Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 20, 1990 TAG: 9003202588
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: By KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The decision followed some three hours of arguments about the standard tentatively accepted by the water board in December - 1.2 parts per quadrillion (ppq) in Virginia's waterways.
Dioxin, a suspected carcinogen, is a byproduct of bleaching paperboard. The tentatively accepted standard is supported by Virginia's three bleached-board paper mills - Union Camp Corp., Chesapeake Corp., and Westvaco Corp. in Covington.
The proposed standard is much higher than the 0.013 ppq level recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency. Board members said Monday they wanted time to review the reams of information submitted by the paper mills and environmentalists about dioxin before making a decision.
"I feel uncomfortable that we're seven lay people differing with the EPA" on technical information about the dioxin risk, said board Chairman Velma Smith at one point.
She said the board would have to review all the factors that go into assessing the health risk to make a decision.
The board's move to table the simmering dioxin issue followed arguments by David Bailey, Virginia director of the Environmental Defense Fund, that the 1.2 ppq standard "simply won't work."
Bailey also cautioned the board it would have to justify any deviation from the EPA-recommended standard of 0.013 ppq. "If you adopt EPA criteria," Bailey said, "you are covered."
Manning Gasch, the Richmond lawyer representing the paper mills in the tussle over dioxin standards, said afterward he understood the board's caution.
"The board is wrestling with a very difficult issue," said Gasch, adding that board members were being "very thorough and meticulous. I respect them for that."
Tests on laboratory animals indicate dioxin - villain of the widely-publicized Times Beach, Mo., incident in which dioxin-contaminated oil was sprayed on city streets - is "one of the most toxic man-made chemicals known," according to the EPA.
It can be produced in the manufacture of herbicides and other chlorine compounds, and in bleaching paperboard. The EPA considers it a probable cause of cancer.
Bleached paperboard is used in such products as milk cartons, microwave-in-the-box dinners, coffee filters and flip-top cigarette boxes.
Dioxin can kill fish and other water organisms outright, according to the EPA. Bailey said it has caused spontaneous abortions in monkeys.
Bailey said dioxin works at the molecular level, passing through cell membranes and binding tightly with protein receptors inside the cell, "like a lock and key."
The dioxin then migrates into the nucleus of the cell, said Bailey, where it can direct the deoxyribonucleic acid - or DNA - that contains the genetic code.
"It may not cause cancer," Bailey said. "It may not cause this or that. But it's acting. It's there."
Gasch said the dioxin can leave the cell again without altering the cell structure.
The paper mills' attorney also told the board that experts have found different degrees of sensitivity to dioxin among different animals. "It appears that humans are one of the least-sensitive species," he said.
Many of Virginia's neighbors have adopted or are considering standards close to 1.2 ppq, Gasch added. Tennessee has proposed a standard of 1 ppq, he said; Kentucky, 1.3 ppq; Maryland 1.2 ppq. Alabama has adopted a 1.2 ppq standard, Gasch said, and Georgia has adopted an emergency dioxin standard of 7.2 ppq.
He said all three of the state's paper mills have either already taken expensive steps to cut down on dioxin discharge or plan to do so.
Westvaco officials say the $10 million they have spent on modifications at the Covington plant have reduced dioxin in its paperboard and in plant discharge to below detectable levels.
Dioxin binds to suspended particles in waterways and then tends to sink to the bottom of streams and rivers. It is found in the highest concentrations in bottom-feeding fish such as carp.
Virginia's Health Department in December warned that pregnant women and longtime fishermen should stop eating fish from the Jackson River, which receives waste water from Westvaco's Covington mill, and the James River as far away as Amherst County. The Jackson River feeds into the James.
by CNB