Making hazardous waste cleanup &d science compatible It now appears that by the year 2000 we will be spending between $10 billion and $20 billion per year to remediate hazardous waste. In the context of this spending, it is critical to begin creating an adequate scientific base. Not only is the problem significant, but, for better or worse, we now know that we have the time for science to play a significant role in cleanup-wen if it takes a decade or more to produce major results. What kind of scientific strategy would make sense? I believe it should have the following elements, which should be pursued simultaneously. First, EPA needs to follow up on its recent “Reducing Risk” project by analyzing the current health and environmental objectives at a significant sample of the 1200 National Priorities List Superfund sites. In this way the Agency can identify the extent of immediate and long-term risks already ameliorated, and the prospects of actually reaching long-term goals. It may be that EPA has already succeeded in many of its original public protection goals. Second, there should be an immediate effort to assess whether the current requirements most frequently borrowed from other environmental programs-the ARARS, or “applicable or relevant and appropriate” standards-are, in fact, based on the best available science. Third, there are numerous instances in which no standard exists for the soil matrices in which chemicals or groups of chemicals are encountered. We need to develop a fundamental research effort to understand what happens to these chemical mixtures: the hazardous waste problem should be the driving force to make the kinds of investments necessary to crack this longstanding problem. Fourth, knowledge of basic toxicity is obviously insufficient in the absence of good exposure data. Although our inadequacies in exposure assess-
0013-936~1/0925-1185$02.50100 1991 American Chemical Society
ment are important to all areas of environmental policy, the economic impact of our current ignorance in this area reveals itself dramatically in the hazardous waste arena. We simply must improve the data that underpin exposure assumptions. In the absence of much-improved data, one can hardly blame project managers on the line for making the most conservative assumptions. Progress resulting from the simultaneous pursuit of these areas would help enormously in providing policy makers and site cleanup managers with improved decision-making tools. I am not talking about developing mindless “cookbooks” of numbers that will stifle creativity or kill the further development of science. But we must recognize the realities of hazardous waste decision making: inexperienced managers are being asked to make major public health and environmental decisions. We have to improve the information upon which we base our choices.
Thomas P . Grumbly is president of Clean Sites, Inc. [Washington. DCl. a nonprofit organizotion formed to accelemte the voluntary cleanup of hazordous woste sites. He is o member of Notional Academy of Science Committees on hazardous waste on public lands and risk communication. He hos o B.A. degree in government from Cornell University ond on M . A . degree in political economy from the University of California ot Berkeley.
Environ. Sci. Technol.. Vol. 25, No. 7. 1991 9185
