Posts Tagged ‘ persistent pollutants ’

DEQ: How To Clean Up Some Of Oregon’s Nastiest Pollution

June 2, 2010
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After two years of study and hearings, Oregon’s DEQ has a plan to make our streams, rivers and lakes safer for people and wildlife.

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Oregon’s Dirty Dozens

October 21, 2009
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Oregon DEQ has just finished the first big step towards regulating 118 toxic, or potentially toxic, chemicals.

DEQ calls them “persistent pollutants”.  They’re persistent because they take a long time to break down in the environment.  Instead, the levels of these chemicals accumulate in water, soil and wildlife.  They work their way up the food chain and can eventually harm people, too.

Some of the pollutants will have familiar names, such as mercury, PCBs and DDT.  Others are not so familiar, but they’re found in products such as weed killers, prescription drugs and even personal care products.  Many of these pollutants have entered the environment through our sewers.

Over the past several months DEQ has studied which of these chemicals deserve the most attention.  Its final list of Priority Persistent Chemicals, AKA the P3 list, was released this week.   But there’s much more work to be done.

Here are a few items from the DEQ list.

  • Halogenated flame retardants:  This includes PBDEs, a class of chemicals used in a variety of consumer products such as carpeting, furniture, mattresses, computers, and televisions.  Oregon and Washington have banned the most common types of PBDEs, but their levels continue to rise in the Pacific Northwest.
  • Pesticides and herbicides: DEQ says some of these are suspected of disrupting the production of hormones in wildlife and humans.
  • Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care products: This list includes some synthetic hormones, an anti-psychotic medication, food additives and disinfectants.  Also suspected of disruption the hormone system.

What’s Next?

Over the coming months, DEQ staff will start looking at the sources of these pollutants and try to figure out how to reduce their presence in Oregon waters.  It will also determine how much of these pollutants will be allowed in wastewater.  If levels rise above a certain “trigger point”, then the operators of Oregon’s 52 largest sewage systems will have to take steps to reduce them.  All these steps should be completed by July of 2011.

The work to fix this problem began when the 2007 Legislature approved Senate Bill 737.

For more information see DEQ’s website on SB 737.