[Pharmwaste] Frontline show "Poisoned Waters"

[Tenace, Laurie]

Frontline had a two hour show last night about water issues. I hope they air
it again - Laurie 
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/poisonedwaters/etc/synopsis.html


More than three decades after the Clean Water Act, iconic American waterways
like the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound are in perilous condition and facing
new sources of contamination.

With polluted runoff still flowing in from industry, agriculture and massive
suburban development, scientists note that many new pollutants and toxins
from modern everyday life are already being found in the drinking water of
millions of people across the country and pose a threat to fish, wildlife
and, potentially, human health.

In Poisoned Waters, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith examines
the growing hazards to human health and the ecosystem.

"The '70s were a lot about, 'We're the good guys; we're the
environmentalists; we're going to go after the polluters,' and it's not
really about that anymore," Jay Manning, director of ecology for Washington
state, tells FRONTLINE. "It's about the way we all live. And unfortunately,
we are all polluters. I am; you are; all of us are."

Through interviews with scientists, environmental activists, corporate
executives and average citizens impacted by the burgeoning pollution problem,
Smith reveals startling new evidence that today's growing environmental
threat comes not from the giant industrial polluters of old, but from
chemicals in consumers' face creams, deodorants, prescription medicines and
household cleaners that find their way into sewers, storm drains and
eventually into America's waterways and drinking water.

"The environment has slipped off our radar screen because it's not a hot
crisis like the financial meltdown, war or terrorism," Smith says. "But
pollution is a ticking time bomb. It's a chronic cancer that is slowly eating
away the natural resources that are vital to our very lives."

In Poisoned Waters, Smith speaks with researchers from the U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS), who report finding genetically mutated marine life in the
Potomac River. In addition to finding frogs with six legs and other
mutations, the researchers have found male amphibians with ovaries and female
frogs with male genitalia. Scientists tell FRONTLINE that the mutations are
likely caused by exposure to "endocrine disruptors," chemical compounds that
mimic the body's natural hormones.

The USGS research on the Potomac River poses some troubling questions for the
2 million people who rely on the Washington Aqueduct for their drinking
water.

"The endocrine system of fish is very similar to the endocrine system of
humans," USGS fish pathologist Vicki Blazer says. "They pretty much have all
the same hormone systems as humans, which is why we use them as sort of
indicator species. ... We can't help but make that jump to ask the question,
'How are these things influencing people?'"

"The long-term, slow-motion risk is already being spelled out in
epidemiologic data, studies -- large population studies," says Dr. Robert
Lawrence of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. "There are 5 million
people being exposed to endocrine disruptors just in the Mid-Atlantic region,
and yet we don't know precisely how many of them are going to develop
premature breast cancer, going to have problems with reproduction, going to
have all kinds of congenital anomalies of the male genitalia, things that are
happening at a broad low level so that they don't raise the alarm in the
general public."

Smith also investigates the state of Puget Sound's environment, where decades
of pollution have endangered such species as orca whales, whose carcasses
have shown high levels of cancer-causing PCBs.

"We thought all the way along that [Puget Sound] was like a toilet: What you
put in, you flush out," says Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, who notes that
about 150,000 pounds of untreated toxins find their way into Puget Sound each
day. "We [now] know that's not true. It's like a bathtub: What you put in
stays there."

Smith reveals that some of today's greatest pollution threats stem from urban
sprawl and overdevelopment, as new housing and commercial developments send
contaminated stormwater into rivers and bays, polluting local drinking-water
supplies.

Smith speaks with scuba diver Mike Racine, who describes runoff into the
depths of Seattle's Elliott Bay as a "brown, noxious soup of nastiness that
is unbelievable."

"The irony is that everybody looks at that [picturesque] scene and thinks
that it's great; everything is right with the world in Elliott Bay," Racine
says. "But in point of fact, not 100 feet away from where they are drinking a
nice glass of wine off their white linen, there is this unbelievable gunk
coming out of the end of this pipe."

In addition to assessing the scope of America's polluted-water problem,
Poisoned Waters highlights several cases in which grassroots citizens' groups
succeeded in effecting environmental change: In South Park, Wash., incensed
residents pushed for better cleanup of PCB contamination that remained from
an old asphalt plant. In Loudon County, Va., residents prevented a
large-scale housing development that would have overwhelmed already-strained
stormwater systems believed to contribute to the contamination in Chesapeake
Bay.

Reversing decades of pollution and preventing the irreversible annihilation
of the nation's waterways, however, will require a seismic shift in the way
Americans live their lives and use natural resources, experts say.

"You have to change the way you live in the ecosystem and the place that you
share with other living things," says William Ruckelshaus, founding director
of the Environmental Protection Agency. "You've got to learn to live in such
a way that it doesn't destroy other living things. It's got to become part of
our culture."

Laurie

Laurie Tenace
Environmental Specialist
Waste Reduction Section
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
2600 Blair Stone Rd., MS 4555
Tallahassee FL 32399-2400
P: 850.245.8759
F: 850.245.8811
Laurie.Tenace at dep.state.fl.us 

Mercury: http://www.dep.state.fl.us/waste/categories/mercury/default.htm 

Unwanted Medicine:
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/waste/categories/medications/default.htm



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