PHOTODISC
For the first time, Europeans can access data on industrial releases of potentially harmful chemicals into air and water. The information is available at a pollutant register on a website run by the European Commission (EC) and the European Environment Agency. Meanwhile, the U.S. EPA, which currently sponsors the most comprehensive national emissions inventory, known as the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), is contemplating options for reducing industry’s annual reporting burden. Launched at the end of February, the new environmental database, known as the European Pollutant Emission Register (EPER), includes information on 50 pollutants released during 2001—the first reporting year—by nearly 10,000 large and medium-sized industrial facilities operating in the European Union (EU). Categories include heavy metals, pesticides, industrial chemicals, dioxin
Information about the toxic emissions from industrial facilities like this chemical plant in Aberdeen, Scotland, is now available on the Internet.
byproducts, and greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. Although reporting thresholds vary for each pollutant, they have been designed to account for 90% of total emissions from the facilities covered, according to EC officials. EPER is not as comprehensive as the pollutant release and transfer register that the EU agreed to last year under a United Nations (UN) treaty (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003, 37, 134A), which covers 86 substances, adds land releases and waste transfers, and requires annual reporting. The second EPER report, which will cover 2004 releases, isn’t scheduled until 2007. But after that, EC officials say they expect to have an expanded EPER in line with the UN protocol. “We are now bringing the first proposals forward on this,” says Bernd Mehlhorn, the desk officer in charge of EPER with the EC’s environment directorate. Environmentalists say that despite EPER’s current limited scope, it is a “huge step forward” and will help pressure industry to reduce and better control its emissions. “You have to understand that for many countries in the EU, this sort of information will be available online for the first time ever,” says Mary Taylor, a chemicals campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe. The data can be grouped by pollutant, activity or industrial sector, air or water emissions, or by country. Likewise, detailed information is available for individual facilities. If companies fail to report the required data, the EC, for now, will rely on pressure from the public or competing facilities to force compliance, Mehlhorn says. If that too fails, the EC could consider bringing the member state in which the particular facility is located before the European court of justice. “For us, the member states are responsi-
News Briefs Clean Air Act report card The Clean Air Act has helped improve air quality over the past 30 years, but more can be done, finds a National Research Council committee after a two-year study of the U.S. EPA’s air quality management program. Implementing the act resulted in cap-and-trade programs and significantly reduced several pollutants, including those from motor vehicle emission sources, but needs still exist to meet newly mandated standards, understand health risks and the effects of pollutants, address environmental justice, and tackle the issues of multistate and international transport of air pollutants. The committee encourages EPA to continue current air improvement programs but recommends that the agency target groups of pollutants rather than individual ones and protect ecosystems, not just people. For more information on Air Quality Management in the United States, go to www. nas.edu.
Voluntary goals set Twenty of the 54 companies that have signed up with the U.S. EPA’s Climate Leaders program have now set greenhouse gas reductions targets, according to the agency. The two-year-old program serves as a key component of the Bush Administration’s alternatives to mandatory greenhouse gas reductions. The reductions to which the companies have committed go beyond the expected rate of improvement in their respective energy sectors, EPA claims. The nonbinding reduction goals set through the program include a pledge by American Electric Power, one of the nation’s largest power producers. For more information, go to www.epa.gov/climateleaders.
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DIGITALVISION
EU and U.S. plan changes in reporting toxics
Environmental▼News ble [for ensuring compliance], not the facilities,” he explains. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, changes being advocated for the TRI include raising reporting thresholds for small businesses or facilities with small reportable amounts, expanding the number of facilities exempt from detailed reporting, and allowing facilities to report production waste in ranges rather than in specific amounts. EPA is also seeking additional burden reduction ideas from the public. The goal is to reduce the time and cost burdens associated with annual TRI reporting, says Kimberly Nelson, assistant administrator of EPA’s Office
of Environmental Information. Industry generally supports the changes, but environmentalists say they could create loopholes that significantly reduce the amount of information available to the public. Moreover, says Sean Moulton, “I don’t think these options would actually reduce any burden” because companies would still have to figure out their specific release amounts to determine which new category or range they fell into. Moulton is a senior policy analyst with OMB Watch, a government watchdog group that focuses on the activities of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
EPA is considering these TRI program changes in response to an OMB requirement to find ways to reduce industrial burdens. The agency is reviewing about 550 public comments and expects to issue a proposed rule early in 2005. “That rule will focus on those options that we think have the greatest potential for reducing burden and not impacting the quantity and quality of the information that we get,” Nelson says. For more information on EPER or TRI, go to http://eper.cec.eu.int or www.epa.gov/tri/programs/ stakeholders/outreach.htm, respectively. —KRIS CHRISTEN
As New Jersey’s recent decision to lower its standard for arsenic in drinking water—a move that California is also contemplating— attests, small communities across the United States appear to be finding cost-effective ways to remove the toxic element from their water. This development contradicts the dire predictions put forth when the U.S. EPA promulgated its 10 parts-per-billion (ppb) standard in 2001 by organizations like the National Rural Water Association and the American Council on Science and Health, Inc. These groups prophesized that small, rural drinking water suppliers would be forced to shut down because of the financial burden. Like the nationwide standard, New Jersey’s new 5-ppb standard is set to take effect in 2006. “Developments in arsenic removal methods over the last several years allow communities many options for treatment,” according to U.S. Filter, a company that is offering a sorbent technology for remediating arsenic in drinking water. In February, EPA’s Environmental Verification program announced that initial tests designed to validate the operation of arsenic removal technologies under conditions typically faced by small drinking water providers confirm the ability of two
RHONDA SAUNDERS
Arsenic’s technology success story
New technologies are inspiring states like New Jersey to go beyond the U.S. EPA for standards for removing arsenic from drinking water.
additional arsenic-removal technologies to meet or beat the 10-ppb standard. The purveyors of these emerging technologies claim that they are useful for both large and small drinking water suppliers because they can remove arsenic less expensively than the best available technologies (BATs) that EPA has identified. The technology developed by ADI International, Inc., is an ironenhanced adsorption media called MEDIA G2, whereas Kinetico, Inc., and Alcan Chemicals teamed up to create an iron-enhanced activated alumina adsorption media. Iron and arsenic have a chemical affinity, and most technologies remove arsenic most effectively when the element is in the form of As(V), according to EPA. The iron also aids in transform-
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ing arsenic from the arsenite (As[III]) form, which is likely to occur in anaerobic ground waters, to As(V). Five communities that each serve fewer than 5000 people are already using the ADI technology, says Eric Winchester, the company’s vice president. Other small communities are interested; at least 50% of the 200–300 pricing proposals the company has received come from small municipalities, he says. Although some technologies are more expensive to operate in western states like New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada because of the silica in their water, Winchester says silica does not impact ADI’s technology. He says that his technology’s proven ability to significantly reduce arsenic levels is one of the reasons his native Canada is currently considering a 5-ppb standard. “Once you have a standard, there is a huge economic and technical incentive for competitors to come up with lower-cost technologies,” observes Erik Olson, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group that lobbied for the lowest possible arsenic standard. “That’s why we feel that time after time when EPA sets health standards, or clean air or drinking water standards, the costs of compliance plummet from the time that EPA was estimating costs to the time that implementation is actually required.” —KELLYN S. BETTS
