On May 31, the government of Kuwait signed a contract with a consortium of consultants to assess environmental damages and prepare claims as a result of the 1990 Iraqi invasion. The claims, which will be submitted to the United Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva, will cover health risk assessment, terrestrial ecosystem damage, damage to underground water supplies and coastal areas, and loss of fisheries. In addition to the claims, it calls for development of a "database system" of environmental information collected prior to and after the invasion. U.S. Vice-President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin signed a bilateral environmental agreement on June 23. The treaty, w h i c h will be administered by EPA, establishes cooperative efforts in biodiversity, environmental management, public participation in environmental decision making, increased data sharing, and protection of intellectual property rights. With the signing, the Agency for International Development will spend $1 million to support the Komarov and Vavilov Institutes in St. Petersburg {research facilities with major efforts related to biodiversity), a n d the United States will work with Russia to reduce risks associated with low-level radioactive wastes in the Russian Arctic.
FEDERAL Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown announced in May the creation of an Environmental Technologies Exports (ETE) office and appointed Anne Alonzo to head the operation. ETE is charged with fostering p u b l i c private partnerships and promoting interagency cooperation to facilitate U.S. environmental tech354 A
nology exports. The office will concentrate on emerging markets in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. ETE is part of an aggressive p u s h by the Clinton administration to boost exports of "green technologies" (see June ESSrT, p. 256A). Alonzo was an enforcement attorney in EPA's Region V office, where she specialized in hazardous waste issues. For the last three years, she was EPA's first attache to a U.S. diplomatic mission, working at the embassy in Mexico City. There she counseled U.S. and Mexican private and public sectors on bilateral issues of environmental interest.
Assessing and saving U.S. biodiversity is high on the administration's action list. In May, H. Ronald Pulliam was appointed the first director of the Interior Department's National Biological Survey. The survey is a major effort to gather, analyze, and disseminate biological information. Since 1987, Pulliam has directed the University of Georgia's Institute of Ecology. As one of his first acts, Pulliam a n n o u n c e d on June 1 a major collaborative effort to track non-native plants spreading through the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaii boasts more than 10,000 species of plants and animals, many of w h i c h are on the U.S. Endangered Species List. Ninety percent of the plants are unique to the islands. Meanwhile, seven federal agencies have joined forces to conserve native plants and their habitats. The partnership, formalized under a memor a n d u m of understanding, creates the Federal Native Plant Conservation Committee with members from the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Biological Survey, Bureau of Land Management, U.S.
Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 28, No. 8, 1994
Forest Service, Soil Conservation Service, and Agricultural Research Service. "Today, over half of the species listed as endangered or threatened are plants," said Fish and Wildlife Service Director Mollie Beattie. EPA issued a final rule in June that adds health effects information and testing requirements to its registration program for vehicle fuels and additives. Manufacturers will be required to analyze combustion and evaporation emissions for potential adverse health effects, either by surveying the scientific literature or by testing. The health effects to be surveyed are general systematic and organ toxicity as well as possible developmental, reproductive, neurotoxic, carcinogenic, and mutagenic effects. Manufacturers of the 7200 fuels and additives already registered have u p to six years to complete the requirements. New products need to meet the requirements prior to registration. Testing will be done in a tier arrangement, with each step determining the need for additional tests. To reduce expenditures, fuels and additives will be classified in groups, and producers can share the cost of testing just a representative of the group. EPA will undertake a five-year, $50 million study of disinfection byproducts and microorganisms under two drinking-water rules signed June 7. The research is designed to balance the health risks of the byproducts against the need to protect against waterborne diseases, an issue highlighted by last year's outbreak of Cryptosporidium in Milwaukee's drinking water. The rules follow nearly two years of negotiations between water suppliers, EPA, and environmentalists. According to the Agency, the rules would target Cryptosporidium and the byproducts chlorine, chloroform, bromoform, bromodichloromethane, dibromochloromethane, dichloroacetic acid, trichloroacetic acid, bromate, chlorite, chloral hydrate, chloramines, and chlorine dioxide. On May 18, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce withdrew its support of the Basel Convention, which would ban the transport of hazardous wastes. The decision jeopardizes U.S. ratification of the
treaty. The Chamber's position was p r o m p t e d by a March agreement by signatories to the treaty to ban the shipping of wastes between developed countries (members of the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development) a n d developing countries for recycling. The decision threatens a $2.2 billion per year U.S. commodities trade market. According to the Chamber, the ban would actually increase degradation of the environment because developing countries use the recyclable wastes for raw materials for their industries. One major export that could be b a n n e d is scrap metal. Ash from municipal solid waste incinerators must be tested for hazardous constituents, EPA announced in May. Operators of incinerators that p r o d u c e ash w i t h hazardous constituents m u s t apply for a hazardous waste operating permit and dispose of the ash appropriately. EPA said that ash will be considered a newly identified hazardous waste, and rules for disposal will be proposed in October. The EPA action follows a May 2 decision by the S u p r e m e Court that the Resource Conservation a n d Recovery Act does not exempt m u n i c i p a l solid waste ash from coverage. The decision will probably increase the cost of operating m u n i c i p a l incinerators a n d raises the prospect of m u n i c i p a l liability for ash already disposed of in a n o n h a z a r d o u s waste site. Use of pesticides in the United States remains relatively stable at about 1.1 billion lb of active ingredient per year, according to EPA's most recent (1992-93) market estimates. Herbicides, especially atrazine and metolachlor, are still the most popular pesticides. The Agency estimates that pesticides are used on about 900,000 farms a n d 69 million households. Copies of the report, "Pesticide Industry Sales a n d Usage—1992 a n d 1993 Market Estimates" (733-K-94-001), are available from EPA, NCEPI, P.O. Box 42419, Cincinnati, OH 452422419. In April, Vice-President Al Gore announced the creation of GLOBE (Global Learning a n d Observations to Benefit the Environment), a program linking environmental scientists w i t h students
around the world. According to Gore, "Students will monitor such things as temperature and rainfall, initially in the areas around their schools, and each day feed the results into a worldwide computer network that is linked to the participating school." The project will begin with 500 schools and by the end of 1995 is expected to include 1000 schools. In later stages, GLOBE's data will evolve to more complex reporting such as numbers of trees planted or migratory birds. The information compiled by these students will be collected in the United States, updated hourly, and fed into the classrooms of the participating schools, to news organizations, and to others.
SCIENCE
Another major epidemiological study has connected exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) w i t h an increased risk of cancer. In the June 15 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, University of North C a r o l i n a Chapel Hill researchers report that a statistical analysis of w o m e n working as electrical engineers, t e l e p h o n e installers, power line workers, a n d electricians found 4 0 % more breast cancer deaths than in the general population. The report is based on an examination of computerized death records for w o m e n in 24 states w h o worked outside the h o m e . The researchers focused on 68 w o m e n w h o h a d died of breast cancer a n d 199 controls, all of w h o m h a d worked in electricityrelated jobs. According to report co-author Dana Loomis, " W o m e n working in electrical jobs should not quit those jobs because these findings are a long way from proving a causal relationship between electromagnetic fields a n d breast cancer." O n e of the few effects of EMFs on cells to be doc-
u m e n t e d has been a decrease in the pineal gland's production of the h o r m o n e melatonin, w h i c h may be connected w i t h an increased risk of breast cancer. Organolead compounds appear to be much more persistent in the atmosphere than expected on the basis of laboratory experiments. T w o papers in this m o n t h ' s ES&T present historic and contemporary data on ionic alkyllead concentrations in Greenland s n o w (pp. 1459 a n d 1467). In this remote region, most of the lead contamination arrives via long-range transport from vehicles using leaded gasoline. Surprisingly, the researchers from the University of A n t w e r p (Belgium) and Domaine Universitaire (France) found high organolead concentrations in snow samples until the mid-1980s despite the phase-out of this additive in U.S. a n d European gasolines during the mid- to late1970s. Moreover, high organolead concentrations in fresh s n o w were found in 1987 a n d 1989 during certain seasons; these were probably associated with European emissions. A 10-year analysis of air quality in 12 U.S. national parks finds that haze continues to severely degrade visibility in the East while scenic views in the West are getter clearer. " O n m a n y days in the summer, visitors have no view at all except a strange, gray fog from many of the most popular lookouts," said T h o m a s Cahill, head of the University of California—Davis Air Quality Group. The group's study, w h i c h i n c l u d e d more than 12,000 measurements, was published in Atmospheric Environment [1994, 28(5), 1 0 0 9 19]. On the other h a n d , researchers found a five-fold decrease in airborne lead in all 12 national parks. "It's mostly sulfate particles, w i t h lots of water attached. At times in the East, it is almost pure dilute sulfuric acid," explains Cahill. Despite sulfur emissions holding roughly constant during 1982-1992, s u m m e r sulfate hazes in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, TN, have soared almost 4 0 % . The study finds that the most improved site w a s Chiricahua National M o n u m e n t , AZ, where sulfate levels d r o p p e d by one-third probably because of the closing of or emission controls on nearby
Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 28, No. 8, 1994
355 A
