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While the program is costly, it has yielded
some success: 299 former hazardous waste
sites across the U.S., including Love Canal,
have been cleaned-up. These are not remote
sites that pose no danger. One in four Americans
lives within four miles of a Superfund site.
Typically these sites are contaminated with
major pollutants--like cyanide, arsenic
or dioxin--that directly threaten human
health by polluting air and groundwater,
poisoning backyard streams, and contaminating
heavily used state and national parks.
The bad news is that the EPA today lists
1,234 sites that still require urgent cleanup,
and has said that as many as 3,000 more
sites might need to be added. Yet the pace
of cleanup is slowing dramatically. In the
late 1990s, the EPA cleaned up an average
of 87 Superfund sites each year, but just
40 sites were scheduled for cleanup in fiscal
years 2003 and 2004, and that number may
drop further. Also, the listing of new sites
has slowed, from 30 per year average between
1993 and 2000 to 23 per year since. And
after dwindling to $30 million in 2003 from
a high of $3.8 billion in 1996, the trust
fund now stands empty.
According to a report prepared by the Sierra
Club and the U.S. Public Interest Research
Group, until recently the trust fund held
enough cash to clean up the 30 percent of
“orphan” sites where no responsible
party could be found or the offending company
had either gone out of business or simply
did not have the money. In recent years,
revenues accrued to the fund from taxes
and levies on dangerous chemicals, crude
oil purchases, and from a special Corporate
Environmental Income Tax. But the corporate
tax expired in 1995 and Congress will not
reinstate it, shifting the burden of financing
cleanups instead to the taxpayers.
Lois Marie Gibbs, the Love Canal mom who
successfully campaigned for the subsidized
evacuation of her polluted neighborhood
in 1978 and went on to found the Center
for Health, Environment and Justice in 1981,
thinks it is a travesty that Superfund lacks
sufficient funds to carry out remediation
projects in needy areas: “It is unfair--and
morally wrong--to slow down cleanups in
contaminated communities like my former
neighborhood because of a lack of money.”
Gibbs, along with thousands of other concerned
citizens, would like to see Congress re-establish
the Superfund tax abandoned in 1995 and
get on with the business of cleaning up
the thousands of hazardous waste sites still
in need of attention.
CONTACTS:
Superfund, www.epa.gov/superfund/
Sierra Club www.sierraclub.org/toxics/superfund
U.S. Public Interest Research Group, www.uspirg.org/passthrus/superfund.html
Center for Health, Environment and Justice,
www.chej.org
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Dear EarthTalk:
Are there organic highlights and dyes I
can use in my hair that
contain less ammonia and peroxide than traditional
brands?
-
Terry Wattendorf, Scituate, MA
For those who want to color their hair but
find the chemicals in widely available dyes
and highlighting treatments too harsh, a
new crop of products promises to do the
trick without causing allergic reactions
or other health problems. While green-friendly
permanent hair dyes still require some of
these chemicals--such as ammonia, peroxide,
p-Phenylenediamine or diaminobenzenein
order to be effective, alternatives do exist
that contain smaller amounts.
Ecocolors, which contains small amounts
of ammonia and peroxide, has a soy and flax
base and uses rosemary extract to condition
the hair and flower essences instead of
artificial scents. Another option is Herbatint.
This ammonia-free permanent dye is biodegradable,
but it does make use of low concentrations
of p-Phenylenediamine and peroxide.
Meanwhile, temporary dyes and highlight
treatments should be able to color hair
without the need for harsh chemicals. Naturcolor
and Vegetel are shorter-lived options that
do not contain any damaging chemicals, although
their effect will only last a few washes.
One truly natural although temporary dye
that has been around since Cleopatra herself
is henna. Made from the powdered leaves
of a desert shrub called Lawsonia, henna
has been used for thousands of years to
color hair and skin. Rainbow Henna makes
a variety of 100 percent organic hair treatments
ranging from blonde to black hair and everything
in between. Meanwhile, Light Mountain sells
an organic henna application kit familiar
to those accustomed to traditional home
hair coloring packages. While many such
treatments are available at natural health
and beauty supply retailers, others, such
as the Italian-made Tocco Magico, may be
available only at salons.
Recent studies have given those worried
about the traditional hair dyes they use
new reasons to switch to less harsh alternatives.
A 1994 National Cancer Institute report
found that deep-colored dyes (like dark
brown and black), when used over prolonged
periods of time, seemed to increase the
risk of cancers such as non-Hodgkin’s
lymphoma and multiple myeloma. Meanwhile
a 2001 study by the International Journal
of Cancer found that people who use permanent
hair dye are twice as likely to develop
bladder cancer as those who go au naturel
regarding hair color.
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