Woodsmoke: a dose of our own, in my backyard

Updated: February 2010

"Do you have a woodstove," the doctor asks as I sit, barelegged in my too-small hospital gown, and give the respirometer a feeble puff. It’s my second try and I beg for one more, surely I can do better.

“Woodstove? Yes - but it’s one of those new ones,” I answer defensively, “you know, with a catalytic converter.”

Not one of those smoke belching dinosaurs, I’d like to add, the kind that blackens the cobwebs and sends clouds of smoke throughout the neighborhood as did the one in our old rental.

But I’m in denial. I ought to know better. Burning wood is dirty, pure and simple. No matter how hot the stove, no matter the catalytic converter devoted to reducing our share of wood smoke.

Chemically wood is about fifty percent carbon and forty-five percent oxygen, some hydrogen (around 6%) with a dash of nitrogen and assorted elements such as calcium, potassium and magnesium. That means that a cord of maple wood, roughly the amount we burn each winter, which weighs around 4,000 pounds, depending on how dry it is, contains roughly 4,000 pounds of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. But, once we stuff the old pizza boxes, the Sunday Times, a little kindling from my husband’s workshop and add a few matches all that is neatly bound up in those logs up will be transformed into heat, light, gas and particles large and small. Some of those particles will end up in the ash pile at the bottom of our stove, and some, along with a mixture of hot gases will flow up the chimney and into the air. Technically, our little stove should release no more than 4 grams of particulates into the air per hour – a tenth of what stoves used to emit before the EPA stepped in. But is that good enough?

Even though we’re talking as little as four grams an hour (and upwards of 30 grams over a day), it is primarily those small particles which concern my doctor. As our wood burns, no matter how efficient or tight our stove, particulates and gases will leak out – if not into our home then up and out our chimney into the neighborhood, mingling with all of our neighbor’s wood gases and aromatic (in more ways than one) wood smoke.

The lovely smoky aroma that comes with wood burning not only indicates the return of crisp fall weather – but the slew of airborne chemicals from carcinogenic polyaromatics to volatile organic carbons (VOCs) to gases like carbon dioxide (the major gas), carbon monoxide and methane – and minerals like potassium, wafting around our "fresh country air." (I say this with some irony as our semi-rural valley sees its share of air pollutants hailing from NYC. And, depending on the weather, can have some of the worst air in the state, particularly in the summer.)

There are also very small bits of carbon in our wood smoke, known as particulate organic carbon, which make up in large part the particulate material or PM, released when wood is burned.

As with any science, the science of air pollutants like wood smoke evolves over time. What’s known to be released into the air when wood burns, and how much, is refined as technology allows scientists to measure increasingly smaller amounts and sizes of pollutants, as are the dangers of exposure to such pollutants.

The old adage you can’t condemn what you can’t measure (or something like that) often accounts for the all too common phenomenon of the dropping baseline in toxicology. The baseline being what was once considered “safe” or acceptable concentrations of exposure. Think lead, mercury, and radioactive chemicals like strontium and plutonium. All chemicals once treated more cavalierly, back in the day, than they are now. And all chemicals for which “allowable” concentrations have continued to decline over the decades.

When EPA first regulated particulates in 1987, they focused on PM₁₀, or particulates 10 microns and smaller. Subsequent studies suggested that the much smaller particles were likely more dangerous, leading EPA to regulate PM_2.5, (particulates that are 2.5 microns) nearly 10 years later in 1997. Flash forward nearly another ten years, and further concerns about these small particulates, caused EPA to reduce the acceptable amount of PM_2.5 exposures in a 24 hour period by almost half. And, as technology provides scientists with the tools to study smaller and smaller particles, the studies that led to reductions in PM_2.5 are being supplanted by studies revealing the toxicological importance of smaller and smaller particles. Some studies suggest that the majority or peak size of particulates released by wood smoke range from 0.15 to 0.4 microns – a few hundred nanometers in size.

Not only are researchers figuring out that bigger is sometimes better (much like FOX television which offered up a new Plus-sized reality show “More to Love,”) they’re also realizing that mass or weight isn’t everything.

The current U.S. EPA standard for PM_2.5 considers only the combined mass, essentially the combined weight, of these little particles. Not the chemical composition nor the number of particles, nor the relative size of the particles. As scientists well know by now (or ought to) when it comes to very little things – like chemicals in the nanometer range (which include some of these particulates) – size does matter.

Typically the smaller things get the more surface area they have. Think about peeling a pound of granny smith apples, and a pound of crab apples. Which would you rather peel? More apple skin, more surface area on those little crab apples. Same with particulates. As these little particulates get smaller, they reveal more surface area. Same amount of mass but more area to react with a body’s cellular surfaces. Typically, the more reactive a particle, the more toxic it tends to be.

In fact, scientists are now linking the smallest of the small particulates, the ultrafine particles (particles smaller 100 nanometers in size) which comprise the smaller end of PM_2.5 with a range of adverse health effects including asthma, chromosomal damage and cardiovascular effects linked to inhalation of particulate matter.

Using the woodstove is one of those lifestyle choices we make every day. As I swear up and down that my asthma tends to worsen with the leaf-mold season rather than wood smoke (although admittedly the two coincide - so who's to say) we rationalize that for each cord of the old maple that fell into our yard years ago, we avoid burning the imported fuel oil sitting below in our basement tank. Besides, we’re only burning a cord or two a year – and although could same can be said for our neighbors on either side, down the street and around the block, at least we’re not burning five hundred thousand tons of wood as proposed by Pioneer “Renewable” Energy....right? But that’s a story for another day.

For a good review of several recent studies on ultrafine particles check out Janet Raloff’s “Bad Breath.”

If you’d prefer primary literature, you can read all about it in Environmental Health Perspectives:

Gent et al., Symptoms and Medication Use in Children wtih Asthma and Traffic-related Sources of Fine Particle Pollution

Delfino et al., Air Pollution Exposures and Circulating Biomarkers of Effect in a Susceptible Population: Clues to Potential Causal Component Mixtures and Mechanisms

Get your BPA FREE with each new bottle!

Roughly a year ago one of the first studies showing that BPA, the known estrognic plastic used to make polycarbonate bottles, leached into liquids under extreme conditions of heating and rigorous washing was published to much fanfare. The study raised a serious issue, although it seemed that unless you were routinely heating your liquids in a well washed bottle (huh? wash my water bottle? In the dishwater?) – a problem clearly relevant to new parents, but not so to folks like me who were done reproducing – ridding the household of all polycarbonate wasn’t a high priority. While I did replace the kid's bottles with the now suspect PET bottles (more on that one later) the old polycarbs still went to the tennis courts and up Mount Toby with me. I just couldn’t justify adding more plastic so the recycle or waste cycle so as long as I had it, I used it. Same with the gem-colored polycarb juice glasses we’ve used for years.

Well, as usual with chemicals we’re just getting to know more intimately than we’d like, there's always one more study that makes us wonder if "we've" really done our best when it comes to using chemicals wisely. This time it's a new study published in Environmental Health Perspectives by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health which reports that BPA molecules really don’t need all that much coaxing to be released from bottle to water. In fact, just regular use, filling them up with cold liquids and drinking was enough to raise concentrations of BPA in the urine of polycarb bottle using Harvard students.

After one week of drinking all their cold beverages from Nalgene Lexan bottles (could you fill this bottle rather than that beer stein please?), and peeing into a cup during the designated hours of 5-8PM, students increased their pre-polycarb urine concentrations by 69%. In other words – you get a little BPA with your water even if you don’t heat it up and abuse the bottle.

Given that the very young (newborns and infants) tend to retain their BPA a bit longer (because their metabolic system which clears chemicals like BPA is less active than adults) this study, one of the first to show that normal use of polycarb means exposure to BPA, should give pause to any parent still using the old polycarb baby bottles. It’s certainly enough to push me to take those pretty gem-colored juice glasses and relegate them to the craft cabinet.

A Very Disney Earth Day 2009

It took some digging, but the “Disney World Envirodisaster” article is now being replaced by a more circumspect, “They May be Behind the Times, but Maybe They’ve got Good Intentions,” article.The one week Disney Extravaganza organized by my daughter’s dance school (about 70 young dancers with parents in tow) which is what landed me in Disney, was, and was not, exactly what I’d expected.

The dancing plastic fairies, plastic pirates, plastic Mickey, plastic plastic at every turn, artificial ponds, and fried food mixed in with messages of conservation and recycling was expected – that I actually enjoyed myself as Disney was a pleasant surprise. The messages of conservation (in the “Circle of Life” Simba stops Timon and Pumba from laying waste to the land to build their vacation resort) by the organization whose originator “secretly bought up thousands of acres in Florida” to build a vacation resort (a boast you can hear on your Hollywood Studios back-lot tour) not only gave me more whiplash then the Test Track ride, but also left me wondering if this wasn’t the very definition of hypocrisy. Yes I know, they’ve devoted much land to conservation, and they did that back in the day, and they do convey the message through their movies. But there’s also plenty of land buried beneath layers of asphalt thanks to Disney and a whole lot of energy and resources devoted to marketing products that are broken or tossed within a few short years (but of course being plastic, will last for many, many more.) Not that hypocrisy is anything new – our political system thrives on it – but these hypocrites are directly addressing our kids. The Kids of America.

How do you explain to your kids, after Pumba and Timon’s parting message: recycle, recycle, recycle , that apparently there is no recycling (or no obvious recycling) in Disney’s Sunshine Season Food Fair located just outside the theater? Thankfully at least we weren’t eating surrounded by a sea of plastic dishes, plates and boxes, but rather paper plates – chalk one up for Disney. I guess they didn’t want to add to the billions of pounds of plastics released into the oceans each year – although I’m not sure what they plan to do with all the plastic utensils.

OK so I’m a skeptic. Hailing from Massachusetts’ Happy Valley, where small organic farm stands dot the road-side, solar panels gleam from yards and rooftops and where you can mix up your “leaf green” Prius with the five others in the parking lot – Disney is, indeed, another world. “You just have to let your brain float,” says one mom, as we sip acid coffee from styrofoam cups in a fish and chips joint in the even more befuddling and depressing Downtown Disney awaiting our children’s “Disney Performance of a Lifetime.” Maybe it’s a small price to pay to watch them smile, sing and hoof their way through a twenty minute routine they’d been rehearsing since September.

After a week of scribbling notes, while admittedly enjoying the parks (Animal Kingdom was my favorite – and yes I do reluctantly consider myself a hypocrite) I vow to look up Disney’s enviro record upon returning home. Something I look forward to after a week of Disney food, which my daughter observed, no matter what we got always seem to come out to be $16 per person. Pricey, but on a per calorie basis it’s quite a deal - the “single serving” chocolate cake is 200 calories “per serving,” and each little single foil serving dish provides 3 servings. Gobbling down my cake, I wouldn’t have noticed that little caveat had my friend Kata not pointed it out. So, upon returning home and doing a little digging, I was surprised to read about Disney’s commitment to “providing healthier options for families that seek them.” Either I wasn’t seeking hard enough or that must refer to the small packets of carrot sticks you can get with your chicken fingers and chocolate cake. Hooray.

Reviewing their Corporate Responsibility Report with a hefty dose of skepticism (rather than simply dismissing Disney based on experience) took some effort, not because there’s much content or detail but, because after going to the parks it’d be easy to write them off. They have grand plans and apparently they’re just getting started according to their 2007 “Enviroport”:

Last year, Disney President and Chief Executive Officer Robert A. Iger appointed an Environmental Council of senior executives from across the Company. The Council is putting into place a comprehensive plan to analyze and implement sustainable long-term strategies for minimizing Disney's impact on the environment within an ambitious corporate growth strategy. The Council includes members from a wide variety of academic and professional backgrounds, including biologists, chemists, engineers, and government affairs specialists. Together, they are taking a measured approach to the complex and important set of tasks at hand, frequently seeking expert external advice as part of the policy-making process.

Like I said, you wouldn’t know it to visit the parks except maybe the part about corporate growth. If they’re conserving water in the parks why don’t they tell that to visitors? If they’re conserving electricity with LEDs, why don’t they let folks know? It’s almost as if they want to make sure they’re not seen as environmental educators, because after all, girls, like Jasmine, Cinderella and Snow White just want to have fun.

Although we did finally find recycling bins dotting the streets of Disney World, we wondered if maybe some Disney robotic squirrels were out back separating Sunshine Season’s trash. Maybe they were. Seeking information on Disney’s recycling programs I couldn’t’ find much, except a comment on another blog who also wondered about recycling at Disney:

Comment by Joe Shelby

2007-07-27 12:12:47

On the backstage tour, while showing us the VACKS (sp?) vacuum based trash system (also discussed in the Modern Marvels documentary - the main outlet site is backstage @ frontierland behind Splash Mountain, where it’s intentionally downwind, and downhill, of the park), our tour guide discussed how the trash is sorted, by hand (well, with tools to avoid touching it) for recycling and biodegradable materials as it’s brought into the landfill a mile away. They don’t bother with separate recycling bins because they’re often ignored, create an eyesore (and a violation of theme) in certain parts of the park, especially Main Street, and get filled with trash anyways by foreign tourists and ignorant bafoons who don’t know or don’t care what the recycling symbol means.

But they do recycle. Otherwise, he said, their landfill a mile away would have been filled up years ago.”

Interesting, but pathetic. Even more pathetic was Disney’s tribute to Earth Day when we happened to be stationed at the Magic Kingdom. A few hours set aside for Jimminy Cricket photo-ops, and a kiosk that could have been more effective had it been designed by a bunch of school kids rather than Disney’s Imagineers. Notably, and obviously there was a plug for their movie Earth and I suppose their offer to plant a tree for each ticket purchased during the first week is part of their green growth strategy. I just wish they were a bit more “out” about their enviro-plans at the parks where over twenty million people – that’s a heck of a lot of impressionable kids - visit a year. If anyone can teach the “kids of America” to respect their environment, reduce, recycle and reuse, Mickey, Jasmine and Prince Charming ought to be up to the task. Maybe then some Disney disciple might go home and say hmmm, how about we ditch the plastic, turn off the lights and reused the water, just like Mickey does?

Chemicals we love to hate, Body Toxic book review

A while back I was invited by American Scientist to write my first ever book review. After having just edited a book that was reviewed (mostly favorably), I was nervous. What if I didn't like it? When reading books about toxics, especially books written by non-toxicologists, my sci-dar is on full blast. Most authors seem to have an agenda whether it's chemicals=bad, or the opposite (although those tend to be written by scientists.) Over the years, I've encountered a few written by toxicologists who seem to have forgotten the "oath" of objectivity, or rather, taken the "better living through chemicals" oath. Although those books are great for teaching (so... who checked out the author's affiliation, the funding source or the publisher?), and readers tend to be self-selecting.

Controversy sells. Wishy washy, we don't fully understand doesn't. It's a problem.

So with some trepidation that my first (and possibly only) book review might be negative, I cracked open Body Toxic, written by journalist Nena Baker. What follows is the uncut version of the review recently published in AmSci:

Teaching toxicology to college seniors and juniors was never easier than this past year. Each week students easily and eagerly fulfilled their “current events” assignment with links and clippings of articles revealing widespread contamination of wildlife or humans, with PFOA and PFOS, PBDEs, PBBs, phthalates, BPA, and atrazine. No longer did I have to rely on stories from the “old days” of legacy contaminants like PCBs, DDT and dioxins - not when there all these great so-called “emerging contaminants.”

Although these chemicals have been around for decades they’ve “emerged” into our collective consciousness thanks to much improved chemical detection methodologies and technologies. As chemists extracted and detected smaller concentrations of chemicals from smaller and smaller tissue and urine samples, chemicals like PCBs, and dioxins were detected not only in parts-per-million or parts-per-billion, and but also parts-per-trillion. Many of those emerging chemicals were there, we just didn’t know it. But it wasn’t simply the improved chemistry that helped raised awareness. As analytic methodology improved, many, including toxicologists were stumped by the “so what?” question. So what does it mean when a fish is contaminated with parts-per-trillion concentrations of dioxin?

Now with improvements and some maturation of toxicological testing, toxicologists are now able to evaluate the subtle effects of smaller and often more environmentally relevant concentrations of potentially toxic chemicals.More importantly over the past couple of decades, toxicologists have expanded the definition of “adverse effect” to include impacts on subtle reproductive and developmental processes which may respond to very small concentrations of foreign chemicals.

The outcome of all this new and improved sensitivity? A greater awareness of all the new and improved products that are in all of us, thanks in part to the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) 2003 National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals. And this is where Nena Baker begins The Body Toxic.

Back then, CDC reported concentrations of 250 chemicals including stain repellents, flame retardants and phthalates along with the old standbys, including mercury lead, and DDT in human blood and urine (data from their subsequent analysis will be released this year.)The report piqued Baker’s interest to the extent that she eventually dropped her day job as a journalist to chase down the answers to three basic questions that we all ought to be asking: 1) Should we be worried about the effects of these pollutants on our health? 2) Can everyday items be responsible for the chemicals inside of us? 3) Don’t regulators already make sure we’re safe from daily doses of hazardous chemicals?

We’ll save the first question for last. The answer to the second question, as everyone knows by now, is a resounding yes, of course. We are all contaminated by bits of everyday items from our kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms, offices, even our hospitals.Is this a surprise? Well, yes and no.We know from the history of fat-loving chemicals like the organochlorines (many now banned nationally and internationally) that we can indeed be “incidentally” exposed to environmental contaminants. No one ever purposefully ingested PCBs (at least not that I know of,) yet we’ve all got them in us. And, more importantly, no was ever asked if they minded being exposed to PCBs, DDT, dioxin or any other of these chemicals. It simply wasn’t and unfortunately still isn’t, a choice.But hey, that was back in the day, before Silent Spring and before the birth of the Environmental Protection Agency, when those chemicals were freely released as pesticides or into the environment both legally and illegally.

To address Baker’s third question, no one can deny that over the past 30 years chemical releases into the environment, food, and water have been greatly reduced thanks to expanded federal regulation. But, as Baker reveals in both the Introduction and in her first chapter, A Chemical Stew, what we are dealing with now is more insidious.These chemicals have flown “under the radar” and into our bodies.Some like bisphenol A were never expected to be released from their chemical matrix or become “available”, others including PFOA and PFOS were thought to break down more rapidly than they did, and still others like certain phthalates managed to be absorbed, apparently unexpectedly, into the body. These are chemicals that many of us never thought would end up circulating our bodies, or worse, those of our children. The second chapter, Chemicals We’ve Loved, explores how we got here from there beginning with the post World War II chemical frenzy, and ending with the myriad of chemicals currently registered by the EPA. In the best of all worlds the book would end here. If they’re registered, then surely EPA must have adequate information to protect the public from exposure to toxic concentrations?

Au contraire. As Baker writes, “under our regulatory structure, ignorance is rewarded: manufacturers have no obligation to test for the safety of substances they sell. [p51]. And we, the public, are ill-informed as to whatever chemicals we may ingest, absorb or inhale. The regulatory structure to which Baker refers is EPA’s Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976. When first enacted, TSCA was a big deal. Writes Mark Schapiro in his book Exposed: the toxic chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power, “TSCA was the first effort by any government to assert some level of oversight over the vast amount of chemicals that had been introduced into the marketplace since the end of World War II. With TSCA, the EPA was a world leader in chemical regulation.” [p 132.]

It was a hopeful time. It was a hopeful time. According to an October 1976 EPA press release, EPA’s Administrator Russell E. Train, declared TSCA to be "one of the most important pieces of 'preventive medicine' legislation…..its basic aim is to give public health far more of the weight that it deserves in the decisions by which chemicals are commercially made and marketed, by which they enter and spread throughout the human environment."

Sadly, 30 years later as Baker writes, TSCA is “notoriously weak and ineffectual” [p.7]. A conclusion shared by many others including the General Accountability Office, which concluded according to Baker, that “the EPA has given up trying to regulate chemicals and instead relies upon the chemical industry to act voluntarily when problems arise.” [p.16]

One notorious example of the naivety of such a voluntary program was when DuPont apparently forgot to report that not only was PFOA persistent, but also possibly toxic to humans and wildlife. Subsequently in 2005, DuPont paid over $10 million in fines and EPA initiated a voluntary phase-out of the chemical by 2015 (a program in which DuPont along with several other manufacturers, is a participant.)

And, although not discussed by Baker (perhaps because there isn’t enough to discuss just yet,) is the fate of nanomaterials under TSCA. Nanomaterials encompass a broad category of chemicals with one thing in common they’re small. Really small. One of the advantages of certain nanomaterials is that they act differently than their larger chemical counterparts. But this very quality concerns some toxicologists who fear that nanoized chemicals may be different enough that they may behave differently in traditional toxicology tests. Yet under TSCA, nano-formulations of existing chemicals will not require new registration (or registration as a new chemical). Further, EPA is asking for voluntary submission of health and toxicity data, by manufacturers and users of nanomatierals. At this point, feel free to ask, “when will we learn?”

What went wrong with TSCA and other federal regulations and the consequences of regulatory “misses,” make up the bulk of The Body Toxic’s chapters beginning with the pesticide Atrazine, followed by chapters on phthalates, polybrominated biphenyls, bisphenol A, PFOA and PFOS. And Baker presents a thorough case study of each through a combination of primary literature, anecdotes, interviews, and popular news articles, all cited in the Notes section. As I am often leery of books on toxics, having perused a few too many alarmist articles and books I was pleasantly surprised to find that, beyond Baker’s Introduction where at times words like “ghastly” and images of bathroom shelves “brimming with chemical-laden personal care products” (of course they’re chemical laden – what isn’t?!), the bulk of her writing kept to the science and the policy.

Returning to Baker’s first question, what does it mean to be exposed to all these toxicants at low concentrations, she doesn’t take the easy route and proclaim they’re the route of all evil. “While biomonitoring studies provide a much more accurate picture of our chemical body burden,” she writes, “limitations remain. The studies don’t tell researchers the source of an exposure, how long a substance has been in the body or, most important, what effects, if any a substance is having on human health.” [p.23] She continues with quote from Linda Birmbaum, then director of experimental toxicology at EPA, who acknowledged that “We really need more research to understand whether the levels we’re finding could be associated with adverse health effects.” [p.23] Fortunately Birnbaum, now director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, should be in a good position to do just that.

The final chapter Reaching Ahead is devoted to the European Union’s new approach to toxics, REACH. The approach is essentially a mirror image of TSCA. Where TSCA requires the EPA to demonstrate that a chemical is a risk to human or environmental health, REACH requires that the manufacturers test and ensure that chemicals do not pose a risk. Where the US was once a leader in chemical control, we can only hope it will become at the very least a follower.

Overall, The Body Toxic makes for informative reading that is not too technical- a plus in this case. Although I would have liked to some synthesis, (for example a discussion of all contaminants discussed which share a common target,) by providing some insight into the complexities of regulation and the workings of scientists Baker’s book opens many avenues for discussion. It’s a good book for a “non-majors” introduction to toxicology.

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[1] [EPA press release - October 21, 1976] http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/tsca/03.htm

We do have a choice: VOC in paint

Our white wall to wall bookcases, blackened from over a decade of “dog” rubbing against the corners, kids whose little shoes marred the window seat, and woodstove particles that had settled into the cracks and crevices, were looking dingy. They’d become a shade of off-white no paint store would dare market, and were in need of some attention.

A good scrubbing helped. But there’s nothing like a new coat of paint to brighten things up, especially after a long winter. With my hired hand in tow (whose little shoes are now size 11) we trudged into Dakor Center and plunked down a can of old paint.

Filler up with the same, I requested. But no such luck. Apparently Deerfield Academy just cleaned Dakor out of the Benjamin Moore Regal I’d used before. But, suggested Richard from behind the counter, I might try the Benjamin Moore Eco-spec™, the virtually no (or very low) VOC paint they use over at the Franklin Medical Center.

VOC means volatile organic compounds, a family of chemicals that paint companies have been trying to phase out or reduce for years – with a little push from state and federal environmental regulations.

The term VOC encompasses a broad category of chemicals with at least two things in common: they are easily volatilized and many are not soluble in water. VOCs are everywhere, from the chlorinated cleaning fluids of olden days which now contaminate drinking water around the country to the ingredients of the Purell Hand Sanitizer that kills 99.99% germs. They are also released from home furnishings, household cleaning products, air fresheners and cigarette smoke. VOCs are produced when coal and oil are burned, when chlorine combines with organic material in water resulting in chloroform, and when cows fart. Recall the flap about cow farts and global warming? That was methane, a VOC. You know that “fresh-cut” grass smell? That’s the VOCs released when the blades are damaged, though they pale in comparison to all the VOCs released by the very act of mowing the lawn (unless of course, you’re using a push mower, then it’s just your own gas that counts.)

Outdoors, VOCs contribute to the formation ground-level ozone or smog, when they combine with other air pollutants like the nitrogen oxides released by burning fossil fuel. The EPA estimates that the nearly 600 million gallons of latex paint (which contains far less VOC than some other paints) sold each year in the US, accounts for nearly 120 million pounds of VOCs released to the atmosphere. Indoors, VOCs can occur at concentrations as much as five-times higher than outdoors, and as much as 1000-times higher after stripping paint.

Some of the worst VOCs are really nasty, causing a range of effects from liver and neurological damage to cancer - though some of the worst offenders are no longer used in consumer products or are present only in very small concentrations. But that doesn’t mean that indoor or home exposure to VOC is harmless. Particularly for those who are sensitive to certain chemicals, who have asthma, or are very old or very young.

Knowing all of this, and as low toxic as I try to be, I wasn’t sure I wanted to pony up more cash for the low VOC paint, the Benjamin Moore Regal was pricy enough. Sensing my hesitation, I was quickly informed that the two paints cost the same.
I could have kicked myself right then and there. How long had this stuff been around, I asked? Since 1999.

Ah, but was it really any better in terms of indoor air pollution than regular latex? Hadn’t latex gotten much safer over the years anyway? The answer to that question took some digging.

“Ingredients that are in conventional latex paints that are not in our Zero VOC paints would be, ammonia and coalescing agents, biocides that are formaldehyde releasers such as Nuosept 95, propylene or ethylene glycol, mineral spirits such as Isopar L, and pigments that contain any free crystalline silica,” emailed Mark Lamborn from Benjamin Moore, when I’d asked about the difference between semi-gloss latex and Eco-Spec.

What did all that mean? Aside from the biocides, which are highly toxic and release formaldehyde, but tend to be used in relatively small amounts – and no-VOC paint still has biocides - the other major difference is the VOC Isopar L, (other paint companies may use something called Texanol.) As listed, the VOC for Regal latex paints ranges from 50-149 grams per liter of paint. Roughly, that’s a bit less than a cup for the lower end, to two cups of VOC for the higher end, per gallon. When painted on gypsum board or drywall, according to an EPA study, those VOCs will volatilize slowly over a period of 3 years.

Mark also explained that the “recently reformulated Waterborne version of Eco Spec (WB) are formulated with raw materials that do not volatize during the drying/curing process. Any trace amounts of VOC [Eco-Spec still has 0.96 gram per liter of VOC] stay within the paint film.” Which, I suppose is why it can be sold as no VOC.
So, no-VOC paint, verses a few cups volatilizing over a few years? Although we’ve got plenty of other indoor pollutants circulating around our home (particularly after a good burrito dinner) why add more in a home where the asthma inhaler often makes the rounds. I went with the low-VOC paint and so far, have been pleased with the results.

A few considerations if you’re in the market for paint:
•There are now many different brands of low or no VOC paint – some rated better in terms of coverage and durability than others, so shop around.

•Watch out for tints. Tints tend to have high VOC so if you’re looking for little or no VOC ask about the type of tints. Some companies now produce Zero VOC tints.

•I focused on latex paint, which uses very little VOC containing solvent, it’s noteworthy that paints for tougher situations (the alkyd paints) can contain upwards of 400grams/L of VOC, now we’re talking VOC. That’s over four cups and, it’s worth noting much of that is released from a painted wall within the first ten hours after application.

Get Your Peanuts Here....or not

First published in the Montague Reporter, Montague, MA

Lately, I’ve been craving peanut butter. Maybe it’s because my husband finished off the jar a week or so ago, and didn’t put it on the list (grrrr,) or maybe it’s because I can’t pick up a newspaper without reading about the great peanut butter recall. Although you’d think that hearing it linked with Salmonella as it so often is these days would be enough to scare me away, who’s to reason with a craving?

Plunking a jar of Teddy All Natural peanut butter onto the check-out belt at Stop & Shop, I felt a little sheepish. Was anyone wondering if I’d been in a news blackout for the past few weeks? Who in their right mind would be buying peanut butter when peanut products are the stars of the Federal Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) largest food recall ever? Certainly not Robert Humphrey, the retired insurance executive from Georgia, who according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution has given up all peanut products (normally a mainstay of his diet.) And Humphrey isn’t alone. In Houston schools pulled all peanutty products from vending machines and menus, as did school districts in Michigan, Connecticut and California among others. While I couldn’t find any evidence of Baystate districts jumping on the ban-wagon, according to Jim Loynd, Food Service Director for Gill-Montague district, “All of our elementary schools are peanut free. At the middle school and high school building we’ve checked to make sure we don’t have products affected by recall. The only peanut butter products we have are from the USDA commodities program,” which, according to their web site did not purchase any recalled peanut butter. Amidst all the furor, the FDA asserts that “major national brands of jarred peanut butter found in grocery stores are not affected by the [Peanut Corporation of America] recall,” though they caution that some “boutique brands” of peanut butter may be subject to recall.

Salmonella typhimurium isn’t a bug to be trifled with. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported over five hundred cases of illness from 43 states since September, with a 22% hospitalization rate. Eight deaths have tentatively been linked to the outbreak. Like most bacteria that live or infect our guts, Salmonella typhimurium, are facultative anaerobic bacteria. That means that they grow and thrive with or without oxygen. They’re versatile, unlike one of my favorites, Clostridium botulinum, a strict anaerobe for which oxygen is toxic. When present in an airtight can, for example, Clostridium may produce botulinum toxin, one of the most potent toxins known. Fortunately for us, it not only produces toxin but also gaseous metabolic byproducts – enough to cause bulging lids in canned goods, cluing us in to its deadly presence. Last year at Stop&Shop I picked up a nice toxic can of tuna.

Salmonella infections, caused by ingesting contaminated foods like undercooked chicken, eggs, and more recently tomatoes are the most frequently reported food-related infections in the U.S. While some studies indicate upwards of 1 million little buggers are required for one to experience acute onset of fever and chills, nausea and vomiting, abdominal cramping, and diarrhea, some outbreaks may be caused by just a few hundred bugs. This “infectious dose” varies based on a number of factors including age and immunity of the host, and the food matrix. According to the USDA, foods high in fat, (like peanut butter,) may protect the bacteria from harsh conditions in our guts. In this ongoing FDA case, contaminated peanut products have been linked to a single peanut processing plant owned by the Peanut Corporation of America’s (PCA) Blakely, Georgia plant, now the focus of a criminal investigation.

In the largest food recall to date, over 400 items and 31 million pounds of peanut product have been removed from store and institution shelves. The recall ranges from Cliff Bars and Luna bars that contain peanut butter to Trader Ming's (AKA Trader Joe’s) Spicy Kung Pao Chicken, Big Y Sundae Cones and Famous Amos Soft Batch Peanut Butter cookies. But so far, the only tubs of actual peanut butter recalled is King Nut, a brand distributed only through food services.

Wondering about my Teddy peanut butter, I found the American Peanut Council’s web page which lists links to dozens of company sites whose products have not (yet) been recalled, including the Leavitt Corporation of Everett, MA, who produces Teddy brand. Teddy, they say, is clean. According to Leavitt’s site, they’ve never used PCA products, and don’t use peanut products from outside the company. While Teddy was clean, cruising the FDA recall site I found reason to pitch the Keebler Toast & Peanut Butter Sandwich Crackers that had been sitting in the pantry since last spring.

If you’ve got peanut products in your house, I’d suggest taking a gander at the FDA site. Of course if you’re in doubt you’d do best to throw it out, especially when President Obama has just promised a complete review of FDA itself.

Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, it’s been a week since we got the Teddy, and so far so good.

Musings of an obsolete toxicologist: nanotoxicology is a whole new world

This morning while walking across town to the Lady Killigrew , a small hipster café located just around the corner from home, I was thinking about a report I’d just begun to draft. The focus was how to evaluate the toxicity of nanoparticles. I was wondering if I’d been too strong in my dismal assessment of toxicology and had hoped that a good slap of cold air (the thermometer outside our kitchen window read -25C) would weed out the dramatic, and clarify the reality.

I’ve pasted some key points below, and while the topic and eventual report are confidential – there’s nothing confidential about the sentiment – I, and many others have been writing about it for a while:

1) The field of nanotoxicology is in its infancy, yet is ever expanding as newly created nanomaterials require assessment of potential health and environmental impacts. I’ve never before had the experience where I’ve considered research from 2006 as “old,” and where, the majority of literature cited is 2008 and 2009. Yet development of a new field within toxicology provides opportunity, and at the same time demands that toxicologists use both hindsight and foresight as they develop the methodology appropriate for these new materials.

2) Hindsight provides us with a glimpse of toxicology as a field, in large part, focused on application as a science catering to the need for rapid assessment and cost-effective regulation. Standardized toxicity testing methodology was developed and implemented as a result, quickly becoming a rigid set of test procedures, a good deal of which, over the years have become obsolete.

3) In part, because of the difficulties with changing test methodologies associated with a regulatory framework (check out the timeline for reproductive and developmental testing – “in development” for what, at least 10 years?) - standardized toxicity testing, useful for screening out the obvious is insufficient for detecting more subtle adverse effects or revealing the impacts of the complex mixtures of contaminants, drugs and naturally occurring chemicals to which we are all exposed.

4) We have an opportunity to consider the history of toxicology as we move forward. Many have expressed concern that “business as usual” may result in failure to adequately evaluate toxicity of nanomaterials. Oberdorster et al., (2005) representing the International Life Sciences Institute Research Foundation/Risk Science Institute (ILSI/RSI) writes “There is a strong likelihood that biological activity of nanoparticles will depend on physicochemical parameters not routinely considered in toxicity screening studies.” Additionally different physicochemical parameters may also affect behavior of particles in media typically used in preparing for traditional toxicity testing, the ability of researchers to adequately evaluate exposure concentrations, and particle behavior in the body. Problems only occasionally encountered in the past.

5) When it comes to some nanomaterials, such as quantum dots and functionalized particles we’re potentially dealing with multiple organic and inorganic materials that may, or may not, be released over a period of time. How do we assess that?

Well, as I wondered if I was getting a bit too dramatic, after grabbing a cup of decaf and ordering a breadboard with mustard I settled in and checked my emails. Bingo. There in the inbox was a link to Peter Montague’s recent article entitled "Can Chemicals be Regulated?" published in Rachel’s Democracy and Health News. Read it and weep.

Or, read it and be hopeful. I really do think that we’re at the proverbial crossroads. We’ve seen the consequences of becoming too rigid, of constrained linear thinking. But this is a new multitasking interconnected networked “wisdom of the masses” kind of world, not just for me and my Lady K compatriots (the majority of whom – to the dismay of the management - are more attentive to their electronics than to their stomachs) but also for those laboring away in research laboratories around the globe.

Maybe I need another slap of cold air, but if we can embrace this new fluidity in information, knowledge, and thinking, perhaps we can embrace a new way of not only evaluating health and environmental impacts of new chemical products, but a new way of using that information wisely.

This isn't your mother's melamine - or is it?

Melamine is yet another cool ‘50s invention that failed to enter my mother’s kitchen. While friends and neighbors stocked up on the nifty new light, durable and colorful plastic dishware, my mother filled her kitchen with white, pure white, simple, elegant, breakable ceramic. Her cupboards are still filled with the stuff – white, white, white. Not so at my in-laws, where the everyday dinner ware is red, blue and yellow melamine, pleasingly smooth, tough and virtually unbreakable.

Just a couple of years ago, Crate and Barrel in an effort to appeal to boomers who recall dining off the colorful plastic, offered melamine in colors that harkened back to the fifties and sixties – bright orange, acid green and red (far better on plates than on the cabinets and counters) and, being deprived of the plastic as a child, I pounced, buying a cute set of eight orange, green and red oval-shaped melamine dishes.

This is all to say that until a year or so ago any thoughts I had about melamine were pleasant and nostalgic. Now when I think melamine, I hear the rattle-snake sound of the old westerns, the sound that happens just before something bad is about to happen. Just before the good guy is about to drink the tainted water, or the heroine is about to drink the poisoned wine.

Chemically, melamine is a pleasingly round molecule made up of hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen, and is used in the preparation and production of a range of items including house wares, flame retardants, and fabrics. When combined with formaldehyde and heated up – melamine is transformed into the dinnerware. Which by the way, when heated together with your favorite acidic food, (reheated tomato sauce anyone?) can release upwards of 2.5 milligrams of melamine per 100 cm2 according to the National Toxicology Program, that’s roughly 2.5 mg per one big round plate – but that’s a separate issue.

By itself, melamine’s acute toxicity is comparable with that of table salt (i.e. not very toxic) although recall that toxicity is often a moving target depending on the sensitivity of the endpoint, exposure duration, age of test subject and other considerations. That melamine causes kidney toxicity following longer exposures to high concentrations in test animals (say 2 – 4 parts per thousand in feed,) is well known and until now, not considered highly relevant, because those concentrations were considered unrealistically high. Here I’d emphasize were, but we’ll get back to that later.

What first brought melamine to our attention here in the states, is the toxic transformation that occurs when it combines with cyanuric acid, an FDA approved feed additive, also used to produce dyes, herbicides, antimicrobials and pool water disinfectant. That's when the "watch out" snake start rattling. Cyanuric acid, a derivative of melamine is also a ringed nitrogen containing structure, and like melamine it is considered not acutely toxic. But when these two chemicals get together, like the Witches of Eastwick, the mayhem begins. Following ingestion, the chemicals make their way to the kidney destined for simple excretion. Unfortunately should they meet up, melamine and cyanuric acid join together to forming melamine cyanurate crystals, a toxic combination capable of lodging in kidney tubules and causing acute renal failure and death.

A year ago contaminated pet food from China was implicated in the deaths of dozens of cats and sickened thousands of dogs and cats. The culprit was subsequently traced to melamine tainted gluten. Gluten, derived from wheat or rice, is a common source of protein. Protein is sometimes estimated by measuring gluten nitrogen content. Given the high amount of nitrogen groups in both melamine and cyanuric acid (available as “scrap residue” from the melamine industry) it isn’t hard to imagine unscrupulous processers adding the stuff to their products to dupe purchasers or regulators into thinking they were selling a higher protein product.
After the massive recall of over 150 brands of pet food one would think that the incident alone would deter anyone from trying the same thing again, at least anyone with a conscience. But sadly, like the string of corrupt Illinois politicians, there’s always someone next in line no matter the consequences.

This past fall over 50,000 infants became ill, and at least four died of kidney failure after drinking melamine laced formula in China. The scandal soon spread beyond formula to candy, milk, and other diary containing products produced by dozens of companies. To date, only melamine has been implicated – leaving scientists to wonder about the mechanism of toxicity – recall with the pet foods melamine was mixed with its evil twin, cyanuric acid.

According to the World Health Organization upwards of 6196.61 mg/kg have been measured in dairy products including infant formula. That’s 6 grams in one kilogram of product, or, 6 parts-per-thousand. While that may be the high end, recall the sub-acute toxicity tests mentioned above and those screamingly high concentrations now seem more relevant. Additionally, chemicals are most often tested in weaned animals – not nursing animals – so concentrations that might be OK for adults may not be OK for the very young.

The Sanlu Group one of China’s major diary and infant formula producers whose products were fist shown to contain the chemical quickly blamed the dairy farmers – suggesting that they were the ones who added melamine to fool protein tests.
More recently, according a news article in the journal Science, investigators concluded that the adulterated infant formula was “nothing short of a whole-sale re-engineering of milk,” a skill likely out of reach for dairy farmers, but perhaps not for milk-collecting companies or corporations higher up the milk-chain.

China’s response to the tragedy, according to Science, is to pledge greater transparency and vigilance. In addition, China plans to open Food and Drug Administration offices here in the U.S. and the US FDA recently opened three offices in China. But old habits die hard and according to Chen Junshi a risk assessment specialist at China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and quoted in Science, it’s likely that food adulterers will only become cleverer. Those willing to make money at the expense of their fellow citizens, will seek alternative methods challenging both Chinese agencies and the newly opened US Food and Drug Administration offices in China.

Now, about those colorful plates...

Wrapped in Plastic

First Printed in the Montague Reporter Nov 2008

I pull a gallon sized Ziploc bag from its sunny yellow box, one of several boxes my mother, who shops at Costco, sent home with me last weekend, and swallow the guilt as I add yet another virginal plastic bag to the relatively permanent archive of plastic things in the world.

Just to be clear, I don’t buy plastic bags. Well, not unless it’s for a good cause like packing away the twenty pounds of wild low-spray blueberries we raked last summer. I tell myself I’ll reuse them, and I do, from storing bagels, to blueberry muffins, to banana bread before tossing them in for a spin in the wash whenever a greasy film builds up. But then the inevitable happens. The plastic zipper tab breaks off, or the blue and yellow tracks warped by warm water and dryer heat no longer join. For a while the bag limps through still storing food, closed up with a rubber band, or rolled up tight and tucked away. But that only puts off its fate for so long – eventually the plastic shows its age, as small cracks and holes begin to let in air or let out drips of last night’s soup.

That’s when it’s pitched into the trash. I’d add them to the Stop&Shop recycling (or down cycling) pile – which allows shopping bags, dry cleaning bags and newspaper bags - but wary of “contaminating” plastic batches with Ziplocs I refrain, and make a note to ask Stop&Shop about this.

As frugal as I am about Ziplocs and Saran wrap, my mother is not. But it wasn’t always that way. I can still recall my envy over the little plastic sandwich baggies Amy Ellis, my best friend in grade school, pulled from her lunch box each day. Her mother, a decade younger than my 42 year old mom, was far more “with-it,” or so I thought. If there was a new product, Amy had it. While her sandwiches were moist and soft, good material for a lunch-time trade, mine, in its wax-paper sandwich bag, couldn’t compare. Now the shoes are on my slightly older feet and I refuse to pack my kids’ lunch in plastic baggies. Just check out the garbage pail in any school room around the country and you’ll find plenty. Their total useful life-time? About three hours.

According to the history of plastic bags, those little baggies, thin sheets of blown polyethylene film sealed along three sides first came into being around 1957, roughly twenty-four years after the discovery of the stuff, and ten years before the ubiquitous and larger, produce bag.

Plastic produce bags, primarily LDPE or low density polyethylene, now fill the cotton shopping bags of the most plastic-wary consumer whether they’re shopping the farmer’s market, the local co-op, Whole Foods or Big Y. So I was heartened last week when I loaded my bagels into a recycled plastic produce bag at Whole Foods. If only the darn thing didn’t break open and spill six bagels onto the floor! I’m sure in time they’ll get it right.

Like sandwich baggies, by some estimates the useful lifetime of produce bags is measured in minutes, or however long it takes to stuff some string beans into the bag, hit the check-out counter and dump them into the colander for dinner. Though the most fastidious of us might reuse them or cart them back to Stop&Shop for recycling, plenty still end up in the trash.

Like all plastics, plastic baggies flow from the crude oil tap which is refined and distilled before cradling our organic broccoli. Crude oil is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons – carbon and hydrogen containing molecules. Some are long, some are short. They are straight, or branched – but all have a carbon “back-bone,” or a chain of carbons C-C-C-C. For years I had a small vial of crude oil in my office, rescued from the Valdez Oil spill, the label thanked me for helping to remove some ridiculously small percentage of the original spill (it now sits somewhere on my son’s science teacher’s desk – beseeching impressionable minds to think more deeply about the consequences of using oil.) This particular crude is the darkest of browns, a thick balled up tar-like substance floating atop the Prince William Sound water captured along with it. It is hard to imagine the link between the transparent filmy Ziplocs in my pantry and a vat of crude oil.

During distillation successively lighter fractions are boiled off and collected, the shorter carbon chain the lighter the fraction. Gasoline for example is “light,” and one of the first fractions collected, while the heating oil that warms our house is thicker, heavier and consists of longer carbon chains. Carbon chains can also be “cracked” into shorter chains, like ethylene, a simple two-carbon molecule. Ethylene is a highly versatile molecule used in hospitals and medical offices for sterilization, fruit ripening (it is also a naturally produced fruit hormone which initiates fruit ripening – try storing some apples next to an overripe banana and see what happens), antifreeze, a one-time gasoline additive, and plastics.

It is one of the highest volume organic (carbon containing) chemicals in production. According to a recent report by SRI consulting in 2006 “…global ethylene production amounted to about 110 million metric tons, with an estimated value of $122 billion.” 110 million metric tons, and guess what? Over half of that goes right into the production of polyethylene plastics including bags and plastic wrap.

“Everyone’s asking about plastic wrap in the microwave,” says my mother one afternoon. Apparently some of her friends had read or heard about the email promising death and destruction by dioxins and other “toxins dripping into your food.” For years she’s been using plastic wrap when reheating. Her reheated food is moist and her oven clean. I don’t cover, and my oven is encrusted with splatter and my food dry. Turns out the email was a hoax, but – according to both the American Chemistry’s Plastic’s Info site (Better Living with Plastics), and the FDA (for what it’s worth these days), consumers should be wary of combining their wrap with their food when microwaving. According to the Plastic’s Info, site, “..most manufacturers recommend leaving at least an inch between the food and the wrap covering the dish. This is to prevent the plastic wrap from melting, which could result from contact with extremely hot foods.” Not to mention allowing chemical additives present in some of the clear cling wraps to leach other chemicals into your food.

Plastic wraps are made from LDPE or polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Concern about toxics leaching from PVC wrap started the rumors flying. Although plastics are incredibly versatile materials, sometimes they are tweaked with chemical additives to get just the right clinginess, or color or flexibility. That meant diethylhexyl adipate (DEHA) in the case of chlorine containing cling wraps. Problem was under the right circumstances, like heating in a microwave, particularly heating things with high fat content, like cheese or meat, DEHA, a reproductive and developmental toxicant (although so far as we know just at relatively high doses) migrated from the plastic wrap resting on top of last night’s Buffalo Chicken Wings into the wings.
While the FDA acknowledges that substances like DEHA can and do transfer from plastic to foods during reheating, the controversy is over how much leaches and how toxic. While FDA maintains whatever leaches out is safe, some countries have banned the additive, while S.C. Johnson, producer of the granddaddy of all cling-wrap, Saran, switched from PVC to LDPE, winning an EPA “Designing Greener Chemistry Award” in the process.

Now, if we just can figure out how to consistently recycle all that wrap and all those LDPE baggies – we’ll all be a little bit greener.

More questions about BPA regulation

Though I am not in the habit of citing newspaper articles – after receiving the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s weekly Integrity in Science Watch, I linked to over the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which over the past year or so has done quite a bit of digging around on the issue of BPA.

Here’s the latest from Milwaukee: last week, the Sentinel accused the FDA of relying a bit too heavily on chemical and plastics industry citing 1) an FDA subcommittee chair whose institution accepted millions of dollars from a donor who had repeatedly expressed his views that the chemical was “perfectly safe;” and 2) using the consulting firm ICF, currently under investigation by the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which according to a letter sent to FDA commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach “…has done prior work for BPA manufacturers, and whose board members have ties to BPA manufacturers.”

Writes the Sentinel, “…Columbia University professor David Rosner, who researches the relationship of industry and government regulators of toxic substances, has compared the controversy over bisphenol A to tobacco and asbestos.” A few years back, Rosner, together with colleague Gerald Markowitz, authored Deceit and Denial: the deadly politics of industrial pollution, one of the better books I’ve read about the role of the chemical industry on regulation.

Coming from Rosner, as far as health scandals go, that’s a pretty serious comparison.