NOVA dips into the sad plight of our coastal waters, where toxic chemicals, raw sewage and disease-carrying microbes are routinely dumped
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Tonight, on NOVA.
00:06As I was running down the beach, I noticed material glinting between high and low water
00:12in the early morning sun.
00:14I realized that I was running in human excrement, that the beach from high to low water for
00:19miles down there were covered with raw sewage.
00:22Over the past 20 years, in the northern hemisphere, there has developed what I call the Cousteau
00:28Mystique.
00:29Oceans are sacrosanct.
00:31I argue, even hazardous waste can be put into the oceans without an unacceptable impact
00:38if you put them far enough out.
00:41Will we find solutions in time to save a natural resource vital to our survival?
00:46Are you swimming in a sewer?
00:53Major funding for NOVA is provided by this station and other public television stations
00:58nationwide.
01:00Additional funding was provided by the Johnson & Johnson family of companies, supplying health
01:05care products worldwide.
01:10And by Allied Signal, a technology leader in aerospace, electronics, automotive products,
01:16and engineered materials.
01:29This is the end of the line for sewage and wastewater from thousands of homes and industries
01:48in the greater Boston metropolitan area.
01:52Fifty feet beneath the surface of Boston Harbor, at the end of a 60-inch pipe, we're looking
01:57at one of the reasons Boston Harbor is in trouble.
02:04Every day in this country, billions of gallons of wastewater are discharged into the marine
02:09environment.
02:11Boston alone pumps out 500 million gallons a day, Los Angeles, 950 million gallons daily,
02:19and New York generates a staggering 1.5 billion gallons of wastewater every single day.
02:27This daily dose of pollution includes bacteria and viruses carried in human feces, thousands
02:34of toxic chemicals, and a tremendous volume of organic matter that has the potential to
02:39disrupt coastal ecosystems.
02:43From homes, businesses, and factories, waste is flushed and poured into municipal sewer
02:47systems with hardly a second thought.
02:52The assumption is someone else will take care of that which we don't want.
02:57But is this a reasonable or safe assumption?
03:01How dangerous is the waste we pour into the sea?
03:05What do we know about its impact on marine ecosystems and humankind?
03:11Is using the oceans as our wastebucket a disposal strategy with a future, or is it just a short-sighted
03:16solution to an immediate problem, one that guarantees our coasts will forever be washed
03:22by troubled waters?
03:30The most deadly pollution in Puget Sound is concentrated in the bays of its major cities.
03:35Some harbors have sediments so loaded with toxic chemicals that their cleanup is thought
03:40near impossible.
03:42Best known are Tacoma's Commencement Bay, Seattle's...
03:45For TV news watchers in coastal communities, reports about marine pollution problems are
03:50all too familiar.
04:00Almost 15 years after passage of the Federal Clean Water Act, we continue to pollute coastal
04:05environments with domestic and industrial waste.
04:08Tests by the group have turned up hazardous chemicals here, including metals, acids, and
04:13cyanide.
04:14Five other companies dump unknown chemicals here without proper permits.
04:18This is a violation of state law.
04:21With a growing population producing ever-increasing volumes of waste, the future of our coasts
04:26remains threatened.
04:28And so while charges and counter-charges continue over who's doing and not doing what to clean
04:33up Santa Monica Bay, the public is left to wait and wonder just what risk it's been taking
04:38over the years eating fish from these waters.
04:41Mary Miller, News 13, Santa Monica.
04:46In 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, directing the federal government to control
04:51the discharge of waste into the coastal environment.
04:55The act called for increased treatment of municipal and industrial wastewater.
04:59It banned, in most cases, the dumping of solid waste at sea.
05:03Yet today, nearly 15 years later, the waters along our coasts are still far from clean.
05:10Because of the high costs involved, many municipalities and industries have resisted complying with
05:15the act.
05:17Often, this has let a bad situation get worse.
05:24This is Boston, Massachusetts.
05:26Like many coastal cities, Boston has rediscovered the appeal of living, working, and playing
05:32near the sea.
05:35Three billion dollars of new investment is changing the face of Boston's waterfront,
05:40while city and state officials are planning a new harbor park.
05:44But the harbor itself remains one of the most polluted in the country.
05:52Bill Golden grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb located on the harbor's southern
05:57shore.
05:59Over the years, he has watched the steady deterioration of the harbor.
06:05Three years ago, while serving as Quincy City Attorney, he was moved to begin a personal
06:09crusade to turn things around.
06:12One summer morning in 1982, I was running along the beach at about sunrise.
06:17As I was running down the beach, I noticed material glinting between high and low water
06:23in the early morning sun.
06:24At first, I thought these were jellyfish that had washed up between high and low water.
06:30As I ran down the beach, I realized that I was running in human excrement, that the beach
06:34from high to low water for miles down there were covered with raw sewerage.
06:39This was on a hot summer's day in which, in a few hours, I knew there'd be young children
06:45swimming in this water, surrounded by this filth.
06:48And to see this beautiful resource, see this bay that had been so important to me as a
06:53young boy turned into an open sewer was absolutely more than I could take as an elected official.
07:01On behalf of the city of Quincy, Golden sued Boston and the area's regional sewer commission.
07:11His lawsuit focused public attention as never before on the use of the harbor as a waste receptacle.
07:19From millions of toilets, sinks, showers, and washing machines, a daily torrent of residential
07:24waste flows toward Boston Harbor.
07:28It starts in household sewer pipes, moves on to street mains, and then to ever-larger trunk lines.
07:35Along the way, thousands of businesses and factories add commercial and industrial waste.
07:47Through a vast network of underground arteries that stretches all the way from Framingham,
07:5125 miles to the west, sewage makes its way toward either of two regional treatment plants,
07:57both located on harbor islands. All too often, some of this sewage never gets to the plants.
08:06Almost every rainfall pours more water into the sewers than the plants can handle.
08:12When this happens, raw, untreated sewage flows directly into the harbor.
08:17Here, raw sewage is flowing from a pipe located beneath the New England Aquarium,
08:22one of Boston's major tourist attractions.
08:27The system does a little better with the sewage that gets to the treatment plants, but not much.
08:32Greater Boston's wastewater plants can only provide the most basic level of treatment,
08:37and even this is often not achieved since the plants are old, chronically understaffed, and in poor repair.
08:44In fact, the Smithsonian Institute has already asked for one of the system's antique pumps,
08:49if it's ever taken out of service.
08:58After treatment, metropolitan Boston sewage, now in the form of a chlorinated liquid
09:03and a slightly thicker sludge, is discharged through underwater pipes directly into the harbor.
09:10Boston Harbor today, I think, is in deplorable state.
09:16It is one of the nation's greatest natural resources,
09:22and yet has become the dumping ground for some two million people
09:27living throughout the metropolitan district system, encompassing some 43 communities and towns.
09:33It receives a massive and unlawful, and I would submit unconscionable, daily dose of pollution.
09:40It receives nearly a half billion, billion gallons of effluent per day,
09:47which receives rudimentary treatment at best.
09:52It gets a half million gallons of raw sludge per day,
09:595.7 billion gallons of untreated refuse per year.
10:05So there's a massive dose of pollution, much of it of a toxic nature.
10:11Those are numbers that are hard for me and hard for most people to grasp,
10:16but in graphic terms, if one were to plug the pipes going into the harbor today,
10:22a year from now, the 50 square miles of the city of Boston would be nearly 17 feet deep in effluent.
10:29The 500 square miles of the MDC cities and towns, 43 communities, would be nearly 2 feet deep.
10:37One would need hip boots to wade around in Framingham.
10:43The effects of all this sewage are widespread.
10:48Every summer, beaches in the harbor are closed, some for as many as 25 days.
10:57One-third of the area's 4,000 acres of clam flats are closed indefinitely,
11:03and most of the rest are restricted to bonded master clammers,
11:07who have to take their catch to a state-run purification facility.
11:14And now, concern is growing about fish caught in the harbor.
11:18Recent studies have found unusually high rates of cancer and disease
11:21in some of the harbor's most abundant species.
11:27Under intensifying pressure from the federal government, the courts, and public opinion,
11:32local authorities are finally preparing to take action.
11:36The state has announced plans to replace this antiquated treatment plant on Deer Island
11:41with a new, more efficient facility.
11:44Sludge dumping in the harbor will be stopped.
11:47Repairs to the sewer system will be made.
11:50This will cost over a billion dollars and take more than 10 years.
11:54It will not solve all of the harbor's problems.
11:58Boston Harbor may someday be as clean as the cleanest urban harbors today,
12:02but here and elsewhere, that's probably not clean enough.
12:07Municipal sewage like this contains three sources of problems.
12:11The first are nutrients and organic matter from human feces and decaying food.
12:16This leads to oxygen depletion in the water, which can result in disease
12:20and even death for fish and other marine animals.
12:24The second source of concern in sewage is disease-carrying bacteria and viruses.
12:29Bacteria like these have been responsible throughout history
12:32for epidemics of typhoid, cholera, and hepatitis.
12:36Standard wastewater treatment is an attempt to deal with the nutrient and bacterial problems.
12:41Basically, the flow of sewage is slowed down.
12:44This allows suspended solids to settle to the bottom, forming sludge.
12:48Advanced or secondary treatment, which many cities now have,
12:52uses microorganisms to break down much of the remaining organic matter.
12:57Bacteria are killed by adding chlorine to the effluent as it leaves the treatment plant.
13:02Unfortunately, bacteria are not the only disease-causing agents in sewage.
13:06Often, viruses are also present, including the viruses that cause acute gastroenteritis
13:11and infectious hepatitis.
13:14Chlorine is generally ineffective against viruses.
13:19Shellfish, such as clams, oysters, and mussels, get their food by sucking in seawater,
13:24filtering out food particles and releasing the water again.
13:29If the water is contaminated, pollutants will be eaten by the animals
13:32and will accumulate in their bodies.
13:36They can then be passed on to people who consume them.
13:42It's also possible to get sick simply by swallowing water at the beach.
13:47One recent study conducted for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
13:51suggests that on urban beaches as many as 2% of all swimmers experience the diarrhea,
13:56nausea, and vomiting associated with acute gastroenteritis.
14:01One way to reduce this level of illness is to close the beaches more often,
14:05but most public health officials are reluctant to take this step.
14:10Public health decisions in the 1980s must take into consideration
14:16social, economic, and even political factors.
14:21What we have is certainly a risk, a health risk.
14:27I think the question becomes, is the health risk significant?
14:30Is it significant enough to close off those beaches
14:34and deny our population a recreational resource?
14:39Cost benefit or risk benefit is a tool that we are using more and more
14:45in the field of public health.
14:49If closing beaches and clam flats because of contamination with human waste
14:53presents a political problem,
14:55at least it is one informed, to some extent, by scientific understanding.
14:59For the most part, we know where this waste comes from and what it does.
15:04But municipal sewer systems also carry vast quantities of toxic chemicals and metals
15:09from both industries and our homes.
15:12This is the third source of concern in our sewage and the most dangerous.
15:17At best, sewage treatment concentrates some of these compounds
15:21in the sludge the process produces.
15:23It does nothing, however, to neutralize them or reduce their toxicity.
15:29Since World War II, a chemical revolution has taken place.
15:33The Registry of Chemicals of the American Chemical Society
15:36contains over four million entries.
15:39Six thousand new formulations are added every week.
15:43In most cases, we have little idea how these chemicals,
15:47alone or in combination, affect living things.
15:52And such ignorance can lead to serious impacts.
15:55The sad experience of the residents of Minamata,
15:58a small fishing village on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu,
16:01is a poignant example.
16:05Starting in the 1930s, a major Japanese chemical company
16:09dumped mercury wastes into Yatsushiro Bay.
16:14Some of these were transformed by natural processes into a dangerous toxin,
16:19which found its way into the bay's fish
16:21and then into the townspeople who ate the fish.
16:27Twenty years after the dumping began,
16:29cases were reported of what has since come to be known as Minamata disease.
16:34The disease is a form of mercury poisoning.
16:36Its victims suffer brain damage, paralysis,
16:39birth deformities, blindness, and even death.
16:46By 1976, over 120 deaths and 800 diagnosed cases of brain damage
16:52had been attributed to the disease.
16:55Many cases occurred years after people had stopped eating the fish.
16:59And once symptoms appeared, there was very little one could do.
17:02The damage had already been done.
17:12Closer to home is the less dramatic
17:14but still disturbing example of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
17:20New Bedford is a major center of the American fishing industry.
17:24Yet virtually none of the fish or lobster processed here
17:27are caught in the immediate harbor area.
17:31The reason?
17:32The flesh of the animals that live here contains dangerous levels of PCBs,
17:37polychlorinated biphenyls.
17:39Tests have shown PCBs, which remain toxic for hundreds of years,
17:43can cause liver problems, birth deformities, and cancer.
17:51These lobsters would be considered too dangerous to eat
17:54by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
17:56if they had more than two parts per million of PCBs in their flesh.
18:01Yet parts of New Bedford Harbor are contaminated
18:04with 200,000 parts per million.
18:08In the 1950s and 60s,
18:10PCBs were widely acclaimed in chemical trade journals.
18:14Before being banned in 1976,
18:16they were used in a remarkable diversity of products,
18:19from electrical transformers to printer's ink.
18:23Over the years, the waters of New Bedford Harbor
18:25have received hundreds of thousands of pounds of PCB-contaminated wastes
18:30discharged by local electronics manufacturers.
18:35Now, New Bedford has the dubious honor
18:37of being one of a limited number of hazardous waste sites
18:40considered so dangerous that it is qualified for Superfund cleanup dollars.
18:45Yet whether a cleanup is even possible remains in doubt.
18:49Marine biologist Dick McGrath
18:51is part of a team of scientists studying the harbor.
18:54The bottom line here in New Bedford
18:56is that we're not going to be able to clean up this harbor
18:59in the sense that we're going to be able to take these PCBs out of here
19:02and remove them from the environment completely.
19:05We can make the situation a lot better.
19:07Maybe that'll mean paving it over,
19:09and it's certainly an option that's been considered.
19:11Maybe it means dredging the materials out of here.
19:14We don't know yet. That's why we're doing the work.
19:17But it's at least possible that the answer is going to be
19:20that there's nothing that can be done.
19:22We don't have the technology to solve the problem.
19:25Forty years ago when PCBs were first used here,
19:29no one knew that today we'd be standing here on the shores of this harbor
19:33talking about a crisis and a catastrophe.
19:36It's been ten years since PCBs were outlawed for use in this country,
19:40and we still don't have the technology to clean up this type of situation.
19:46What types of chemical compounds are we making now
19:49and unknowingly releasing to the environment thinking that they're safe
19:54only to find out perhaps 40, 50 years down the road
19:58that we've got another PCB situation on our hands
20:01and we still don't have the technology to clean it up?
20:08Minamata and New Bedford reveal the dangers inherent
20:11in discharging the wastes of a modern industrial society.
20:15But whether all ocean dumping should therefore be banned
20:18is still a point of contention among marine scientists.
20:23Chemist Ed Goldberg sees Minamata and New Bedford as aberrations.
20:27He believes, given the depth and size of the ocean,
20:30it can safely assimilate much of society's waste.
20:35Over the past 20 years, in the northern hemisphere,
20:38there has developed what I call the Cousteau Mystique.
20:42The oceans are sacrosanct.
20:44We should put nothing in them.
20:45We should protect them at all possible cost.
20:48I argue even hazardous waste can be put into the oceans
20:52without an unacceptable impact if you put them far enough out.
20:58Goldberg believes evidence of the ocean's capacity to assimilate wastes
21:02can be seen in the waters off Southern California.
21:05Here, the narrow continental shelf means deep water can be found not far offshore.
21:11Into this water, through thousands of portholes and huge underwater pipes
21:15connected to area treatment plants,
21:17the domestic and industrial waste of 11 million people is discharged into the sea.
21:22Because of coastal waste discharge, fish develop fin rot.
21:27They develop tumors. Their backbones are distorted.
21:31But the fish are not unhealthy with respect to eating,
21:35and we are not affecting, as far as we know, their reproductive success.
21:40This is the trade-off.
21:42Is the ability of the oceans to accommodate the waste of 11 million people
21:47compensated by fish diseases of rather trivial incidence?
21:53The school of thought Goldberg represents
21:55believes it's possible to determine how much of any contaminant
21:58we can safely discharge into the sea.
22:01With this knowledge and careful monitoring,
22:03we can minimize damage to the marine environment.
22:06But other scientists disagree.
22:08Biologist George Woodwell.
22:10Sewage doesn't contain merely organic matter.
22:13It also contains PCBs, various insecticides,
22:18a diversity of chemicals, and heavy metals.
22:21For those substances, there is no assimilative capacity that is reasonable,
22:26and there's no way to prevent their accumulation
22:29through biotic systems to hazardous levels.
22:33But quite beyond that,
22:35the idea of putting pollutants into the oceans
22:37that one cannot under any circumstances remove if he wants to
22:41is absolutely absurd.
22:43It's just unthinkable to use the oceans in such a way
22:46as to cause an irreversible contamination
22:49that will be with us forever.
22:53When leading scientists disagree so sharply,
22:56it's a sure sign more research needs to be done.
22:59To determine just how much risk ocean waste disposal involves,
23:03scientists need to address two fundamental problems.
23:06First, how do pollutants move
23:08once they are introduced into marine environments?
23:11And second, what impacts do individual pollutants have
23:14on both marine and human life?
23:19A tremendous number of forces influence pollutant movement.
23:22Forces like tides, prevailing winds, local currents
23:25caused by surface and bottom topography,
23:28and water depth, temperature, and salinity.
23:32For many years, the best way scientists had
23:35for studying the role these forces play
23:37was to build scale models and experiment on them.
23:42The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
23:44built this replica of Chesapeake Bay in the 1970s.
23:48It's no longer used, but it remains in some ways
23:51the ultimate expression of this line of research.
23:55Covering 14 acres and holding 500,000 gallons of water,
23:59this multi-million dollar recreation of the bay
24:01and its 100 tributaries was an essential part
24:04of a decade-long study of Chesapeake Bay.
24:08Yet even a model this large and complex
24:10leaves significant questions unanswered.
24:16In order to get a handle on as many variables as possible,
24:19oceanographers have turned to computers and mathematical models
24:22which can simulate water movement and pollutant concentrations.
24:27They may be our best bet for answering
24:29some of the difficult questions that now hang over
24:31discussions of ocean waste disposal.
24:36For example, take Boston Harbor.
24:39Here, one half million gallons of sludge
24:41is discharged every day on the outgoing tide.
24:44The assumption is tidal currents will take the sludge out to sea
24:47where it will be diluted in the deeper water.
24:50But how much actually leaves the harbor?
24:52How much returns on the incoming tide?
24:54How do winds, water temperature, and local currents affect this process?
24:59These are just some of the questions
25:01MIT researchers Phil Geschwend, Eric Adams, and Rick Kosick
25:04hope to be able to answer when they complete
25:06their mathematical model of Boston Harbor.
25:09With formulas in place and existing harbor information entered,
25:12they can now make projections of pollutant movement.
25:16These projections are verified by gathering water samples
25:19from specific harbor locations
25:21and analyzing them for the presence of tracer chemicals.
25:24In this case, halogenated compounds,
25:26which are always present in the effluent
25:28discharged by the local treatment plant.
25:31Environmental chemist Phil Geschwend.
25:34I think one of the more surprising things
25:36that we've tentatively found so far
25:39is that despite the fact that something like
25:41one-third of the volume of the water
25:43comes and goes with each tide,
25:46that much of that water seems to be just returning water
25:49and carries chemicals back into the harbor with it.
25:52And what we end up seeing when we measure these
25:55halogenated compounds in the water inside the harbor
25:58is that they seem to have built up
26:00to reasonably large concentrations.
26:02They're not being flushed out as fast as we would have thought.
26:06Yasuo Onishi and his colleagues at Pacific Northwest Laboratories
26:10are doing similar work on the West Coast
26:12and reaching similar conclusions
26:14about the ability of natural systems to flush waste.
26:19This is Squim Bay in Washington State.
26:22At its northern end, the bay connects with Puget Sound.
26:26Not far from that point,
26:28the town of Squim has its sewer outfall pipe.
26:32Using a computer model,
26:34Onishi has shown that sewage effluent from this pipe
26:37is not being as thoroughly diluted as previously believed.
26:41On the outgoing tide,
26:43local currents tend to trap the effluent near the harbor mouth.
26:47On the incoming tide, effluent flows directly into the bay.
26:52Computer models like this one may, in the not-too-distant future,
26:56dramatically improve our understanding of pollutant movement.
27:00But knowing how chemicals move is only a start.
27:03We also need to know how they affect marine species
27:06and the people who eat them,
27:08at what concentrations effects are seen,
27:10and whether these effects are immediate, long-term, or both.
27:17This is Seattle Harbor on Puget Sound.
27:20Like many other urban harbors,
27:22it has long been a dumping ground for society's waste.
27:25As a result, scientists estimate that these waters and the sediments below
27:29contain 10,000 to 15,000 different chemicals.
27:34For the past 10 years,
27:36a research team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
27:40has been trying to understand
27:42how these chemicals affect the marine life of the sound.
27:56Over the years, biologist Donald Malins and his staff
28:00have gathered, dissected, and analyzed literally thousands of fish.
28:04You guys, look at this.
28:06Oh, yeah. That is a very bad one.
28:08It's riddled with tumors.
28:11It looks like most of the liver has been replaced by the tumor.
28:15All this in here, I would guess, not guess,
28:19I would predict that that is hepatocellular carcinoma.
28:23That's one of the worst ones I've seen, frankly.
28:26Isn't it?
28:28Donald Malins.
28:30Well, one hears talk about the assimilative capacity of our coastal waters,
28:35but when you look, as I have looked,
28:38into some of our urban bays in Puget Sound
28:42and you find that the sediments are laced with myriad toxic chemicals,
28:47that these toxic chemicals are obviously getting into the food chain
28:51and that you find in a number of bottom-dwelling species,
28:55such as English sole,
28:5730% liver cancer
28:59and perhaps 30, 40, 50% degenerative disease of the liver,
29:04you have to ask yourself,
29:06have we not reached the assimilative capacity of those urban bays?
29:09My personal opinion is, clearly we have.
29:13Malins and his staff have been able to prove statistically
29:16that toxic chemicals are responsible for cancer and other diseases in fish.
29:21Now they want to go further and determine which chemicals are to blame
29:25and how they cause disease.
29:27This is an even harder challenge.
29:30After all, it took decades to show exactly how cigarettes cause lung cancer,
29:34even though the statistical connection between the two had long been clear.
29:39On at least one front, however, the team is making real progress.
29:43For years, their fieldwork indicated a link between a group of compounds
29:47called aromatic hydrocarbons and liver tumors in certain species of fish.
29:52Aromatic hydrocarbons are found in virtually all petroleum products
29:56and are a major by-product of the burning of fossil fuels.
30:01What Malins and his staff were finding contradicted previous research
30:05that had been unable to find these hydrocarbons in fish tissue even after oil spills.
30:10Biologist Usha Varanasi took on the problem of the missing hydrocarbons.
30:15So the question was whether these compounds are not taken up by the fish
30:21and therefore no problem, or whether these hydrocarbons were taken up
30:25and then released so quickly so that no accumulation was taking place,
30:29that again would be less of a problem.
30:32Or whether these compounds were being converted as they would be in, say,
30:37in a rat and a human being, whether they were being converted into oxidized products
30:42that could not be identified.
30:44At that time, when the hydrocarbons were not detected in the tissues,
30:48it was believed that the fish were just not taking them up.
30:53Varanasi believed that the hydrocarbons were being converted in the liver
30:56into new compounds that other researchers hadn't looked for.
31:01To prove this hypothesis, she injected living fish with a specific quantity
31:05of radioactively labeled benzo-A-pyrene, a known carcinogenic hydrocarbon.
31:17Eight to 24 hours later, the liver and gallbladder were removed
31:21and both were tested for the presence of the radioactive tracer.
31:26It was there, in the liver and especially in the bile.
31:30Just as Varanasi suspected, the fish were metabolizing the hydrocarbons
31:34into new compounds.
31:36In that process, the hydrocarbon, like benzo-A-pyrene, gets converted
31:41into a very reactive metabolite, which then binds to DNA
31:45and alters the DNA structure somewhat.
31:49This binding of a chemical, covalent binding of a chemical to DNA,
31:53is considered to be the initial step leading to carcinogenesis.
31:59Dr. Varanasi made a significant contribution in helping us solve
32:04the puzzle of the causes, or possible causes, of some of the liver tumors
32:09which we're finding in Puget Sound.
32:11She demonstrated that aromatic hydrocarbons, particularly benzo-A-pyrene,
32:17are metabolized to compounds which interact with DNA.
32:21But we've got to go one step further, at least in this,
32:24and we are doing that.
32:26We are exposing English sole, which developed liver cancer in Puget Sound,
32:30to extracts of sediments, which will contain the toxic chemicals
32:35and see, in fact, whether we can induce the liver cancer
32:38in these animals under those conditions.
32:42Donald Malins and his team of researchers are generating perhaps
32:46the most comprehensive picture of the interaction of toxics
32:49and the marine environment.
32:52Yet he readily admits it remains a very incomplete picture,
32:56and that worries him, because of the seriousness of the damage
32:59that may be occurring.
33:02Actually, these coastal environments are so complicated,
33:06and the tools which we have for measuring biological effects
33:10are so minimal, and in some cases, in my view, so primitive,
33:15that, in fact, we really can't measure what sort of biological effects
33:20we can expect in our marine life,
33:23particularly if these effects are long-term.
33:27And we know even less, in my view, about what the implications
33:31of all of these pollution problems are to people
33:34who consume fish from polluted environments.
33:39If dumping waste in coastal waters has biological risks,
33:42how about going farther offshore?
33:45Ships like this one now dump New York City's sewage sludge
33:4912 miles off the New Jersey coast.
33:51As a result of a recent court case,
33:53they'll soon take their loads 106 miles out
33:56to the edge of the continental shelf,
33:58where, theoretically, the ocean has a greater assimilative capacity.
34:01Here, too, the scientific community is divided.
34:04Marine biologists Kenneth Sherman and others believe
34:07this could lead to the pollution of vast stretches of ocean.
34:10I think that it's clear with the stresses and perturbations
34:14that have been measured and documented for the near shore area
34:18that one could expect that, over time,
34:23a similar pattern could evolve in the so-called deep blue ocean.
34:31Oceanographers at NOAA's Narragansett Laboratory in Rhode Island
34:34monitor the impact of open ocean waste disposal
34:37by systematically gathering seawater samples
34:40and measuring the size and quantity of the tiny animals
34:43and phytoplankton present in the sample.
34:46These life forms make up most of the ocean's biomass,
34:49and damage to them can have a ripple effect
34:51throughout the entire food chain.
34:55Unfortunately, the lab work required to do this kind of monitoring
34:59is both expensive and time-consuming.
35:01As a result, researchers rarely monitor effects
35:04beyond the immediate area of a dump site.
35:07Even though the impact of dumping may be extremely widespread.
35:11There is growing acceptance among oceanographers
35:14that large areas of the ocean function as a single interdependent ecosystem.
35:21To begin to handle the enormous number of samples required
35:24to monitor these large areas of the ocean,
35:26NOAA and University of Rhode Island biologists,
35:29engineers, and electronics experts
35:31are developing an automated plankton sorting system.
35:38The computer starts with a video picture of the sample
35:41and reduces the image of each organism to its basic shape.
35:45It then searches its memory banks and identifies the shapes
35:48as fish eggs, fish larva,
35:50or one of 13 different tiny shrimp-like creatures called copepods.
35:56In the seconds it takes to do this,
35:58the computer also takes up to 40 measurements
36:00of each organism in the sample.
36:03This technology is essential to measure changes
36:07in large marine ecosystems.
36:09Already it is being used to confirm a shift
36:12in phytoplankton size observed in heavily polluted areas.
36:16There seems to be a tendency in a shift
36:19from large cells to small cells.
36:21If that persists over space and time,
36:25we may in fact be short-circuiting the food web.
36:28And because the small cells may dominate over the larger cells,
36:32they may preclude that nice, neat, evolved transfer of energy
36:37from one level in the food chain
36:39to the next level in the food chain.
36:41We may in fact have developed a short circuit,
36:44and that may have significant consequences.
36:47But these are the kinds of things
36:49that have not yet been fully documented.
36:51We're just now beginning to come to grips
36:54with these ecosystem-level problems.
37:00Satellites are another tool that are now being used
37:03to help scientists recognize changes occurring over such large areas.
37:07The one thing that we cannot do from ships
37:10is obtain a synoptic,
37:12a one-time look at the entire shelf region.
37:16But one pass of a satellite will give us this information
37:19in a matter of seconds for that entire area.
37:24But, as is often the case, the more scientists learn,
37:27the more they understand how complicated some of our problems are.
37:32For example, satellites equipped to read differences in ocean temperatures
37:36have enabled oceanographers to prove the existence of warm core rings.
37:43Warm core rings are large eddies that spin off from prevailing currents
37:47and exist as self-contained mini-ecosystems.
37:50With diameters of up to 200 miles,
37:53these low-moving systems have energy comparable to 10 hurricanes.
37:57Along the Atlantic coast, warm core rings spin off from the Gulf Stream
38:01and travel south.
38:03As they do, they often cross the area of New York's deep-water dump site 106.
38:08It's the top of the ring that's passing through the dump site.
38:11So it'll keep that material with it as it starts rotating.
38:14Materials dumped into 106 that are entrained in a warm core ring
38:20could conceivably be advected to the west
38:24and reintroduced into the Gulf Stream
38:27and perhaps in time turn up off the coast of the United Kingdom.
38:35If we've learned anything in the last decade of pollution control,
38:39it is that there's simply no away.
38:43One relevant example is the tall smokestacks
38:47that were built in the Midwest in the early 1970s
38:50to solve local pollution problems.
38:52And now we in New England in particular
38:55are the beneficiaries of those in the form of acid rain,
38:58which is falling on our forests and our lakes.
39:01There simply is no away.
39:03The ocean cannot be the repository for wastes for all of society.
39:10How much, if any, of society's waste the oceans can assimilate
39:14will be studied by scientists and debated for decades.
39:18In the meantime, we need to find alternatives.
39:23Unfortunately, all of our current waste disposal options pose problems.
39:30Incinerating sludge that is laced with toxic chemicals can cause air pollution.
39:35Burying it in a landfill can endanger underground drinking water supplies.
39:40Perhaps the only real solution is to keep toxic chemicals and heavy metals
39:44out of the waste stream in the first place.
39:48The key to clean harbors, clean oceans, is pretreatment.
39:53Pretreating the wastes that come from American industry
39:58before it reaches the ultimate treatment plant and then into the harbor.
40:03In other words, removing the toxics at the source.
40:08Pretreatment is an idea that applies to any industry or business
40:12that uses chemicals or metals,
40:14from the local dry cleaner to high-tech electronics firms
40:17to the metal finishing industry.
40:20This is pioneer metal finishing in Franklinville, New Jersey.
40:24Like thousands of similar shops around the country,
40:27it electrically bonds surface metals like chrome and brass to steel products.
40:33Virtually everything that we encounter in our daily lives
40:37that looks metallic has been electroplated,
40:40from car bumpers to watch bands to light fixtures.
40:45Traditionally, the plating industry is a dirty industry.
40:49We use a lot of water, we use a lot of chemicals,
40:52we use a lot of metals, and unfortunately all the metals
40:55and all the chemicals don't end up on the work.
40:58We have cadmium, nickel, copper, zinc, brass,
41:01and on down the line with whatever type of plating you're doing.
41:04And if those metals build up in your water streams in the environment
41:09and people drink them, they're going to cause very serious physical problems
41:13and possibly even death.
41:15We may have some platers that have solvents that they have to get rid of.
41:19You have very strong caustic cleaners and acids that you have to get rid of.
41:25And if any of these things go into the environment without being treated properly,
41:30then they're going to develop an imbalance in the environment.
41:33And that's going to be hazardous to all of us.
41:36Some years ago, Harry Desoy decided to run
41:39the most environmentally responsible plant possible.
41:43His focus, then and now, is on pretreatment and recycling.
41:48Pretreatment at Pioneer involves filtering, settling,
41:52and chemically neutralizing the water they've used.
41:56After treatment, all of the water and most of the chemicals and metals are reused.
42:01Nothing is discharged into the sewer system.
42:04The process does produce a small amount of sludge,
42:08but Desoy is looking for ways to recycle this as well.
42:13Unfortunately, Harry Desoy is an exception.
42:17For the most part, in this and other industries,
42:20management has been reluctant to invest in expensive pretreatment equipment.
42:25One of the great fears that you have in the plating industry
42:28is that the guy down the street isn't going to be putting out the same amount of money.
42:32I lose my competitive edge,
42:34and he ends up taking over all the business after I go by the wayside.
42:39What we've found is that we've been in it since 72 as far as waste treatment is concerned,
42:43and that hasn't happened.
42:45We've had to struggle a little bit from time to time,
42:47but now that we've learned how to do it right, we've found out it really can be done.
42:52What Desoy does is unusual,
42:55but for the most part it is only what is required by existing laws.
42:59We have laws governing our electroplating processes.
43:05We have laws that tell us that we can only discharge one part per million copper,
43:09one part per million nickel, and on and on with the different metals.
43:13These laws have been in existence for a number of years.
43:16The problem is that these laws are simply not being enforced.
43:20A company can apply for extension after extension after extension,
43:24and he knows for a fact he's going to receive it.
43:27So once these laws are strictly enforced the way they should be,
43:30then we will see our industry being cleaned up.
43:33Good morning. I'm with the district attorney's office,
43:36and we have a search warrant.
43:39These are Los Angeles police officers.
43:41They're investigating a crime.
43:43It's not murder or rape, but they're taking it just as seriously.
43:48The illegal dumping of toxic waste is a violent crime.
43:52It's not white-collar crime, which is the way most people think of it.
43:55When you dump toxic waste on the public,
43:57you're talking about threatening their health, indeed their very lives.
44:00The problem is that the effect is not felt immediately.
44:04You're mugged on the street.
44:05You know right away that you've been the victim of a crime.
44:08You can feel it on the top of your head.
44:10But when you are exposed to water that has been contaminated,
44:14when you're exposed to air that has been contaminated because of toxic waste,
44:18you're not going to feel the effect right now.
44:20It may be 5, 10, or 20 years from now that you develop cancer.
44:25The effect is just as real, but it's delayed.
44:28And because it's delayed, because human nature is what it is,
44:31then the public doesn't take it as seriously as they should.
44:35Industry, God knows, doesn't take it as seriously as they should.
44:38And unfortunately, neither does law enforcement.
44:42Determined to enforce toxic waste laws,
44:44Reiner created the L.A. Toxic Waste Strike Force.
44:48Every week, representatives from a wide range of state and local agencies,
44:52from law enforcement to county health to local sanitation departments,
44:56coordinate their investigations of suspected illegal polluters.
45:00What we can always do is just run a routine inspection.
45:02We're talking about one felony disposal at one location,
45:06which we've now photographed, on one specific site.
45:09So we really don't need the informant's information per se.
45:12We can send them in on an inspection, grab a sample.
45:14Based on that sample, use the aerial, get ourselves a search warrant,
45:18go in, and go ahead and file.
45:21We bring the basic discipline of law enforcement
45:23by bringing law enforcement agencies into it.
45:26We also bring some sophisticated scientific efforts,
45:29where we use monitoring devices that we put in sewers
45:32that are able to monitor the flow of chemicals that are going by.
45:36And by cross-checking this, we can isolate the violator
45:40and know exactly what he's dumping in the sewer and when he's dumping it.
45:45For some cases, the strike force has used remote-controlled cameras in the sewers.
45:51For others, they've flown aerial surveillance missions.
45:55The evidence they've gathered has been strong enough
45:58to win every case they've brought to court.
46:01For the first time, we are getting jail sentences
46:04for the top corporate executives who had guilty knowledge of what was going on
46:08and didn't take any steps to put an end to it.
46:12We're talking about the chairman of the board, the president, and the vice president.
46:16When you do that, then you have a chilling effect, and that's what we're aiming for,
46:20this chilling effect upon all of the other people in the industry
46:23who see what can happen if they violate the law.
46:26In addition to serving time, a number of corporate executives
46:30have been forced to acknowledge their guilt in full-page ads like this one.
46:37Others have been required to speak at public forums.
46:41We were wrong in what we did, and we paid the penalty.
46:44Now, these are people who do not expect to go to jail.
46:47It's not part of their lifestyle.
46:49A common burglar, when he gets caught, he expects he's just going to have to do his time.
46:53He's going to jail. That's part of the way he does business.
46:56But corporate executives do not anticipate that.
46:59And to hear that slammer behind them and to find out that this is serious business
47:03then changes the entire equation.
47:07In most cases, pretreatment is the only way companies can avoid breaking the law.
47:12But the idea of pretreatment goes beyond the illegal discharge of chemicals.
47:17The concept of pretreatment is an extremely important one.
47:21It basically suggests source control.
47:24But that notion has much broader applicability.
47:27It suggests that we look at the formulation of products and say,
47:30what's going to happen when all of these products are released into the environment?
47:34Can we find substitutes for the toxic ones?
47:37Can we prevent the toxic ones from being introduced into these products?
47:41That kind of set of principles or mindset will go a long way
47:46towards the ultimate objective of a sustainable environment.
47:53If cities like Boston, New York, and Seattle are going to clean up their harbors,
47:57pretreatment must become a priority.
48:01If and when this happens, it will also be possible for these cities to see waste
48:05not as a problem, but as a resource.
48:10Philadelphia, a city of 2.5 million people,
48:13used to take its sludge 100 miles down the Delaware River and dump it in the sea.
48:20Under persistent pressure from the EPA,
48:22the city began enforcing toxic waste discharge standards.
48:26This resulted in increased industrial pretreatment and cleaner sewage sludge.
48:32Now, not only has Philadelphia stopped dumping its sludge in the sea,
48:36it's actually selling some of it.
48:40Sludge, the thickened end product of sewage treatment,
48:43contains the nutrients which are the basis of all fertilizers.
48:46With the removal of toxic chemicals and heavy metals through pretreatment,
48:50it's possible to take advantage of these nutrients.
48:53After thickening and additional drying, sludge can be composted.
48:57This is what Philadelphia and a number of other cities are now doing.
49:03In the composting process, thickened sludge is mixed with wood chips
49:07and then laid over plastic tubing, which feeds air into the piles.
49:14Microorganisms take over from there.
49:16For the next 30 days, they help decompose the organic material in the sludge
49:20in the process, generating sufficient heat to kill off all remaining pathogens.
49:28Philadelphia's compost is screened and applied to farmland,
49:31used to reclaim strip mine sites in the western part of the state,
49:35or sold as a soil conditioner.
49:39Currently, Philadelphia's composted sludge is being marketed under the name
49:43Earth Life to landscapers, golf courses, and greenhouses.
49:47Earth Life has micronutrient benefits. It has secondary elements.
49:51It has NPK, the macronutrients.
49:53It has water-holding characteristics equal to peat moss,
49:57and it makes plants grow deeper and greener because of some of the iron content in it.
50:04What we do is we bring the material in and say,
50:06Mr. Grower, Mr. Landscaper, Mr. Golf Course Superintendent,
50:09try it and just stand back, and we wait, and he uses it.
50:13And he usually calls us because the product proves itself.
50:16A salesman doesn't prove the viability of a product.
50:19The product proves it to the customer who's buying it.
50:22And it's a great product. Compost is a great product.
50:30San Diego also sees its sewage as a potential resource,
50:33but here it could be a future source of water.
50:36San Diego grew up in a virtual desert.
50:38It depends on water imported at great expense from other parts of the country.
50:43Yet every day its treatment plants dump into the sea
50:46180 million gallons of what could be usable water.
50:52This is a reverse osmosis unit.
50:55Now, if you remember, I was talking about a semi-permeable membrane.
51:01Now, if you remember, I was talking about a semi-permeable membrane.
51:06Advanced technology to turn wastewater into drinking water exists,
51:10but is terribly expensive.
51:13In order to afford it, San Diego is looking for ways
51:16to save money on its current sewage treatment system.
51:19Someday, the water hyacinth may help San Diego
51:22use the water it now throws away.
51:25Early experiments with this remarkable plant
51:27suggest the city may be able to cut some sewage treatment costs in half.
51:32The water hyacinth plant is a rather unique aquatic plant.
51:38It floats on the surface of the water,
51:41but its very hairy roots, its fibrous roots,
51:45hang down in the water and become the perfect filter
51:49for filtering out the organic material in the wastewater.
51:55These hairy roots also provide a home for
51:58literally millions and millions of organisms
52:01that assist in the treatment process.
52:04Bacteria, crustaceans, snails,
52:08all live in these root systems
52:11and perform part of the treatment process.
52:15Aquaculture is not a process that will work for every community.
52:19It needs a warm climate and a system that has already dealt with toxic wastes.
52:24But it does represent the kind of creative thinking that is needed everywhere
52:28if our society is not to be overwhelmed by our own wastes.
52:38In the 1970s, this nation made a commitment to protect its coastal oceans.
52:43However, with the increasing population and the increasing generation of waste,
52:48that commitment that was made in the 1970s is now being called into question.
52:52It's called into question because the oceans still represent
52:55a very cheap alternative to dispose of waste.
52:58That alternative is becoming increasingly attractive as people say,
53:03we've got to protect our groundwater, we've got to protect our landscapes,
53:06therefore we only have one recourse,
53:08and that recourse is to dump our waste in the ocean.
53:12That tension is creating the opportunity,
53:16looking at this from the optimistic side,
53:18to begin to change the way we think about material and waste.
53:23Instead of saying we acquire material, we use it, and we throw it away,
53:27we begin to shift to a different kind of orientation,
53:31and that orientation is we use material, we then recycle it,
53:36or we confine and protect it from being released into the environment.
53:40We're nowhere near moving through that transition,
53:44and whether we will do it and do it satisfactorily
53:47is still very much in doubt.
53:49We cannot retreat from zealously guarding our oceans
53:55just because there are other environmental problems,
53:58and admittedly severe ones, such as groundwater contamination.
54:03We need to deal with both marine protection
54:07and groundwater protection at the same time.
54:10And what that means is that we, as a society,
54:13are going to have to undergo dramatic changes.
54:16One of the measures of how strongly ingrained in our society
54:21is this pattern of getting a material, using that material,
54:26whether it be a chemical or whether it be some kind of a product,
54:30and we've finished with it, it's no longer of value to us,
54:33we simply send it out in the environment, we throw it away,
54:36we dump it in a river, we dump it in the ocean,
54:38we dump it on the land somewhere.
54:40One measure of how deeply ingrained that is
54:43is we keep asking questions, well, where should we put it?
54:47That's the wrong question.
54:49If we ask where we should put it,
54:51we're going to have to find a place to put it.
54:53The question we should be asking is,
54:55how do we avoid generating it in the first place?
54:58If we can begin to ask that question,
55:00then turn loose the scientific and engineering capacity
55:04of this and other nations,
55:07have the benefits of these kinds of materials,
55:09and yet avoid degrading the environment
55:12as a function of their use.
56:06For a transcript of this program, send $4.00 to NOVA,
56:20Box 322, Boston, Massachusetts, 02134.
56:23Please be sure to include the show title.
56:26To purchase film or video copies of this program for educational use,
56:30call toll-free 1-800-621-2131.
56:34In Illinois or Alaska, call Collect 312-940-1260.
56:41This program was produced by WGBH Boston,
56:44which is solely responsible for its content.
56:51Major funding for NOVA is provided by this station
56:54and other public television stations nationwide.
56:57And by Allied Signal, a technology leader in aerospace,
57:01electronics, automotive products, and engineered materials.
57:09And the Johnson & Johnson family of companies,
57:12supplying health care products worldwide.