Monday, 12 Mar 2001

Kiss My Arsenic

Pressure-treated wood used to build playgrounds, decks, and docks is leaking arsenic at unsafe levels, according to an investigation by the St. Petersburg Times. The arsenic comes from a pesticide applied to the lumber to protect it from termites and rot. Florida officials say the arsenic is leaking at levels dozens to hundreds of times higher than those considered safe, and in some cases, they are concerned that arsenic may be seeping into drinking water. Although the pressure-treated wood is banned in Switzerland, Vietnam, and Indonesia, and heavily regulated in other countries, Scott Ramminger, president of the American Wood Preservers Institute, says the product is "perfectly safe."

Is This Bush Green?

Loud cries to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge aside, the Bush administration has taken some steps to make industry edgy, and some right-wingers are growing nervous that Dubya's environmental policies will differ very little from former President Clinton's. Said one anonymous industry lobbyist, commenting on the Bush administration, "If their goal is to keep sticking it in the eye of business, they've done a good job." For example, U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman has pledged to move forward with a campaign promise by President Bush to seek a bill to control power-plant emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury.

For the Love of the Lamb

What's a conservationist to do when the biggest threat to the survival of a species is another rare species? In California's eastern Sierra Nevada, endangered bighorn sheep could be pushed to extinction by the threatened mountain lions that like to eat them. Not all mountain lions have a taste for mutton -- champions of the bighorns advocate tracking and killing those that do. But defenders of the big cats are outraged at this suggestion; they counter that humans should stand back and let nature take its course. Others argue that humans have already messed with the natural state of things -- for example, removing the grizzly, the lions' natural predator -- and now's no time to stop.

Songbird Sings the Blues

Some animals facing extinction aren't being helped by the Endangered Species Act thanks to a decision last year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to place a moratorium on protecting new species. The service said it had to impose the freeze because it was too busy and short on cash from dealing with lawsuits filed by enviros over already-protected species. Thirty-nine species that were on the verge of being listed for protection under the act may now be in danger of extinction, and 236 species that were candidates for listing are also in jeopardy. The population of the Mississippi gopher frog, which once ranged throughout the pine forests of the Gulf Coast, has now dwindled to only 100. The cerulean warbler, a songbird once found in Eastern forests, has declined by 70 percent since 1966.

Spilling Me Softly

Salmon are suffering as the West feels the squeeze of California's energy crisis and the second-worst drought since 1929. Operators of federal dams are being forced to choose between using water to generate hydropower or spilling it downstream to support salmon. The Bonneville Power Administration announced last week that salmon recovery programs on the Columbia River will be cut back to meet electricity demands and debt payments to the U.S. Treasury. The BPA did spill $2.1 million worth of water last weekend to help migrating salmon, but the spill was only one-tenth of its normal size for this time of year.

Getting Into Chip Shape

Semiconductor manufacturers have reached a voluntary agreement with the U.S. EPA to reduce the use of chemicals that contribute to global warming. The industry cleans equipment and makes silicon wafers using perfluorocompounds, which are 10,000 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat and last in the atmosphere for 2,000 to 50,000 years. Under the agreement, members of the Semiconductor Industry Association, including Intel, will reduce their use of the chemicals 10 percent from 1995 levels by 2010. The EPA's Sally Rand says the manufacturers are the only industry working globally to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.