that EPA does not have the time to carry out the law. The law became effective the day Clinton signed it. This means that the agency must develop new processes to comply with the law's requirements while reviewing existing standards and setting new ones. To make matters worse, bill supporters from all sides of the pesticide-use debate now say the law includes provisions they would rather not see in legislation. "To get the bill enacted, there were some things we had to swallow," said Brian Folkerts, National Food Processors Association. "Clearly there are some things in there that have given some people in the industry pause," including new federal authority to fine food processors $500,000 per shipment if residues on food are found to violate a standard. Environmentalists, too, have privately complained that the bill does not include a phaseout for carcinogens. Comments from stakeholders indicate that EPA will have a hard time carrying out the law. "It would be naive to say that the antipesticide groups are not going to use these [data] provisions to challenge regulations" like they did with the zero-tolerance requirement under the old law, said one industry representative. Public health and environmental groups said they don't have an agenda planned, but they pledge to make sure EPA "follows the letter of the law," said Richard Wiles, Environmental Working Group. The Natural Resources Defense Council, which sued the agency because it was not acting on the old law's zero-tolerance requirement, plans to watch EPA's implementation "like a hawk," said NRDC senior attorney Al Meyerhoff. "I think everybody realizes that some of these issues will be ground up in the courts," Meyerhoff added. "Let's not kid ourselves," EPA Deputy Administrator Fred Hansen cautioned committee members. The agency is applying a new standard to pesticide use, and some decisions will not please everyone. "I don't want people to believe that more resources means that everybody is going to get their way," Hansen said. —CATHERINE M. COONEY
NEWSSCIENCE White House panel creating database of endocrine disrupter-related research The U.S. government is funding some 400 research projects that examine the effects of chemicals that disrupt the endocrine systems of humans and wildlife, according to a new federal survey. A 26-member federal panel organized by the White House National Science and Technology Council, which oversaw the survey, intends to make a searchable database of endocrine-disrupter research and combine it with information on all similar public and private research in the United States and Europe. The database is intended to help scientists coordinate research and see where gaps lie, according to Lawrence W. Reiter, director of the EPA National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory and chair of the panel. The U.S. inventory and a scheme to differentiate the re-
search will be presented at the panel's meeting Nov. 22 in Washington, DC. Reiter stressed that techniques used to create this database may serve as a model for other complex research projects. "Problems go up and budgets don't, and we've got to figure out better ways to get the work out," he said. The panel is made up of federal scientists from throughout the government. It is leading the effort to coordinate some $20 million to $30 million annually in federal research on a host of chemicals found to disrupt the hormonal systems of wildlife and, potentially, humans (ES&T, June 1996, 242A). Along with the inventory, the panel has created a "framework document" laying out major scientific questions and broad research needs. It is in draft form and under review. The research
PRIORITIES NRC outlines U.S. environmental science agenda Environmental monitoring and impact of chemicals are among six topics singled out as key to setting an environmental science and technology agenda for the future in a report by the National Research Council (NRC) released in September. The topics were selected based on surveys, forums, and interviews with experts and the interested public, including business leaders, academics, and environmentalists. "Linking Science and Technology to Society's Environmental Goals" calls for scientists and engineers to better focus research and technology application in these areas: • Use of social science, costbenefit analysis, and risk assessment to help separate minor and major environmental risks and to encourage less expensive, incentive-based pollution reduction approaches; • Ecological and environmental monitoring to gather consistent, standardized, high-quality, and complete
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data on the state of the environment; • Adverse effects of chemicals in the environment and development of better test methods to evaluate longterm effects of chemicals; • Development of energy sources that do not rely on fossil fuels; • Manufacturing and product engineering that reduce the negative environmental impact of industrial production; and • The relationship between population and consumption to help reduce the environmental impact of population growth. The six research areas were selected from nearly 40 subjects put forward by participants in the NRC's surveys, interviews, and forums. The NRC notes that many other areas were of equal concern, but the drafting committee felt these six were not being studied adequately. To obtain the report call the National Academy Press at 1-800624-6242. —JEFF JOHNSON
project inventory and research framework are divided into three categories: methods used to identify potential hazards from exposure and effects; quantitative models to assess risk; and measurements of specific chemicals in the environment. "Our goal is to overlay the framework and the inventory," Reiter said, "and to begin to identify where there are common interests and where we have research gaps." At the November meeting, the working group will hear testimony from organizations that are funding endocrine disruption research, especially industrysupported research and projects under way in Europe. "We hope to rev them up enough so they will take their data and put it in a form we can include in our database," Reiter said. Eventually, the information will be available on the Internet. The White House panel's role is limited to research questions. A separate body within EPA is developing a strategy to screen and test for the endocrine-disrupting potential of the 600 pesticides and 72,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States. EPA is expected to recommend formation of a federal advisory committee to help guide the agency in this huge task. Although plans to form an advisory committee are not final, a staff member said he has received up to three calls a day seeking membership. The screening and testing strategy will be aimed largely at reducing or mitigating risk to human health and the environment, obtaining and using exposure information to set agency priorities, and developing a process to determine when tests beyond screening are necessary and how these will be validated. The staff member noted that there is a "strong technical component" needed to integrate research into the screening and testing program, but EPA's project would not revisit research. Instead, he said, the emphasis will be on regulations, noting that both the recently passed Food Quality Protection Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act Reauthorization call for testing to determine if chemicals can disrupt the endocrine system. —JEFF JOHNSON
NEWS TECHNOLOGY Research, regulations spur development of new CEM incinerator technologies Technology entrepreneur Mike Seltzer hopes the decision by Waste Technologies Industries (WTI) to let him demonstrate his real-time metals emissions monitoring prototype at its Ohio hazardous waste incinerator is the wave of the future. Seltzer, a research chemist at the Naval Air Center, China Lake, Calif., has developed a continuous emissions monitoring (CEM) system for metals. The technology has also caught the eye of Department of Energy officials, and it could have far-reaching consequences for incinerator operators, especially if EPA moves ahead with proposed incinerator regulations. Seltzer's prototype measures all metals, including lead and mercury. These two are of great concern to regulators, citizens living near incinerators, and incinerator operators. WTI, located near homes and a school, has faced a barrage of opposition and consequently has installed some of the world's most advanced pollution control and monitoring equipment (ES&T, Jan. 1996, p. 14A). It uses CEM for carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, oxygen, total hydrocarbons, hydrochloric acid, and opacity. WTI's president saw Seltzer's prototype at an incinerator conference in April and urged him to
bring it to Ohio. The device operated at WTI for a week in September and found no detectable metal emissions. Seltzer's system couples a wellknown technology, inductively coupled argon plasma spectrometry, to hardware that draws sample stack air emissions into the plasma. The metals are broken down to atomic constituents in the plasma and measured by the spectrometer. The system can process metal measurements every two minutes; current methods require more than three weeks to process samples in a laboratory. Seltzer first developed his prototype for the Navy several years ago; then the Army sponsored further work; now DOE is interested in it for use at its own hazardous and radioactive waste incinerators and for civilian applications. Dan Burns, a senior researcher at DOE's Savannah River Plant, heads a program to encourage CEM development. Currently, DOE is supporting a six-month test of three mercury-monitoring technologies at a South Carolina cement kiln and is financing CEM tests of particulate matter at a hazardous waste incinerator in Wilmington, Del. It is also funding several multi-metal benchscale projects. continued on page 478A
Mike Seltzer tests his continuous emissions monitoring system for metals at Waste Technologies Industries incinerator at East Liverpool, Ohio. VOL.30, NO. 11, 1996/ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS • 4 7 7 A
