Published October 22, 2002 in the Midland (MI) Daily News

By Beth Medley Bellor

SAGINAW –– People attending Monday night’’s meeting of Tittabawassee River Watch got something they hadn’’t at the most recent dioxin-related meeting –– the ear of the Michigan Department of Community Health.

No one from the health department was available at an Oct. 15 meeting, and several health-related questions went unanswered. At the Green Point Nature Center Monday, the 21 people present included the MDCH’’s Brendan Boyle and Linda Larsen, a toxicologist who is compiling comments and responses to a petitioned health consultation released earlier this year.

Once again, a health study proposed by The Dow Chemical Co. came under fire. There was a new tone to this meeting, though –– concern that fighting over the health study has distracted people from calling for other action.

Petitioners for the consultation who brought this issue to the forefront object to Dow’s input into a scientific advisory committee and presence on a stakeholder advisory committee that are proposed for the study, and say the company has reach into universities as well.

“I am not opposed to a health study,” Lone Tree Council’’s Michelle Hurd Riddick said Monday night. “I am opposed to Dow being so intimately involved.”

Larsen said a draft of the health study will be put up for public comment soon, and an alternative proposed by Lone Tree likely will be accepted as comment. Because the study was outlined at an Oct. 3 public meeting in Freeland, it is unlikely there will be another meeting, she said.

Dow has said it releases extremely little dioxin now and that contamination is historic. The company began chlorine chemistry processes –– of which dioxin is a byproduct –– about 1915 and did not begin wastewater treatment until 1937.

The Department of Environmental Quality’’s residential cleanup standard for dioxin is 90 parts per trillion. Soil samples taken earlier this year indicate higher levels downstream than in Midland, including levels as high as 3,400 ppt in Freeland Festival Park. The park remains open, but with bright yellow warning signs.

Larsen is particularly interested in the park. DEQ staff have suggested the levels 15 inches down are from 30 to 40 years ago, she said. “We need to keep looking ’’til we find the bottom.”

Residents wondered if it is possible to clean up something as large as the Tittabawassee.

Health officials pointed to extensive work cleaning up the Pine River’s DDT and the Hudson River’s PCBs, and the beginnings of work to clean up 35 miles of the Kalamazoo River at a cost of $300 million or more.

“It’s always possible, if there’s a will and there’s money,” Boyle said.

Boyle cautioned that the presence of contamination does not indicate the level of uptake. The question came, what if someone has property with 1,500 ppt of dioxin but no body contamination?

Boyle said those answers will have to come from the DEQ.

There is no way to predict how much dioxin contamination it will take to cause disease, Larsen said.

“It’s different for everyone,” she said. “It may affect one person in one part of the body and another person totally differently.”

Most adults swallow about 100 milligrams of dirt a day, she said, through dirt on their hands or food, or even through breathing it in through nasal passages and swallowing.

Dioxin has a half life of seven to 14 years in the body, meaning that’s how long it takes for half of what’’s in the body to break down. Through diet, it is possible for it to build up, so people are eliminating it at the same rate they take it in and maintain a steady level.

Some vegetables –– the cucumber family, Larsen said –– do take up some dioxin from the soil, but still contain far less than the amount in animal fats. Most dioxin in human diets is said to come from animal fats –– for example, from beef, since cows take up dirt as they eat grass.