Tuesday, 12 Feb 2002

A Year of Living Dangerously

From going it alone on global warming (read: doing nothing) to opening up more federal lands to all types of nasty, extractive industries, it's been a long, rough ride for U.S. environmentalists in Bushlandia. Sure, you already know this -- but the devil is in the details. Mathew Gross takes a close look at environmental policy in the first year of the Bush administration, only on the Grist Magazine website.

Smoke Scream

The levels of pollutants spewed into the air over New York City following the Sep. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center exceeded even those of burning oil wells during the Gulf War, according to a new study released yesterday by scientists from the University of California at Davis. The study, which was the most thorough analysis of the dust and smoke following the attacks, found elevated levels of sulfur, silicon, titanium, vanadium, and nickel -- all in very fine particles that can contribute to a range of health problems, including emphysema. The findings bolster support for allegations by some New York legislators that U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman misled New Yorkers by reassuring them that the air was "safe to breathe" one week after the attacks. They may also help the case of some 1,300 people who plan to sue the city this week for injuries, health problems, and damages stemming from alleged negligence during the post-attack recovery and cleanup.

City City Ban Ban

And in related news from the Big Apple: The city's post-Sep. 11 restrictions on single-occupant vehicles entering Manhattan has led to 190,000 fewer people coming into the city by car every day, according to a study commissioned by business and labor leaders opposed to the ban. The study claims the restrictions could cost the city $1.5 billion in lost spending, tolls, and taxes over the course of the year; it further claims that the goals of the restrictions -- to encourage people to enter the city by carpool or mass transit -- are not being met, and that people are simply deciding not to go out on the town if they can't go it alone. City officials, however, say the study is not comprehensive and fundamentally flawed.

Not-so-secret Agent

Four decades after the U.S. started using Agent Orange in Vietnam, the two countries will begin working together to assess the effects of the toxic chemical on human health and the environment. Agent Orange is a defoliant that contains TCDD, the most dangerous form of dioxin, which causes cancer, immune system malfunction, and birth defects. The U.S. sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange on Vietnam from 1962 to 1971 in a frustrated effort to expose the enemy and win the war by denying forest cover to jungle fighters. The practice created one of the most enduring, damaging, and controversial legacies of the conflict; in the first decade after the war, about 50,000 children were born with deformities or paralyses attributed to Agent Orange. Delegates from the two countries will begin to discuss joint research into the effects at a four-day conference in Hanoi starting in early March.

Anti-protection Racket

Fourteen of 25 groups of wild West Coast Pacific salmon and steelhead may lose their protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, following the federal government's formal acceptance yesterday of petitions to de-list the groups. Last year, the National Marine Fisheries Service began evaluating the protected status of 23 of the 25 groups after a federal judge found the agency was wrong to declare Oregon coastal coho a threatened species, saying it had only looked at wild populations and not factored into its calculations the number of hatchery salmon in streams. The current petitions, which will be considered as part of the overall reevaluation, were filed by farm and property rights groups traditionally opposed to endangered species protection measures. The fishing organization Trout Unlimited criticized the petitions, saying they failed to live up to NMFS' scientific standards and would drain much-needed resources.