
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Lake Erie is exhibiting symptoms of nutrient overload, such as more frequent zones of depleted oxygen and blooms of nuisance algae, even though the amount of the usual culprit, phosphorus, entering the water from sewage plants and runoff has not increased. Early results from a U.S. EPA-funded study hint that invasive species and climate change may lie behind these observations.
Ontario. A research cruise in late August found that 8 out of 10 monitoring stations had oxygen concentrations below the threshold of 4 milligrams per liter, at which aquatic life is threatened with suffocation. Climate change could be accelerating the hypoxia process, says Bob Heath, director of the Water Resources Research Institute at Kent State University. Warmer temperatures have reduced water levels by about four feet compared to the late 1990s, explains Jeff Reutter, director of the federal Ohio Sea Grant Program at Ohio State University. The shallower water is then warmer when the lake stratifies into warm and cold layers in spring, causing bacteria to respire faster and consume more oxygen, Heath says. Because the top layer is always 40–50 feet thick, no matter what the total lake depth, the bottom layer and its supply of oxygen shrink and become more susceptible to anoxia when lake levels drop, Reutter adds. Phosphorous levels are rising in the lake, although scientists don’t know where the extra phosphorus is coming from. Phosphorus inputs have not changed since they de-
Guidance for science and technology policy U.S. congressional leaders are in urgent need of usable science and technology advice, according to a new book edited by Carnegie Mellon University Professors Granger Morgan and John Peha. Science and Technology Advice for Congress points out that congressional members often must make decisions in the face of scientific uncertainty and competing scientific claims from special interest groups. To address this, the authors suggest that decision makers be provided access to careful, balanced, interdisciplinary analysis of issues presented in a nontechnical form. Several combinations of institutions could fill the information gap, but if budgets are constrained, the editors recommend the establishment of at least one analysis organization that works for Congress, similar to the old Office of Technology Assessment, which is directed by a bipartisan committee. The 232-page book is available at www.rffpress.org.
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are and extends an open invitation [to others] to provide that data,” he adds. Various government agencies and several states, such as California, Michigan, and South Carolina, collected data for their own indicators programs; however, painting a national picture with these data proves troublesome, says Keith Harrison, chair of the Michigan Environmental Science Board. Most data, with the exception of a few areas such as ambient air quality, are collected on a regional or state scale. To be used nationally, state data must be collected under similar conditions by almost identical techniques in order to be compared. The data also must be collected over time, so they might illustrate a trend, Harrison says. The report shows a mixed bag of results. For example, over the past
