HOPE COLLEGE, Holland, Mich., August 9, 1971. Hon. MARK HATFIELD, U.S. Senate, Senate Office Building, DEAR SENATOR HATFIELD: On Tuesday August 3, I testified before the Subcommittee on Energy, National Resources, and the Environment, concerning the Toxic Substances Act. You questioned the previous witness, Mr. Train, about that section of the bill which permits export of products which are found unsafe for domestic use. I began my testimony with some true, but not too well thoughtout comments on this export question, which had also bothered me. I am writing you now to certify those comments, in the hope that you will pursue the question further. As a result of a wildlife die-off attributed to methylmercury seed dressings, and after studies indicating that some of the methylmercury was translocated from the seed to the final edible grain, Sweden began restricting the use of these chemicals in agriculture, in 1964. They did not ban manufacture of these chemicals for export, and the manufacturers found a market in the U.S. We bought and used these chemicals, thus contributing to our own mercury problem. The New Mexico poisonings were due to methylmercury treated seeds. There were two epidemics of environmental mercury poisoning in Japan, both due to the discharge of mercury-containing wastes from chemical factories. One of the Japanese companies involved in the poisonings sold its chemical process to an Italian company, without informing the Italian company that the chemical process they were buying, had caused much sickness and death in Japan. Canada has been, and is, faced with a roughly analogous situation, involving her inland commercial fishery. Since some countries, including Sweden, tolerate a higher mercury level in fish than does Canada, many of the fish condemned by Canada could be sold abroad. Canada, however, has chosen not to export fish which it consideres unsuitable for consumption by Canadians. I hope that you will continue your efforts to turn the policy of the United States to the moral position already taken by Canada. Very truly yours, DAVID H. KLEIN, Professor of Chemistry. TOXIC SUBSTANCES CONTROL ACT OF 1971 AND AMENDMENT WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1971 U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE ENVIRONMENT, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 10:25 a.m., in room 5110, New Senate Office Building, Hon. William B. Spong, Jr., presiding. Present: Senator Spong. Senator SPONG. The hearings will come to order. The first witness this morning is Mr. Robert Fri, the Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Fri, we are pleased to have you with us. STATEMENT OF ROBERT FRI, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; ACCOMPANIED BY DR. JOHN BUCKLEY, OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR RESEARCH AND MONITORING Mr. FRI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me Dr. John Buckley of our research organization. Dr. Buckley is a biologist who has been involved in the testing of pesticides and toxic substances for a number of years. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to have the opportunity of appearing before you today in support of S. 1478, the administration's proposed Toxic Substances Control Act. Yesterday, Russell Train, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality in his testimony described the nature and extent of the problem of toxic substances, including projections on the growing number of new chemicals entering commercial channels. We endorse Chairman Train's statement and share his concern for this critical environmental problem. Today, in our testimony, I want to discuss EPA's thoughts on the proposed toxic substances program which this legislation would establish. Additional comments on the administration's proposal and on Senate amendment No. 338, which is also pending before the committee, are contained in our legislative report. We request this report be made a part of the hearing record. Senator SPONG. Without objection, it will be included. (The report follows:) Mr. TRAIN. But we do not have malaria in this country to any significant degree, so we can afford to be rather pure on this. Senator HATFIELD. We can afford to be concerned about environmental problems because we have reached a certain standard of living which the undeveloped and the underdeveloped countries have not, who say we cannot be concerned with environmental problems until we reach your standard. Here again we must take leadership, and I think the leadership role sometimes is a sacrificing one, but which must be done if objectivity and the morality of it is on its side. Senator SPONG. Mr. Train, we have a rollcall vote now, and I suppose this is a good time to cease our examination of you. We appreciate your appearance here this morning. There may be some followup questions that I will submit later in the hearings. We thank you very much for being here. Senator Hatfield, you had no further questions? Senator HATFIELD. No. Senator SPONG. The committee will recess for 15 minutes while we vote. We will be back and resume then. (Recess.) Senator SPONG. The hearings will come to order. The next witness will be Dr. David Klein. Dr. Klein, you were kind enough to testify before this subcommittee last year and we are very pleased to have you back with us this morning. STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID KLEIN, PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, HOPE COLLEGE, HOLLAND, MICH. Dr. KLEIN. Thank you for the opportunity to present some views and some data which I think will lend support to the legislation under consideration. Before I start my prepared statement, listening to the prior discussion on the question of exports puts me in mind of a couple of specific instances which occurred during the great mercury controversy, and which I think may have some bearing on that general topic of whether we should or should not export things which we find bad. Sweden, as you know, experienced difficulty with their wildlife as a result of alkylmercurials used in agriculture, and they began to restrict the use of those alkylmecurials in their agriculture in about 1966. Now, what they did with the materials which they could not use was to sell them to us and we just went along, apparently completely unaware that these things have bad effects, bought them and used them here. So we have been ourselves on the short end of t particular stick. A similar incident on the export of technology occurred in tion with one of the Japanese factories involved in the Jan ronmental mercury poisonings. One of those factories whole process to Italy, the process which involved disch from the production of acetaldehyde. They exporte Italy and apparently made no mention to the Its experienced some problems with their waste neither of those cases did the economic interes come off looking very good in the eyes of th he other side of the coin, Canada refuses to export fish which nd unsuitable for their own consumption. They will not ship ngs that they do not think are suitable for themselves. There are I suppose precedents on both sides, but I do believe anada looks a little better than Sweden and Japan. n that much preface I will begin with my prepared statement. k with your permission I will omit the first two paragraphs, e as I read them over they are not too interesting. The essence. , of that message is that I believe what we need is a combined ach in which we first develop improved waste treatment, and , we limit the quantities of material which enter the treatment S. degree of waste treatment required to get satisfactory removal ic materials is very difficult to attain and the problem can be ved immeasurably if it is possible to initially limit the quantity stes that will enter the treatment plant. ator SPONG. Regardless of interest, we will receive your staten its entirety, and you can testify as you will from it. KLEIN. Fine. sting laws have tended to concentrate largely on industrial rges and on a few specific major pollutants. However, a wide y of products containing potential environmental pollutants individual consumers and are disposed of by them, and such sal is very largely unregulated. I will confine my specific resto mercury, for which I have data, but we recognize the probof course not confined to mercury. the time this subcommittee had hearings last spring and summer e effects of mercury on man and the environment, the major e of waste mercury to the environment was the chlor-alkali iny, which was losing mercury to air and water at the rate of 500 per year, about four-tenths of a pound per ton of chlorine pro1. The most recent figures I have seen indicate that this loss has cut to about two hundredths of a pound per ton, a twentieth of ormer rate of loss. Direct discharge of mercury to the waters is measured in pounds per day rather than thousands of pounds ay. e second large use of mercury is in electrical products and about ons is used annually in making batteries. How is this 500 tons ercury thrown at on the batteries are burned out? Most fills where the cases eventually corrode ed to contaminate the groundwater. ned, and their mercury is added to the al disposal of 500 tons of mercury by een co led; the annual disposal of ury batteries has not been fine gadgets, and everyinimal health or environeed leadership in developcts, and we need regula nvolving tens or at most a arges associated with these wever, a significant fraction release of last summer entitled "Secretary Hickel Reports Mercury Discharges Reduced by 86 Percent." Now that release told us that mercury discharges from industrial sources had been reduced from 287 pounds per day in July to 40 pounds per day in September. I remember being very comforted by that, but when you crank that 600 pounds per day into the equation, isn't it the case that the reduction referred to represented only about 25 percent of the total direct discharges from industrial and municipal sources? Becoming excited about that kind of a reduction is sort of like becoming excited about getting rid of the flu when you still have tuberculosis or cancer. We have been speaking of direct discharges into our water. What would you say is the total daily discharge into the environment? Dr. KLEIN. It is roughly double the figure I gave you before, perhaps a little more. I can give you that probably somewhat more accurately. I am stuck on total daily discharge. It can give you a rough tonnage figure which would correspond at present to about 1,000 tons per year. What we would need to do to get daily poundage figures is divide by 365 and multiply by 2,000 which I am not capable of doing at this time. But it is roughly a thousand tons per year as the total discharge of mercury which has been somehow dug up, mined, put into products, and then dispersed, in the order of a thousand tons per year. Senator SPONG. While I am questioning you I will see if I can get the mathematics worked out over here on my left. I am told that works out to about 5,500 pounds per day. Does that sound right? Dr. KLEIN. I can believe that. Senator SPONG. You will accept that? Dr. KLEIN. Sure. There was a lot of fine print in that release about the decrease in the mercury discharges that not everybody read. Senator SPONG. In your statement you mention some sources of mercury that might be responsible for the levels of discharge you have found. Are there substitutes for mercury in these products, or is it absolutely essential that these uses of mercury continue? · Dr. KLEIN. In most cases there are substitutes, at least for a lot of the use. For example, in paints, mercury is used largely to increase the shelf life, to some extent to prevent the material from mildewing once it is on the wall. There are substitute materials which I think are adequate in all but a few cases, the few cases being light-colored exterior water-based paints for use in very humid regions. So it might, for example, be possible to continue the use of mercurial preservatives in those paints and restrict it in other paints. That is true, I think, of most sources. I do believe that loss from thermometers could be cut down significantly by making the thermometers a little sturdier or by causing the nurses not to stand near the edge of the table when shaking them down. There is now no safe method for disposing of that mercury, but that material need not enter the water. The same is true from the materials lost in dentistry. That material need not enter the water. |