Should California ban BPA?

An emotionally charged battle is expected to come to a head today (Wednesday) when the California Assembly votes on banning the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in baby bottles, sippy cups and containers of infant formula and baby food.

The chemical, which has been linked to cancers, infertility, early puberty and neurological disorders, is one of the most widely used in the world. The California vote is being closely watched around the nation: Several states and cities, including Connecticut, Minnesota and Chicago, have enacted BPA curbs, and federal restrictions are under consideration.

Chemical companies, infant formula makers, pharmaceutical firms, grocery chains and can manufacturers have mounted a ferocious lobbying campaign to defeat the bill in Sacramento. A BPA ban passed the California Senate in June but the Assembly vote is expected to be close, with half a dozen Los Angeles Democrats as swing votes.

Public health groups, including the Breast Cancer Fund, Planned Parenthood, several Red Cross chapters, and Physicians for Social Responsibility have been joined this year by the California Labor Federation and the California Teachers Assn. in pushing for the bill.

Got an opinion? Visit www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html and enter your ZIP Code to find which legislators represent your area.

-- Margot Roosevelt

Company will clean up San Gabriel Valley contamination

Defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. has agreed to spend $21 million to clean up polluted groundwater in the San Gabriel Valley.

Under a consent decree settlement announced this week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the company will pump contaminated water from beneath the City of Industry, La Puente and Walnut; build pipelines; and construct and operate a treatment plant.

The area is one of four federal Superfund sites in the San Gabriel Valley, where more than 30 square miles of the water table are polluted with solvents and degreasing agents used for decades by business and industry.

The pollution, first detected in 1979, has affected the primary source of water for more than 1 million valley residents, forcing the closure of wells and spawning a long cleanup battle.  

Fish in streams across U.S. tainted with mercury

Researchers found mercury in every fish tested in a nationwide stream survey, with some of the higher concentrations showing up in mining areas of the West.

In about a quarter of the fish, levels of the toxic metal exceeded federal standards for people who eat an average amount of fish.

“This study shows just how widespread mercury pollution has become in our air, watersheds, and many of our fish in freshwater streams,” U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a press release.

The study, conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, sampled 34 fish species at 291 stream sites across the country from 1998 to 2005.

The most contaminated sample came from smallmouth bass in the Carson River in Dayton, Nev., a historic gold mining area.

Face-off over fumigant: Will California approve methyl iodide?

Scientists and activists faced off with growers and the chemical industry at a California Assembly labor committee hearing Wednesday about the fumigant methyl iodide, a known carcinogen under consideration for use on California fields.

Growers of strawberries, ornamental plants and other crops want the chemical approved as a replacement for methyl bromide, an ozone-depleting chemical banned under an international treaty. But worker advocates are concerned that the fumigant may increase the risk of miscarriage, cancer and thyroid toxicity.

Assemblyman Bill Monning (D-Carmel), chairman of the labor committee, said he convened the hearing to raise the issue "to a level of transparency and public scrutiny that is absolutely necessary and appropriate given the potential risks posed by this chemical." Monning had voiced concern that the Department of Pesticide Regulation was fast tracking approval of methyl iodide.

"If it poses worker safety risk, then we have to decide, do we have our priorities right?" Monning said in a phone interview following the hearing. "You can't go backwards with cancer, birth defects or unintended health impacts."

Methyl iodide has already been approved for use by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and every other state except Washington and New York. At Wednesday's hearing, agricultural industry representatives voiced impatience with California, where the review process is still underway. 

The state Department of Pesticide Regulation, which is charged with determining whether the chemical can be used in the state, reaffirmed its commitment to an external review process and a public hearing on the chemical, scheduled for the end of September.

"California is unique," Monning said. "We have different growing conditions; we have different concentrations of rural residents living next to fields."

He added: "We have a process that we should be proud of. Part of this hearing today is to protect the integrity of that process."

--Amy Littlefield

Photo: Legislators and community activists worry that workers who pick strawberries and other crops could be sickened by the fumigant methyl iodide if California approves the chemical for use. Credit: Al Seib/Los Angeles Times

Time to dump your bisphenol-A baby bottle?

As federal and state lawmakers consider banning bisphenol A, a chemical found in hard plastic that has been linked in animal tests to cancer and hormone disruption, a group of doctors, activists and legislators are literally trashing it.

At a "toxic baby-bottle swap" on Wednesday, attendees can dump plastic bottles into trash cans and go home with BPA-free bottles donated by the Los Angeles-based company Green to Grow.

The event is aimed at garnering support for state Sen. Fran Pavley's SB 797, which would ban BPA in food and beverage containers targeted at children under 3 years old.

The state Senate voted in favor of the bill in June, and the Assembly is expected to vote in the next few weeks.

"The chemical lobby is spending millions of dollars. It's really the babies versus the powerful chemical industry," Sen. Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) said in a phone interview Monday. "I'm literally taking this to the people. This press conference which has gathered some wide support will hopefully get people involved and encourage them to pay attention to this issue."

ExxonMobil pleads guilty to killing birds, pays fine

ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas company, pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to charges that it killed 85 protected birds, including hawks, owls, and waterfowl. The company violated the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in five states over the past five years, according to the Department of Justice.

The company, which reported over $4 billion in earnings for the second quarter of 2009, will pay $400,000 in fines and $200,000 in community service fees to waterfowl rehabilitation and preservation programs. It will be placed on probation for three years and must implement a plan to minimize bird deaths during that time.

Most of the birds died following exposure to hydrocarbons in uncovered natural gas pits, oil tanks, and waste water facilities at ExxonMobil drilling and production plants in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, court documents state.

Open pits and tanks often attract waterfowl and other birds, which may land in the chemicals and attempt to feed, according to the documents.

Obama administration set to reverse Bush on perchlorate levels in drinking water

The Obama administration may be poised to reverse another Bush administration decision on toxic chemicals.

Under President Bush in 2008, the Environment Protection Agency decided not to regulate perchlorate, a chemical used to make rocket fuel that has been found in drinking water and has been linked to thyroid hormone disruption in young children. Now, it looks like the agency is reconsidering that stance.

In California, perchlorate used in manufacturing has seeped into groundwater. High levels of the chemical in drinking water has caused alarm in Rialto and Santa Clarita. The chemical has also turned up in tainted lettuce. In the absence of federal regulations, California moved to set state standards for perchlorate in drinking water in 2006. Massachusetts was the only other state with an enforceable standard on the chemical. 

That same year, the EPA drew a response  from scientists at its the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, who said the agency's recommended standard on perchlorate failed to protect infants and children.

Now, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson has said the organization will take another look at the chemical and accept public comments.

“It is critically important to protect sensitive populations, particularly infants and young children, from perchlorate in drinking water,” Jackson said.  “As we re- re-evaluate the science around perchlorate, we will seek public input before making a regulatory determination based on the best science.”

The chemical is found naturally on Earth and is used to make fireworks, flares and rocket propellant. It has also been found on Mars.

-- Amy Littlefield

Photo: Perchlorate is a chemical found in drinking water that has been linked to thyroid hormone disruption. Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha/Los Angeles Times

Pesticides in well water linked to Parkinson's disease

Farmworkers and their families pay for the cheap cost of California produce in more ways than one. Not only do they face low wages and harsh working conditions, but they also endure health effects from the hundreds of millions of pounds of pesticides and fumigants dumped onto fields near their homes annually. 

Now pesticides in private well water have been linked to Parkinson's disease, adding to the list of long-term health risks for people in agricultural areas.

Rural residents who drink from private wells are up to twice as likely to develop Parkinson's from certain pesticides, including methomyl, chlorpyrifos and propargite, a UCLA study has found. People with Parkinson's were more likely to have consumed water from private wells, and had done so for 4.3 years longer on average than people who did not have the disease.

Parkinson's is a disease of the central nervous system that can render patients unable to walk or speak. Complications from the disease are often fatal. Because Parkinson's develops over many years, researchers looked at pesticide data from 1974 to 1999.

Private wells could have higher levels of some chemicals, because they are not regulated under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974.

The study's lead author, Nicole Gatto, said she hoped the results of the study could be used to change the methods of pesticide application by increasing "awareness of how pesticides applied in the environment can affect people's health."

The groundbreaking study from UCLA researchers focused on residents of Fresno, Kern and Tulare counties and used geographic information system mapping and pesticide use data, instead of relying on people's memories. The study is part of a larger project led by Dr. Beate Ritz at UCLA to measure the relationship between Parkinson's and pesticides. 

-- Amy Littlefield

Photo: Workers harvest watermelons near Arvin, in Kern County. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

Students spearhead study on Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch

The Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch, a floating mass of plastic trash about twice the size of Texas, is a striking reminder of human effect on the ocean. Located about 1,000 miles off the California coast, the patch is kept in constant swirling motion by ocean currents. When laundry baskets, bottles and other assorted items wash up on shore, they clutter beaches and pose a toxic threat to species such as albatross that mistake bottle caps and nozzles for food. 

In a seagoing expedition that began Sunday, students and researchers from UC San Diego's Scripps Institute of Oceanography will attempt to hone in on the scope and effect of the patch, which was the focus of an article in the Los Angeles Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning series on oceans.

During their 20 days at sea, the researchers will attempt to discover what kind of plastic is in the patch, how deep in the water it goes and how big the patch actually is. They also will examine the plastic to determine whether trash may provide a vessel for pollutants and invasive species traveling to places they do not belong.

"I'm pretty pleased that the students have had the initiative to band together and see if they can get this expedition together," said Robert Knox, deputy director for research at Scripps. 

Funding for the project came from the University and the Project Kaisei, as well as the National Science Foundation.

-- Amy Littlefield

Photo: Plastic debris washes up on Midway Atoll, a rookery for albatross and other birds. Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times; from the Los Angeles Times Altered Oceans series

Steer clear of the beach after rain, scientists say

Fecal pollution at 227 California beaches rose 4% from 2007 to 2008, according to a Natural Resources Defense Council study released Wednesday. Los Angeles County had the worst beach water quality in the state, with 20% of its water samples violating state daily maximum standards.

Overall, samples taken at more than 400 California beaches violated state standards 10% of the time. California waters ranked among the most polluted in the country. The state came in 22nd out of 30 coastal states for beach water quality.

The report recommends a range of precautions, including steering clear of urban beaches after a rainstorm, when storm water contaminated with animal and human feces can carry bacteria into the water and sicken swimmers.

For more information, see the Los Angeles Times story and the NRDC report online here.

Photo: A surfer on Surfrider Beach. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times