ES&T
CURRENTS INTERNATIONAL Finland may be getting a centralized hazardous waste treatment facility that is based on the Danish experience {ES&T, Vol. 15, No. 12, 1981, p. 1415). The $28-million, 65 000-ton/year plant will be owned by the state (70%), and industry (30%). It will employ 95 people and require $11-12 million/ year for operating costs. The Danish centralized plant approach includes a central plant at Nyborg, 25 collection stations, and transportation by rail or truck, with a detailed manifest system. The waste becomes the responsibility of the company, Kommunekemi, as soon as it is delivered to the central station from the collection stations. The wastes in Finland are about 85% organic.
WASHINGTON A new bill to amend the Clean Air Act has been introduced by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.). It was created in opposition to Rep. Thomas Luken's (D-Ohio) proposal H.R. 5252, which has industry and administration support. In contrast to H.R. 5252, which would double the auto emission standards for carbon monoxide and N O , , Waxman's bill would not relax these standards. Unlike H.R. 5252, the Waxman bill would retain the current automobile inspection and maintenance requirements, the pollution offset requirements, and Class II prevention of significant deterioration areas. Waxman's bill would also mandate a 10-millionton reduction in SO2 emissions from sources east of the Mississippi River over a 10-year period. Like H.R. 5252, the Waxman bill would streamline the state implementation plan process and extend some deadlines for attainment of national air quality standards. EPA Administrator Anne M. Gorsuch promised no involuntary sepa0013-936X/82/0916-0211 A$01.25/0
rations for budgetary reasons through fiscal year 1983. Agency sources say that the high attrition rate since last fall makes formal firings unnecessary to achieve the lowered personnel levels required by the proposed 1983 budget. About 600 persons resigned between October and November 1981. This is double the normal figure—more than two percent of all employees each month. Another policy shift is that the planned major personnel reorganization will not take place, but some workers will be shifted among agency divisions. EPA has suspended for 90 days its ban on the disposal of barrels of hazardous liquid waste in landfills while the agency develops new, less restrictive rules for the burial of liquid wastes. Many companies are taking advantage of the suspension by putting hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid waste into landfills. A suit against EPA has been filed by a trade group representing companies that incinerate or use other means of disposal for hazardous wastes. EPA maintains that the previous ban was "too extreme" because it required "high-cost management practices." Agency officials admit that containers may corrode, but say that they "would not have suspended the ban if they thought there was going to be an environmental problem." At press time, as the result of a public hearing, EPA reversed its decision and established an interim rule prohibiting barrels in which toxic liquids are observable. In order for a chemical to be considered priority under the Toxic Substances Control Act, there must be strong exposure estimates on health effects to humans, not just animals, EPA's toxics chief John Todhunter decided recently. He said it should be "established that at human exposure levels, the risk is probable and would be high." Many observers see this as a signif-
© 1982 American Chemical Society
icant departure from conventional cancer guidelines. When asked what EPA would use as a criteria for determining when human exposure levels are high and probable, Todhunter answered, "This is a professional operation that can make intelligent judgments regarding human exposure levels." Using this new policy, EPA has decided not to ban or limit the use of formaldehyde and diethylhexyl phthalate even though there is evidence that both cause cancer in laboratory animals.
Markey: nuclear Salvation Army
Nuclear power could get back on its feet financially with a $50 billion federal low-interest loan program or federal regulation of huge regional electric companies, according to nuclear energy officials who suggested these ideas in a recent meeting with Vice President George H. Bush. One official proposed the combination of utilities into large regional power companies to be regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which now regulates only wholesale utility rates. In this way state utility commissions would be bypassed. Nuclear critic Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) called the loan idea a "$50 billion nuclear Salvation Army." Interior Secretary James G. Watt announced in February that he would propose barring mineral drilling and mining in all wilderness areas until the end of the cenEnviron. Sci. Technol., Vol. 16, No. 4, 1982
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tury. However, critics say that many details of his proposal would have the effect of gutting the wil derness system. Current law allows no more leasing of wilderness lands at any time after Dec. 31, 1983. Under Watt's proposal, that dead line would be moved up to the present, but the question of devel opment after the year 2000 would be left open. According to Watt's draft bill, regions now under study as wilderness areas could be as signed by the administration for private development if it decided they are unsuitable for wilderness designation. Present law forbids de velopment in all study areas, and Congress alone has the authority to determine if these are unsuitable as wilderness.
emissions within 10 years of enact ment." The policy would allow the states up to three years to agree on state emission reductions and to re vise their state air plans according ly. It also favors the creation of an acid rain fund to help states fi nance scrubbers and other controls for sulfur dioxide.
SCIENCE Crop losses from ozone to only four crops amount to $1.9-4.5 billion a year, according to an analysis pre pared by the Office of Technology Assessment and released by Rep. George E. Brown, Jr. (D-Calif.).
The Endangered Species Act, en acted in 1973, is due to expire Oct. 1, 1982, and a final version of the bill must be completed by May 15 if it is to be reauthorized. The act makes it unlawful for federal agen cies and any project aided by feder al money to harm an endangered species or damage its habitat. Inte rior Secretary James G. Watt has said he favors redefining the term "harm" to exclude damage to criti cal habitat and include only direct physical attack. The Reagan ad ministration has cut funding for the act and has listed only one new species for protection. The law's supporters note that no project has been permanently stopped because of its threat to an endangered species.
STATES The Virginia Electric and Power Company is running out of space to store its burned-out nuclear fuel at the Surry generating plant (oppo site Jamestown) and may have to shut down the plant as early as March 1985 unless it finds a way to get rid of some of the used-up fuel. Officials say building new storage facilities at Surry would take too long. It is one of the six U.S. plants that will soon exhaust their storage space. Currently the storage pool at Surry is packed with about 1 mil lion lbs of radioactive waste in 40 ft of cooling water. At a February meeting the National Governor's Association requested an acid rain control program to ac complish "phased reduction of sul fur dioxide and nitrogen oxide 212A
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Brown: releases crop study This loss represents about 5% of total agricultural production. Yields of corn, peanut, soybean, and wheat were analyzed. Not in cluded in the study were damage to other crops and timber and losses caused by other pollutants such as acid rain. The National Crop As sessment Network (NCLAN), a research program funded by EPA and begun in 1980, gathered the data. This was originally planned as a multimillion dollar six-year study, but the Reagan administra tion is reducing its budget from about $2 million to S300 000 a year. Quantitative measurements of toxic organics in "alternative fuels" and resultant effluents may be made with a combination of gas chroma tography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) being developed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS). Presently, the complex character of effluents, and low (parts per billion (ppb)) concentra tion of some toxic compounds com plicate the analysis. A modified GC/MS approach, NBS says, can monitor selected ions or compounds for each analyte. Researchers have analyzed, for example, five phenols from 0 to 1000 ppb, and five poly-
nuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) at 1-300-ppb concentra tions. Is ozone pollution lowering cotton and other crop yields? Howard Heggestad, a U.S. Department of Agriculture plant pathologist, be lieves so. He notes doubled cotton yields between 1946 and 1966, be cause of improved varieties and better production methods. But since then, despite improvements, yields have reached a plateau or even decreased, with at least some impact ascribed to ozone pollution. The greatest harm from ozone (and SO2), he says, is to the leaves. A California cotton variety showed a 15% loss, as compared to the same variety grown in purified air. Some varieties developed some ozone tol erance in California, but experi ments with ozone in Maryland showed marked yield and quality degradation. PAH analysis by EPA Method 610, using high-performance liquid chro matography (HPLC) can be im proved if time can be reduced and equipment investment is economi cally advantageous. The Applied Science Division of Milton Roy Company's Laboratory Group says that its Adsorbosphere C 18 (3-μιη) LC column meets these criteria, while allowing accomplishment of PAH analysis. It uses 254-nm ul traviolet detection, with a flow rate of 1.26 mL/min, and no gradient. Dimensions are 100 X 4.6 mm. The company says that analyses can be done in less than 9 min, as com pared to 17-40 min with, say, reversed-phase columns whose di mensions are also larger. Pest infestations and their econom ic damages might be forecast through work with insect pheromones (sex attractants), according to the Maryland Agricultural Ex periment Station (College Park). A working model using male fall armyworm moths lured to traps by synthetic pheromones correlates the numbers trapped with eggs fe males lay in a cornfield. Given the number of moths attracted in, say, a week, one might predict the amount of infestation, the possible damage, and the optimum time and application of pesticide. The armyworm, "eating" corn plants from the inside out, can cause extensive damage. University of Maryland Professor Floyd Harrison is devel oping the model.
