Environmental ▼ News Chlorine and antimicrobials cause concern
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san reacts with free chlorine to generate more than 50 ppb of chloroform in dishwater. When combined with the other trihalomethanes in the water, the additional chloroform could easily ratchet up the total trihalomethanes concentration to 80 ppb, which is EPA’s maximum allowable amount, or higher, Vikesland says. In light of previous studies showing that trihalomethane levels increase when people shower, the research raises questions about exposures to chloroform when antimicrobial soaps are used. At this point, however, the risk they may pose is unknown. Vikesland’s research also shows that triclosan’s reaction with free chlorine produces several chlorinated triclosan intermediates, including 2,4-dichlorophenol. In the presence of sunlight, these chlorinated intermediates could be producing dioxins, say McNeill and his colleague, William Arnold of the University of Minnesota’s department of civil engineering. The two have recently demonstrated that sunlight readily converts triclosan in river water to produce dioxins (Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2005, 24, 517–525). But if more highly chlorinated dioxins could be generated photochemically from chlorinated triclosan intermediates, they could be far more toxic, says McNeill. The research also suggests that dioxins could be forming near swimming pools. “There’s triclosan in hand soaps and moisturizers. [If] someone who has triclosancontaining moisturizer [on jumps] into the pool . . . they’re a potential source for chloroform [and chlorinated dioxin] formation,” Vikesland says. The same is true for PAUL D. THACKER
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ashing dishes by hand ley. “This research is important for with an antibacterial demonstrating that the chlorinadishwashing liquid can tion of triclosan can occur under do more than just ensure that the environmentally relevant condiplates, glasses, and silverware are tions,” says Kristopher McNeill of free from grease and germs, accordthe University of Minnesota’s deing to Peter Vikesland of the Virginpartment of chemistry. “The fact ia Polytechnic Institute and State that you can chlorinate triclosan University. In research published in [under] pretty mild conditions is this issue of ES&T (pp 3176–3185), troubling,” he adds. he and his colleagues show that the triclosan used in household dishwashing soaps reacts with chlorinated water to produce significant quantities of chloroform. The research also suggests that triclosan can photochemically react with chlorine to produce highly chlorinated dioxins. Because of its antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral properties, triclosan is found in toothpastes, deodorants, lotions, and hand soaps. It is also incorporated into a wide range of consumer goods, including kitchen tiles, children’s toys, and athletic clothing. As triclosan flows down drains, it makes its way into surface waters and sewage treatment plants, the bile of fish, and breast milk, according to the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, a New research shows that the triclosan in antibacterial dishwashing soaps can react with consumer group. chlorinated drinking water to produce levels of The U.S. EPA classifies chlochloroform that exceed EPA regulations. roform as a probable human carSince writing the paper, Vikescinogen. Moreover, the presence of land’s team has conducted followtrihalomethanes, such as chloroup research under conditions that form, in drinking water has been linked with human bladder cancers more closely mimic those found and miscarriages. during home dishwashing. The new The reaction of phenols such as experiments used EPA’s maximum triclosan with free chlorine is well allowable residual disinfectant conknown, but Vikesland’s research centration of 4 mg/L in tap water “ties the use of a household product and were conducted at 40 °C, which [to] increased exposure to a disinfits well with the cleaning recomfection byproduct,” says David Sedmendations of the Soap and Deterlak, an environmental engineer at gent Association. the University of California, BerkeUnder these conditions, triclo-
© 2005 American Chemical Society
News Briefs
found in the environment, chlorinated triclosan could be a source of toxic dioxins in the environment, says Arnold. Research has already shown that the presence of triclosan can affect algae populations (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003, 37, 162A–164A). —KELLYN BETTS
Hopes for hydrogen cars
The return of the process by exposing E. coli to chlorine bleach at a concentration of 0.5 parts per million for 5 minutes and then dechlorinating the water. These injured bacteria were then injected into 2-liter vessels containing water collected from 9 sites in an estuary on the New Hampshire seacoast; these locations varied greatly in water quality and salinity. “This is important because we used actual environmental water samples,” says Stephen Jones, a research associate professor at the University of New Hampshire and study coauthor. Initially, the injured E. coli could not be cultured, a typical means of detection used by treatment plants, but after only 10 hours the bacteria began to recover and grow on culture plates. Bacteria showed the greatest recovery in water samples with high levels of organic pollutants. For example, at one site 360 meters downstream of a water treatment facility, bacterial recovery increased 50-fold after 74 hours.
Bacteria thrive in water discharged from wastewater treatment plants into estuaries, such as this one, but the effect may depend on the water’s salinity.
DAVID KELL AM, NE W HAMPSHIRE ESTUARIES PROJECT
After noticing increased numbers of E. coli downstream from a wastewater treatment plant on a New Hampshire estuary, researchers became concerned that fecal bacteria were surviving the disinfection process. The result is a lab study published in this issue of ES&T (pp 3083–3089). The research suggests that if bacteria are only injured by exposure to low levels of chlorine disinfectant, they can go undetected by current wastewater testing procedures and then recover after the water is discharged into a river or estuary. Whether that is happening in treatment facilities is still not known. The study does raise concerns that bacteria might survive disinfection at a water treatment plant and then become a health hazard downstream, says Alan Roberson, director of regulatory affairs with the American Water Works Association: “There’s not a high possibility, but they are right, it’s definitely an issue.” Roberson points out that wastewater plants typically use much higher concentrations of chlorine and longer exposure times than were used in this study, and those tougher conditions are likely to kill any bacteria. With current procedures, wastewater is disinfected according to a formula based on chlorine concentration and contact time, then dechlorinated to prevent harm to the environment. The researchers simulated this
Europe could build a network of 2800 hydrogen filling stations for next-generation cars over the next 15 years at a cost of ¤3.5 billion (U.S. $4.6 billion), which is much less expensive than previously thought, according to a new study by energy consultancy e4Tech. The study assumes there will be 6.1 million hydrogen cars in the EU by 2020 and describes different scenarios for producing and distributing hydrogen, such as methane reforming. The report predicts that eventually 120 million Europeans—a third of the EU population—will have access to hydrogen fuel. Approximately 500 hydrogen test cars are on European roads now. The full report is at www. hydrogenday.com/WGAP/hydrogen/ file/rwar-69wdr8.en.1/e4tech% 20hydrogen%20study.pdf.
Particulate pollution linked to heart disease
Researchers at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine have uncovered the first epidemiological evidence linking atherosclerosis, or thickening and hardening of the arteries, with long-term exposure to ambient particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers. Nino Künzli and colleagues published their findings in the February issue of Environmental Health Perspectives (2005, 113, 201–206). The team studied 798 generally healthy male and female volunteers over 40 years of age from the Los Angeles area who showed some signs of increased risk for cardiovascular disease. Overall, the researchers found that for each increase in fine particles of 10 micrograms per cubic meter, the two inner layers of the carotid artery thickened by approximately 4%.
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USCD
a child using an antimicrobial soap before getting into the pool. McNeill and Arnold say that the research also calls for more detailed studies of whether chlorinated triclosans are being released from wastewater treatment plants. Because triclosan is widely
Environmental▼ News “Whether that was regrowth or resuscitation of injured bacteria, we don’t know,” says study coauthor Carl Bolster, a hydrologist with the federal Agriculture Research Service. Increases in detectable E. coli could signal that water discharged
from these plants encourages growth of bacteria that are already in the environment. “It’s a good question that we couldn’t answer with this study design,” says Jones. A paradigm within microbiology holds that E. coli only grow in intes-
Estimates of greenhouse warming double Since 1991, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has predicted a 1.5–4.5 °C increase in average temperatures due to a doubling of CO2 levels. Now, new results from distributive computing projects suggest that the temperature increase could go as high as 11 °C. “Our experiment shows that increased levels of greenhouse gases could have a much greater impact on climate than previously thought,” says David Stainforth, a climate scientist at Oxford University. He and his colleagues at climateprediction.net, a collaborative effort of British universities and government agencies, presented their results at the European Geosciences Union meeting in April. The researchers enlisted 95,000 people from 150 countries to download a general circulation model (GCM) and run it using the idle processing capacity on their personal computers. The distributed computing project enabled the researchers to run thousands of versions of the model, in which 21 parameters were set to alternative values considered plausible by experts (Nature 2005, 433, 403–406). Stainforth and his associates analyzed more than 2000 simulations that perturbed 6 parameters, such as the threshold of relative humidity, the cloud-to-rain conversion rate, and the ice fall speed. When CO2 concentration doubles from pre-industrial levels—as is expected to happen between 2050 and 2100—the simulations pre-
dict that global mean temperature could rise over a period of many years anywhere from 1.9 to 11.5 °C. “An important message is that we didn’t get any measures of climate sensitivity less than 1.9 °C,” Stainforth says. This means that policy makers can be increasingly confident that global temperature will rise by no less than 2 °C in response to doubling CO2 levels. But it is also possible that temperatures could rise by as much as 11 °C, Stainforth cautions.
During the past five years, a handful of researchers have used simplified climate models and the observed temperature changes since 1850 to generate statistical estimates of global temperature response to doubled CO2 that range from ~1 to 9 °C, says Michael Schlesinger, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. However, the climateprediction.net experiment is the first time that a GCM has produced climate responses to doubled CO2 that are substantially greater than 5 °C, he says. “Hopefully, the current uncertainty can be narrowed using paleoclimate temperature scenarios such as for the last ice age and the Cretaceous, the warmer period of the dinosaurs,” he adds. “Our results demonstrate the wide range of behavior possible within a GCM and show that high sensitivities cannot yet be neglected as they were in the headline uncertainty ranges of the IPCC Third Assessment Report,” says Stainforth. The range of possibilities for
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tines, but Jones and other experts say that evidence exists that the bacteria might also be expanding their numbers in nutrient-rich environments, such as sewage waste or polluted rivers. —PAUL D. THACKER
future climate evolution needs to be taken into account when planning climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies,” he adds. “We don’t design models to have a narrow range of climate sensitivity,” says Bill Collins, with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and a member of the group preparing the fourth IPCC scientific assessment for 2007. The accepted range of climate sensitivity has remained at 1.5–4.5 °C because it reflects the diverse results obtained by the modeling community, he says. The next IPCC report will quote the climateprediction. net results to characterize the range of uncertainty produced by GCMs, he says. However, because the climateprediction.net model is not as complex as other GCMs, it will not join the 15 models used to evaluate parameters such as precipitation over the North Atlantic, Collins says. “What we hope to do in the IPCC’s fourth scientific assessment is to convey more probabilistic estimates of climate sensitivity, so as to be able to say more of what the chances are of an 11 [°C] climate sensitivity versus, for example, a 2 [°C] sensitivity,” explains NCAR climate expert Jerry Meehl. Stainforth says his model versions are “as realistic as other state-of-the-art climate models.” Although his model is not scaled to predict regional impacts, he emphasizes that “models with such extreme sensitivities are critical for the study of the full range of possible responses of the climate system to rising greenhouse gas levels, and for assessing the risks associated with specific targets for stabilizing these levels.” —JANET PELLEY
News Briefs
CENTERS FOR DISE ASE CONTROL AND PRE VENTION
Scientists report the first successes in overcoming a major limitation of microbial fuel cells (MFCs)—the need to add and replenish compounds that transport electrons to the electrode—in a system described in this issue of ES&T (pp 3401–3408). In the paper, researchers from Ghent University (Belgium) show that Pseudomonas aeruginosa produces its own electron transporters, which can be used by other bacteria. Scientists and engineers in the field are excited by the results, which they say have the potential to increase the power output of MFCs. Although MFCs are still in the proof-of-concept stage and generate very little power, environmental engineers are increasingly interested in them as an alternative energy source that could use, for example, organic wastes in wastewater to generate electricity (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2004, 38, 160A–167A). The existence of soluble electron carriers, produced by one bacterium and usable by other bacteria, “could have really profound practical applications in terms of increasing the power output,” says Bruce Rittmann of Arizona State University. Uwe Schröder of the Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Germany) agrees, adding that a soluble shuttle allows for more microbes per surface area unit and greater power generation. Pseudomonas and other bacteria produce electrons as the result of consuming substrates, such as glucose, acetate, or the “leftovers” in
Some strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa could increase the power output of microbial fuel cells.
wastewater. In order to power the MFC under anaerobic conditions, these electrons must be transported to the cell’s anode. Until now, researchers have needed to frequently replenish redox mediators in the MFCs in order to shuttle the electrons from the bacteria to the anode. The key component of the MFC design that Korneel Rabaey and his colleagues describe in the new paper is P. aeruginosa, a well-characterized bacterium and a human pathogen. What is distinctive about this strain of P. aeruginosa is that it naturally produces pyocyanin and other phenazines, which can function over and over as electron-carrying redox mediators. Moveover, pyocyanin synthesis is induced by the presence of the anode. In their experimental MFC, the Ghent scientists found that pyocyanin can be recycled at least 11 times. The researchers are on the lookout for nonpathogenic bacteria that produce similar redox mediators. “More important is that these shuttles that we were able to purify could also be used by other bacteria,” says Rabaey, the paper’s lead author. “If there are mediators present in, let’s say, a biofilm, multiple layers of bacteria can participate in the electricity generation, which means that the power output can be multiplied with a certain factor.” Why were they able to isolate a strain of Pseudomonas that grows better in the presence of an anode and that produces significant amounts of pyocyanin only in the presence of the anode? “It’s Darwin’s law of natural selection,” says Rabaey. “The reason why the electrode stimulates the production [of pyocyanin] is because the electrode keeps a selective pressure in the system towards bacteria that can produce a lot of these phenazines.” The laboratory-scale MFCs used in these experiments produce tiny amounts of power—less than 4 milliwatts per square meter. However,
Charcoal sparks African improvements
By committing to sustainable forestry and the least polluting stoves for cooking and heating, African countries could protect public health and offset costly fossil fuel use, according to Daniel Kammen of the University of California, Berkeley, coauthor of an article published in Science (2005, 308, 98–103) Biomass fuels are used to meet more than 90% of the household energy needs in many African nations, but the indoor air pollution generated by their incomplete combustion currently causes 400,000 deaths every year in sub-Saharan Africa. Because charcoal burns more cleanly, it is safer than other forms of biomass fuels. The authors calculate that even a gradual transition to charcoal could prevent 1.0 million deaths by 2030, while a rapid transition could save 3.7 million lives.
Nordic countries most sustainable
Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland took four of the top five spots in the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) ranking produced by a team of environmental experts at Yale and Columbia Universities. This is the third update of the ESI, which is intended to be an alternative to the gross domestic product and ranks countries on 21 elements of environmental sustainability, including natural resource use, pollution levels, and contributions to protection of the global commons. South American countries were also well represented in the ranking, with Uruguay, Guyana, and Argentina among the top 10. The United States placed 45th—a major drop from its 2001 ranking of 11 in the pilot version of the ESI, mainly because of its scores on waste generation and greenhouse gas emissions. Many countries are now using the ESI as a policy guide, according to the report. To view the report, go to www.yale. edu/esi.
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DANIEL K AMMEN
A unique microbial fuel cell
Environmental▼ News Rabaey and corresponding author Willy Verstraete believe that MFCs yielding an energy density of one kilowatt per cubic meter of reactor—enough power to run your clothes washer while you watch your MFC-powered television—will be achieved within a year or two. Rittmann and Schröder both
think commercial application of the technology will take about a decade. Although pyocyanin substantially increased the power output of this new MFC, the output from these laboratory-scale reactors is still low. “We need to see this same phenomenon occurring and these same kinds of increases oc-
curring when we are starting at a much higher base, like maybe 1000 times higher,” says Rittmann. Nonetheless, both think there is a lot of promise. “Microbial fuel cell research is still in its infancy, and quite new concepts and developments can be expected,” says Schröder. —BARBARA BOOTH
Arctic lakes track warming since 1850
COREL
changes could be due to environmental pollutants or introduced species, not climate change, Smol For the first time, scientists have says. However, he argues that the tors, providing records of ecological documented the pervasive reorgalarge-scale reorganizations consischanges that show as the ice-free nizations of aquatic food webs in tently observed across the Arctic season lengthens, new habitats beresponse to climate warming. In come available, and the once unican’t be explained by colonization work published March 22 in Proformly cold lake water develops events because the newly dominant ceedings of the National Academy different thermal layers, reports species were all found in the sediof Sciences (Proc. Natl. ments long before the Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2005, big changes. 102, 4397–4402), a team Meanwhile, lakes of 26 researchers found in northern Québec that the biological comand Labrador, where munities in 46 Arctic the climate has relakes began changing mained stable or even as early as 1850 in conslightly cooler than cert with declining ice the rest of the Arccover and longer growtic during the past ing seasons. New, un150 years, exhibit no published data suggest changes in species that since the mid-20th assemblages, says century, anthropogenReinhard Pienitz, ic sources of nitrogen paleolimnologist at may be acting synerLaval University in gistically with climate Québec. These lakes change to accelerate serve as control sites, After millennia of stability, food webs in Arctic lakes may be changing because of global warming. this radical ecological which make it clear reorganization. that climate warmSmol. For instance, a pond on CanRelatively stable for several miling must be the prominent driving lennia, the communities of species ada’s Ellesmere Island was domiforce behind the ecological reorgain these Arctic lakes have been transnated until 1850 by four species of nizations, he says. formed from ones typical of cold algae that adhere to sediment and “While we’re sure that climate conditions and extensive ice cover rocks, but then this community warming is shaping the ecologito species assemblages that thrive was abruptly overturned in favor cal changes, I’m not 100% sure under open water and have higher of more than 30 different species that it is the only factor involved,” productivity, says John Smol, a pacharacteristic of less severe ice consays Alex Wolfe, a paleoecologist at leolimnologist at Queen’s Univerditions, says Marianne Douglas, a the University Centre in Svalbard, sity in Kingston, Ontario (Canada) paleolimnologist at the University Norway. Evidence obtained from and one of the authors of the study. of Toronto (Canada). “Arctic warmnitrogen isotope analysis of sites at Smol and his colleagues extracted ing started in 1850 at the microSvalbard and on Baffin Island insediment cores from lakes in Canscopic level, and this is consistent dicates that deposition of airborne ada, Russia, Norway, and Finland, with scenarios from general circunitrogen from fertilizers and fosthen tracked down—in each succeslation models, which say that we’re sil-fuel burning increased dramatsive layer—the microfossils of algae going to see the effects of global ically after 1950, coinciding with along with the tiny crustaceans and warming in the Arctic before we rethe acceleration of biological comaquatic flies that feed on them. cord it at lower latitudes,” she says. munity transformations, he says. The fossils are reliable indicaSkeptics had suggested that the —JANET PELLEY 192A ■ ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / MAY 1, 2005
Environmental▼ News PERSPECTIVE
The discovery that European and North American rivers and streams contain a witch’s brew of pharmaceuticals at low concentrations has raised obvious questions: What are the environmental effects, and should these drugs be regulated? However, scientists are stymied by their failure to collect some of the most fundamental data on these drugs. Nothing illustrates that better than carbamazepine, a popular anti-epileptic drug. In the late 1990s, scientists began detecting carbamazepine in our waterways, and they later found that the drug resists degradation in drinking-water treatment plants (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2004, 38, 392A–399A). Unpublished research by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found that carbamazepine pollution is widespread. In a sampling of 44 river sites across the United States, USGS scientists found an average carbamazepine concentration of 0.06 ppb in water and 4.16 ppb in the sediment. “The difference between the water and the soils may reflect sorption to the solids and associated organic matter,” says Ed Furlong, a USGS research chemist and one of the study’s authors. The study also found average carbamazepine levels of 20.9 ppb in the solids of sewage treatment plants, which discharge into some of the rivers tested. Other researchers have found that carbamazepine is very persistent once it enters the environment. As part of its regulatory process, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers the environmental impact of new pharmaceuticals. “In the 1970s, the FDA considered itself a medical agency and was not concerned with effects on the environment,” recalls Florian Zielinski, an FDA chemist who works on the environmental assessment of drugs. Zielinski says that change began in 1969 after passage of the National Environmental Protection Act. However, it was not until the
PHOTODISC
Pharmaceutical data elude researchers
Drugs like carbamazepine are mainly being found in rivers, lakes, and sediments throughtout the United States, but the environmental effects of such drugs are largely unknown.
late 1980s that the FDA began requiring companies to submit environmental risk data, and these regulations were not finalized until 1998. Zielinski says this means that drugs approved before the late 1980s lack environmental risk assessments. In addition, the FDA has no definitive estimate of how many currently marketed drugs have been evaluated for their environmental impact. It can be difficult for scientists outside the FDA to perform environmental risk analyses because much of the information on pharmaceuticals is proprietary. Companies submit anticipated production and sales figures to the FDA during a new drug application (NDA), but this information is then withheld from the public. This makes it impossible to determine how much of any pharmaceutical is pouring into waterways. Further, under current regulations, a company can obtain a “categorical exclusion” and not have to perform an environmental assessment if they manufacture less than 40,000 kg per year. “Forty thousand kilos correlates to about 1 ppb in the
aquatic environment,” says Zielinski. He adds that this figure assumes that the drug is spread uniformly across the United States. A categorical exclusion does not take into account the input from multiple companies that might all be making the same drug. For instance, if 10 companies are manufacturing a drug at 30,000 kg each, for a total of 300,000 kg, there is no trigger to perform an environmental assessment. And if one company surpasses 40,000 kg, that company’s environmental assessment would not account for production from other companies. The issue for environmental researchers is complicated further because a generic drug can be sold under various names by many different companies. Geigy, a manufacturer in what was then West Germany, first put carbamazepine on the European market in 1964 as Tegretal. It was then brought to the United States as Tegretol in 1968. It has been sold under a number of brands, including Mazepine (Canada), Timonil (West Germany), and Stazepine (Poland). According to the FDA’s Orange Book of approved drug products, 12 companies now manufacture carbamazepine in the United States under the proprietary names Carbatrol, Tegretol, Teril, and Epitol. Tegretol-XR, an extended-release formula from Novartis, came on the market in the 1990s. The FDA has approved carbamazepine for treating epileptic seizures and trigeminal neuralgia, a condition that causes stabbing pain to the jaw or cheek. However, carbamazepine is also used “off-label” to treat bipolar depression, excited psychosis, and mania. In addition, Timothy Berigan, chief behavioral psychiatrist at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., says that Scandinavians prescribe the drug to aid alcohol detoxification. Novartis lists the standard daily dosage for adults as 800–1200 mg, although dosage may reach as high as 2000 mg per day. Lynn Roberts, a professor of geography and environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University, says that figuring out
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Environmental▼ News PERSPECTIVE the annual consumption of carbamazepine is almost impossible. On the basis of U.S. sales of generic carbamazepine, she and Ph.D. student Kevin Bisceglia calculated that U.S. production ranged from 43,000 kg in 2000 to 35,000 kg in 2003. However, Roberts has been unable to get data on brand-name carbamazepine since 1999, when sales were $93 million. In that year, $67 million of generic carbamazepine was sold. She adds that these numbers do not include possible imports from Canada. The NDA for Tegretol-XR contains metabolic studies that shed light on potential environmental risks. Novartis reports that for patients taking the drug orally, about 3% of the pharmaceutical is not metabolized. At a daily dosage of 1200 mg, this means that a single patient excretes at least 36 mg of carbamazepine into the environment every day. The rest comprises
hydroxylated and conjugated metabolites; the main one is carbamazepine epoxide, which also has strong anticonvulsant properties. Carbemazepine epoxide is less cytotoxic than the parent drug and is negative for the Ames test. No environmental research has been done on this metabolite. Carbamazepine is considered carcinogenic in rats but does not cause mutations in mammalian cells. Sublethal effects were observed in Daphnia at 92 ppb, and the lethal concentration in zebra fish is 43 ppb after 4 days. On the basis of its annual production of Tegretol, Novartis calculated an expected concentration in the environment. From a comparison of this number to the lethal concentration in zebra fish, the company cites a safety factor of at least 100. However, the production values used to formulate the safety factor are confidential.
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Researchers are just beginning to study the ecotoxicology of carbamazepine and other drugs. Eve Dussault, a graduate student at Guelph University (Canada), presented data on carbamazepine at a Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry meeting in November. She found that Daphnia were killed when carbamazepine was present at 17.2 ppm and that midges died at 34.4 ppm. However, she also found that carbamazepine inhibited growth at 12.7 ppm for Daphnia and at 9.2 ppm for midges. Dussault says that once carbamazepine enters the environment, its half-life is about 80 days. However, she adds that the environmental levels are much lower than what she found was lethal to benthic organisms. “But this is only acute toxicity, a 10-day test,” she says. “We don’t have any clue about chronic toxicity in the environment.” —PAUL D. THACKER
Environmental▼INTERVIEW
OFFICE OF CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN
Christine Todd Whitman When Christine Todd Whitman resigned as U.S. EPA administrator in 2003, after only two years on the job, some Washington, Former EPA adminisD.C., insidtrator Christine Todd ers specuWhitman. lated that she could no longer tolerate the environmental agenda put forth by the Bush Administration. Whitman, who has long been a leader in the moderate wing of the Republican Party, denied the charge. Instead, she cited her desire to return home to New Jersey, where she was twice elected governor in the 1990s. But this year, she came out with a book, It’s My Party, Too, which details her thoughts on how far-right politicians and activists have been slowly tearing apart the Republican Party and the nation. As cited in her book, one of her chief concerns is that the environment has become just as politically charged as abortion. In an interview with ES&T, Whitman discusses some of the problems she encountered as EPA administrator, the role of science in running EPA, and how she views her own party.
In your book, you describe an incident at the G8 conference in Trieste, Italy. Walking across a city square, you bumped into David Anderson, the environmental minister for Canada. He was without security personnel, and when you asked him about this, he replied, “I don’t need any—no one hates Canada.” Do you think that the United States’ refusal to deal adequately with global climate change is undermining our nation’s credibility? First off, that incident took place before the administration made the announcement about Kyoto. But I think the way we did it has definitely hurt us. I don’t think that we appreciate how climate change is an enormous issue to the rest of the world.
And when we disengaged. . . . Frankly, the disengagement should have been no surprise to anybody; this [protocol] had already been voted down in the Senate. Climate change was just not going to pass in this country, but the problem is that instead of stating that we felt the treaty was flawed but that we understood the rest of the world’s concerns and want to work with them, we just said, “We’re outta here.” And that’s the message that went out to the rest of the world: The United States just didn’t care and was flipping the bird. The thing to me that made no sense is that the president increased spending on climate change research; he called for an 18% decrease in greenhouse intensity. The government has engaged with almost all of the rest of the developing nations on coal-bed methane research, hydrogen fuel cell technology. . . . They’re actually doing stuff, but you would never know about it. And you would never know about it because frankly I think the base of the party didn’t like it and the message was all directed towards that base.
Many scientists feel it’s very hypocritical for a president to not support climate-change policies yet increase funding for research. In fairness, I think we can do more. I think we can get a cap on carbon that would give utilities time to reach it without so dislocating the industry that it will drive the costs of energy out of sight. And I think, ultimately, we will have a cap on carbon. But you also have the studies, I think two years ago, from NASA showing the impacts of land change. So there are still scientific differences on where to focus the dollars. The president has acknowledged that climate change is occurring. But then Michael Crichton, who is enormously popular, writes a book [State of Fear] saying that it’s not happening. And that sets you back. So it is not as widely accepted as it should be.
When EPA released its Report on the Environment a couple of years ago, major edits were made to the section dealing with climate change. Why was that? Actually there weren’t. And that [allegation] drove me nuts. Within a year or two of the establishment of EPA, the National Academies said that we should do an assessment of where we are with the environment—a report card. And for almost 30 years, they’ve been trying to reach an agreement on how to get an acceptable data set. We still didn’t have this when I walked into office. We had done this in New Jersey, and I felt it was important so that we could understand if all the stuff we were doing with regulations and fines was actually improving the environment, and how much. When we came to the chapter on climate change, we couldn’t get agreement. The science on climate change is fairly new, so the scientists couldn’t agree, even the scientists that evaluated the overall report from outside the government.
Can I read you something? The Union of Concerned Scientists released an internal EPA decision paper asserting that the White House did make “major” changes. This document states that after these changes, the report “no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change.” That’s not what I saw. Yes, there were changes. CEQ [the president’s Council on Environmental Quality] made the final changes on what they were comfortable going forward with as an administration. What they said they could get agreement on from all the other scientists was not substantive enough and could have undermined the rest of the report. So, rather than undermine the whole report, I just wanted to get the report out, and include a paragraph that points people to the other science. We’ll recognize climate change as an issue, but where we have absolute agreement.
The British ambassador to the United States recently held talks with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on global climate change. This was the first time the British government has reached out to a state official
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Environmental▼INTERVIEW News on environmental issues, and the ambassador said they did this, in part, because they feel that the states are moving this issue forward. I don’t think [the federal government is] moving forward fast enough. There is a lot we can do. Again, everybody is discussing this in terms of Kyoto, but things are being done on the voluntary level, and that shouldn’t be dismissed. But it’s not just the administration. To get a cap on carbon, you have to get through some very tough [members of Congress]. . . . I could be wrong on this, but I haven’t seen [Senator] Bob Byrd [D-WV] calling for a cap on carbon. Knowing his state [which mines coal], I don’t think you’re going to hear that. It’s not just a partisan issue. I haven’t read the book, but Michael Crichton cites studies that show climate change is natural and that we are not in immediate danger. Then you have that movie, The Day After Tomorrow, where the world is coming to an end immediately if we don’t do something tomorrow. When you have those two images in the popular media, it’s hard for the people to figure out what’s right. That’s one of the reasons the administration hasn’t been that engaged, and why they haven’t felt any pressure.
Former EPA administrator Russell Train and top EPA officials who worked with you say that you are a nice person whose heart is in the right place, but that you lost battles when Vice President Dick Cheney moderated the interagency disputes. Well, I lost my share of fights, that’s for sure. But the president decides policy, and at the end of the day, you can fight as hard as you want, but if the president goes in another direction, then that is the policy. My goal was to move things forward. We were able to get the off-road diesel rule—something that nobody thought this administration would support because it’s aimed right at ranchers, construction workers, and the building industry. I can’t speak to how much CEQ injected itself into these battles. My understanding is that there is always this tension
between EPA and CEQ on who is in charge of the environment.
Does it bug you that CEQ has mostly lawyers and economists, while EPA has the scientists? That’s true. But the other side of it is that science has always informed decisions at EPA, but science is not always exact. A big part of my frustration was that scientists would give me a range. And I would ask, “Please just tell me at which point you are safe, and we can do that.” But they would give a range, say, from 5 to 25 parts per billion (ppb). And that was often frustrating.
Scientists are now concerned that, rather than science informing policy, policy is now informing science. Do you think that’s true? I don’t think that’s entirely true. I think this administration is trying to put in a balance that was lacking before about what the impact is of these regulations on the real world—the business community. What they cost to implement was not always considered the way it should have been, and that is always going to cause a fight with people. From the science community, this is seen as undermining the science. From the business community, it’s seen as getting some balance back. Again, what you always do is try to fight for the greatest good. I do think it’s very dangerous to say that you want “sound science”. When you say that, you can’t pick and choose. Again, the problem comes back that science is not exact. [Note: When George W. Bush came into office, he delayed a new rule on arsenic that would have lowered the drinking-water standard from 50 to 10 ppb. The rule was later enacted.] When we went through the brouhaha with arsenic, I was already comfortable with 10 ppb because we had already done it in New Jersey. But we needed to up our justification and push back against Congress and others who had concerns that we were only relying on a single study out of Taiwan. I knew there were other studies done in America, so we could justify it. But we wanted to take the time.
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People speculated that you left EPA because you were having problems with conservative elements within the Bush Administration. The reason I left was because my husband and I really didn’t like living apart. It took a bigger toll on us than we had expected. The timing, though, did have to do with New Source Review as it applied to [coalburning] utilities. That was an issue I had been working on for two and a half years, and I was perfectly comfortable with reform, but I wanted it done in ways that did not undermine the bigger cases that were pending and had been brought under the Clinton Administration, two of which I had signed onto as a governor. I did feel that [the utility companies] were gaming the system, and I didn’t want to see us lose those cases. [Note: The Clinton Administration had been lining up lawsuits against utility companies for violating New Source Review provisions and illegally emitting thousands of tons of pollutants. EPA had reached agreements with many of the power companies, but Bush officials rewrote the provisions, unraveling these court cases and saving utility companies hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and pollution control measures.] We started getting to a place where it became obvious that what was happening was not going to make me comfortable. The president has the right to set policy and run his administration, and he also has the right to have an administrator who is comfortable with where he is. I just wasn’t comfortable with this, and it was time for me to step aside.
Why did you really write the book? It’s mostly about changing the party. This book was never designed to be a tell-all about the administration, and the hits I’ve been taking for not being a tattletale miss the point. I feel that the focus on a narrowing base is hurting the party and the ability of the government to make appropriate decisions. —PAUL D. THACKER
