In the Federal Register, the agency said that it will no longer permit the obstruction of safety evaluations by allowing firms to hide behind age-old claims of business secrecy.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, had told Congress earlier this year that the heavily lobbied “confidential business information” protection was keeping the agency’s risk assessors from obtaining vital data on health and safety concerns of chemical substances awaiting approval. Thousands of chemicals were not properly evaluated because of the withheld information, she told lawmakers.

This action has real-life implications.

Photo from Green Earth Technologies

Earlier today AOL News published a long story on scientists in the U.S., Canada, South America and elsewhere pleading with the EPA not to approve the use of an oil dispersant that contains unidentified and possibly untested nanoparticles.

The company, Green Earth Technologies, insisting its product is safe for use in the Gulf, says that federal law allows it to conceal information on the composition of the nano-dispersant and precisely what nanoparticles it contains because it’s confidential business information.

That protection may no longer exist, at least within the EPA. Other federal safety agencies such as OSHA and the Food and Drug Administration apparently still allow such corporate obfuscation.

Richard Denison, senior scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, says he rarely gets to use the words “elegant” and “Federal Register notice” in the same sentence, but that’s how he describes the long-sought-after change in how EPA will handle corporate information.

“Yesterday’s notice is the latest in a series of actions the new leadership at EPA has taken to make good on much-neglected aspect of its mission,” wrote Denison.

In announcing the new policy, EPA said it took the action “to promote public understanding of potential risks by providing understandable, accessible, and complete information on potential chemical risks to the broadest audience possible.”

A careful legal interpretation of the long maligned, but vital Toxic Substance Control Act convinced the agency that it could provide more valuable information to the public by identifying data where information may have been claimed and treated as confidential in the past–but is not, and was not, in fact entitled to confidentiality under TSCA.

EPA says it expects to begin reviews of confidentiality claims — both newly submitted and existing claims on August 25, 2010.

Click here for the entire Federal Register report.

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It has taken more than a decade of wrangling but the Environmental Protection Agency has finally said pesticide makers must disclose the hidden ingredients in their poisons.

Yesterday, the agency said it was drafting a new rule which will require manufacturers to fess up and identify the estimated 4,000 different “inert” materials in their pesticides.

Marla Cone, the Editor in Chief of Environmental Health News, writes that inert ingredients as anything added to a pesticide that does not kill or control a pest.

“In some cases, those ingredients are toxic and cites formaldehyde, bisphenol A, sulfuric acid, toluene, benzene and styrene as some of the ingredients that are allowed in pesticides but that are not identified on labels.

Pesticide manufacturers and their lobbyists have been voracious and successful in stalling disclosure of these chemicals.

They said they are worried about disclosing proprietary or trade secrets, but health and environmental activists say the companies really fear how the public will react to the information on what’s actually in the widely used pest, weed and fungal poisons.

For example, Cone wrote that a recent study found that one inert substance, called polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, used in the popular herbicide Roundup is more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself.

Year after year, EPA denied or ignored petitions from public health and environmental activists and the attorneys general in at least ten states seeking disclosure of the chemicals. But now the new administration says it plans to draft a rule that will increase transparency, protect public health and encourage companies to replace toxic substances.

“EPA believes disclosure of inert ingredients on product labels is important to consumers who want to be aware of all potentially toxic chemicals, both active and inert ingredients, in pesticide products,” according to the agency’s website.

Jay Vroom, the boss of CropLife America, which is the public voice of the pesticide manufacturers, said he found the EPA decision “just baffling.”

He again told EHN’s Cone that his clients are concerned they will be revealing confidential business information, or trade secrets, about their formulas.

Here is a link to the EPA announcement.

Nine women from California, Oregon and Washington found out that was just what happened, but they learned it after their babies were born.

They were participants in a first-of-its-kind study that tested their blood and urine during their second trimester of pregnancy to find out whether their unborn offspring were being exposed to toxic chemicals found in common consumer products.

The study concluded that children spend their first nine months in an environment that exposes them to known toxic chemicals.

“Our tests measured levels of five chemical groups, including phthalates, mercury, perfluorinated compounds or bisphenol A, and the flame retardant tetrabromobisphenol A,” said Erika Schreder, staff scientist for the Washington Toxics Coalition, one of the three West Coast environmental health organizations who conducted the study.

Thirteen toxic chemicals were found in the bio-fluids of the pregnant women and that research has proven that exposure to some of these chemicals has been linked to serious health problems like asthma, childhood cancers, diabetes, infertility and learning disabilities.

However, the report does not offer a correlation between the levels of the chemicals found in the mothers and any health problems the newborns were expected to encounter.

“We cannot say with certainty whether these particular babies were harmed by the toxic exposures in the womb because of the complexity of their exposures…,” Schreder told me in an interview.

“We do know that they were exposed during the very most vulnerable time in their lives to chemicals associated with cancer, learning disabilities, and infertility,” she added.

Most of the mothers were stunned and angered at the results of the testing.

Amanda Estrada-Guzman, a nurse from Richland, Wash.,  said “The results were shocking and eye opening. I was scared and worried how this will affect my baby.”

Alma Feldpausch, an environmental scientist from Seattle said that “I would indeed expect our government agencies to work to reduce these chemicals.”

Kim Radtke, a program manager in a Seattle breast feeding advocacy program, said “Babies deserve to grow and develop in a healthy environment, in utero and out.”

The three groups that produced the report and other public health and environmental activists across the country say that to adequately protect not just pregnant women, but all of the public, immediate steps must be taken by the government beginning with the passage of laws that protect the most vulnerable.

Here is a link to a longer version of this story on AOL’s Sphere.com.

You have to wonder a bit about the Environmental Protection Agency’s often-stated promise of transparency and openness to its employee’s opinions.

It appears that the rigidness that marked much of the Bush administration’s control of the EPA has returned, as the agency has threatened “disciplinary action” against two of its lawyers for comments they made in a video they posted on YouTube.

The video, entitled “The Huge Mistake,” was made by EPA enforcement lawyers Laurie Williams and her husband, Allan Zabel. The pair stressed their views were personal and did not represent the EPA.

Their video explains why the agency’s “cap & trade” will not accomplish its goals, let alone effectively curb climate change.

The proposed controversial “cap and trade” plan is part of the effort to reduce carbon emissions which are believed to be the leading cause of global warming.

The plan would set a limit, or cap, on nationwide carbon emissions, but companies could buy “pollution credits” if they wanted to exceed the cap.

You’ve got to wonder when the American Petroleum Institute and Greenpeace are both against the plan. However, I don’t want to debate the merits of the plan, but rather EPA’s efforts to stifle its experts from talking publically.

Last week, EPA ethics officials gave the two veteran employees 24 hours to make specific changes to the video. Mostly the agency demanded that all references to the lawyer’s work be deleted. Here are some of the edits that were to be made:

◦                                 Removing the language starting at 1:06 min – ‘Our opinions are based on more than 20 years each working as attorneys at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the San Francisco Regional Office.’

◦                                 (ii) Removing the images of EPA’s building starting at 1:06 min…

◦                                 (v) Remove [sic] the language starting at 6:30 min – ‘In my work at EPA, I’ve been overseeing California’s cap-and-trade and offset programs for more than 20 years.’”

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an organization representing the interest of government environmental professionals, has reposted the original video onto YouTube.

“How is government supposed to be transparent when public servants are forbidden from discussing the nature of their work?” asked PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch.

““EPA is abusing ethics rules to gag two conscientious employees who have every right to speak out as citizens,” Ruch said in a statement today.

It was just in August that EPA Administrator Jackson issued a statement to employees saying the agency will operate as if in a “fishbowl,” a new openness.

I spoke to an EPA Congressional liaison today who said that the agency requires that all public statements be approved before they’re released.

PEER’s Ruch says that some federal agencies such as the Fish & Wildlife Service have dispensed with any pre-approval of employees’ unofficial expressions, as long as they are accompanied by a short disclaimer.

Here is a link to EPA’s list of changes it wanted made to the video.

Little is known about the health effects of these inventions.

“We have no idea how some of these structures interact in biological systems — nor do we understand the potential toxicological risks they impose on our environment,”  says James Bonner, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology at North Carolina State University

An Environmental Protection Agency science panel began a four-day hearing Tuesday in Washington examining the hazards associated with the odor-ending nanosilver.

Those concerns will also be underscored this week when Swiss scientists release what they say is the first comprehensive study on the escape of silver nanoparticles from clothing to rivers, streams and lakes, often major sources of drinking water.

Textile manufactures are cranking out millions of pairs of sweet-smelling bras, panties, socks, undershirts and other clothing that are spiked with nanosilver, advertising the garments as containing odor and germ-fighting material.

In the Swiss study, being published this week in the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science & Technology, the scientists measured the nanosilver particles released from a variety of brands of socks made from different textiles, finding that most of were relatively large and that as much as 35 percent of the total silver came out of the fabrics during the first wash.

Most filters in water treatment plants are unable to screen out the nano-sized particles of silver, which may be no thicker than 1/50,000^th the width of a human hair.

“These results have important implications for the risk assessment of silver textiles and also for environmental fate studies of nanosilver,” said Dr. Bernd Nowack and his colleagues from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research.

For decades, scientists have shown that silver in many forms has great medicinal effects, including being toxic to most bacteria, viruses, and fungi.

While silver is useful, there is growing concern that no one has yet completed, or, at least published research on whether nano-sized silver in the water may harm the environment or the people and animals who drink it.

While this study dealt with a clothes hamper of socks, to understand the potential size of the problem, consider that there are thousands of individual items being sold that tout nanosilver as an antibacterial agent.

The Internet is filled with hundreds of products from underwear for astronauts, campers and hikers, to thongs, frilly bras and hospital scrubs.

The anti-odor, anti-bacterial clothing is selling well around the world and new lines of products are being added almost weekly.

The Internet offers page after page of the latest nanosilver products for sale. One clothing website based in Wisconsin described its presentation as “scantily clad models who we can be sure smell as good as they look.”

But it’s infants and children that give marketers their biggest payday.  They count on new parents’ fears of germs to sell an almost endless list of products that will kill the bugs on things their offspring may put in their mouths.

Plush dog with antimicrobial nanosilver

But nanosilver products didn’t slink quietly into the marketplace.

The Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung had a Hollywood-style gala to launch its “Silver Wash” clothes washer with a nanosilver-coated drum that it said it would kill over 600 different bacteria.

Most of the high end women’s and design magazines had slick ads proclaiming that the ‘Silver Wash’ “released 400 billion nanoscale silver particles during the wash and rinse cycles and achieved 99.9 percent sterilization of bacteria.’’ It boast leaving behind a residual silver coating on clothing “to keep it smelling fresh for up to 30 days.”

So when you think about  what’s going out with the rinse water,  think bigger than a few pair of socks.

Andrew Maynard, Chief Science Advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, warned Congress last year that hundreds of products with nanoparticles are on the market, with three to five new ones added every week.

“What we know at the moment is that silver does have the potential to cause environmental harm if released in sufficient quantities, and that silver used as nanoparticles might exacerbate the problem in some circumstances,” he told me this weekend.

He is concerned that current research won’t provide a clear picture of potential risks presented by nanoscale silver for some time.

“And it’s not even clear whether the right research is being funded – in other words, there’s a disconnect between where we need to be on nanosilver, and what we are doing to get there,” added Maynard, who’s at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

In June 2008, The International Center for Technology Assessment and a coalition of consumer, health, and environmental groups filed a petition with the EPA demanding the agency use its pesticide regulation authority to stop the sale of hundreds of consumer products now using nano-sized versions of silver.

No one involved in the nano safety fight could tell me of any products that EPA pulled off the market. But, under powers of the almost unpronounceable Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, EPA declared Samsung’s “Silver Wash” a pesticide.

The EPA’s nano Scientific Advisory Panel will be evaluating statements on the “Assessment of Hazard and Exposure Associated with Nanosilver.”

The panel will hear from scientists, toxicologists, public health specialists and representative of the nanosilver industry.

Here are three of the many topics they are likely to debate, or at least consider as they ponder what regulations this multi-billion dollar industry needs and will accept:

• An antibacterial agent like nanosilver is a pesticide. It kills bugs.

• Not only does nanosilver kill harmful bacteria, but it doesn’t distinguish between good and bad bacteria.  This means it will also kill microbes that water treatment plants need to operate and that we need to live.

• The potential hazards associated with exposure to nano particles – both metals and chemicals – are likely to differ from the same substance that hasn’t been reduced in size.

The most common reply when nano scientists and marketers are asked about the safety of their almost invisible creations is something like: “Well, we know the toxicity limits for (insert chemical of your choice) Why should we test it just because we’ve made it smaller?”

Many toxicologists and public health specialists disagree.

“Unfortunately, that’s the mantra,” said PEN scientist Maynard. “One size fits all is not a viable concept when it comes to assessing risk or toxicity of any substance.”

Dr. Jennifer Sass, senior scientist and nano specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council has long been concerned about the toxicity of nano particles.

In material she submitted to the EPA panel, Sass said that unless multiple, well-designed studies demonstrate otherwise, nanosized material should not be automatically declared safe.

Sass, who for years has studied EPA and industry’s testing for children’s exposure to toxic material, says that NRDC is particularly concerned about exposures to infants and children through the use of nanosilver and other nano-chemical antimicrobials.

Many who will attend the hearings or who submitted testimony believe passionately that no new government regulations are needed.

For example, some groups that sell cosmetics or nutritional or medical supplements made with silver are adamantly against EPA imposing any controls on silver products. They insist that nutritional supplements containing nanosilver have never been demonstrated to pose any threat to the environment.

Other federal and state agencies will be watching the outcome of the EPA’s effort.

Almost everyone sees the enormous actual and potential benefit to medicine, engineering and a hundred other fields from the advances in nanotechnology.  But many people in government, public health and the nano industry worry that there must be some mechanism to weigh the benefits against what could be an enormous risk.

The images on their Web site are iconic: A child holding the hand of a grownup, a worker’s hard hat with an American flag decal, a family photo.

Their message is that you must tell Congress it’s time to reform our nation’s chemical safety laws.

Sign up and they say they will inundate federal lawmakers with e-mails under your name reminding them that it’s time to change the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Substances Control Act in a way that will “protect public health, preserve American jobs and innovation.”

If you didn’t look closely, this would seem like a warm and cuddly group that is fighting to keep the chemical industry from endangering children, the environment and people just like you.

The coalition offers no address or telephone number at which to contact them and calls itself “a non-profit social welfare organization.”

But if you check the interactive map on the coalition’s website, the three or four “members” in the 13 states listed are mostly agri-business, chemical and industry trade associations.

Richard Denison, a senior scientist from the Environmental Defense Fund calls the coalition an “Immaculate Deception” that is actually an industry front group.

He agrees that the chemical industry is a key stakeholder in the debate over TSCA reform and it has a right to organize and advocate for its views.

“But surely it can do all of that without wrapping itself in a ‘people like you’ cloak of deception!” Denison says.

Denison and another researcher in Washington traced the creator of the Web site’s domain name and found it was registered by an issues management and public relations firm called Democracy Data & Communications, LLC.

Denison asks, “Why are they so afraid of showing themselves?’’

Many environmental regulators and activists had expected the Obama administration to be a strong ally, especially when it came to trying ensure the public is protected from harmful chemicals.

But earlier this month, the chemical industry received an unexpected gift when the White House Office of Management and Budget prevented EPA from requiring safety data on pesticides that Congress had required years earlier.

The OMB – which oversees regulatory policies – was notorious for bending over backwards in previous administrations to please industry, especially in regulations involving the environment and public health and safety.

Eleven years ago, as part of the Food Quality Protection Act, Congress demanded that EPA include an Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program. Endocrine disruption can interfere with reproduction and development and other hormone-controlled processes.

In April, EPA ordered that manufacturers of 67 pesticides – the first selected for screening – test and identify possible endocrine disruptors in their chemical brews.

Earlier this month, the White House office told EPA headquarters to back off and to evaluate the safety of the pesticides with existing, and knowingly inadequate toxicity data rather than requiring the submission of endocrine disruptor information.

“The OMB decision is a gift to the pesticide makers that will gut our efforts to protect children and the environment from dangerous agricultural chemicals,” says a senior EPA scientist, who can’t be identified because he is not authorized to speak for the agency.

“Where are the differences that this new administration promised.  At least with the Bush gang we expected it. With Obama, it’s like a gut punch.”

The OMB directive has some environmentalists concerned that Obama’s political people may not stand tall for revamping TSCA. For three decades the Act was the backbone of the federal government’s attempt to ensure the safety of the production, sale, use and disposal of almost everything chemical.

But environmental regulators and activists say the law needs to be strengthened, needs to be given more teeth, and needs to make industry more accountable for the chemicals it creates.

The Obama Administration has said it wants Congress to reauthorize and significantly strengthen the effectiveness of TSCA, especially with new chemicals and scores of nanoparticle creations flowing from laboratories.

Among the changes EPA wants is to ensure that manufacturers provide it with information to determine the safety of existing chemicals. And if industry refuses, EPA wants authority to quickly require testing.

Under the current law, companies could refuse to provide EPA with information on potential chemical risks by claiming the data was “confidential business information.’’

Agency investigators and some industry whistleblowers documented that the confidentiality claim was often a sham to prevent EPA from instituting adequate safety controls.

The proposed changes in TSCA call for stricter requirements for manufacturers to substantiate their claims of confidentiality.

This new openness, should it be achieved, especially with pesticides, will improve the safety of farm workers, people live in agricultural communities and children eating the fruits and vegetables needed to thrive.

Here is a link to OMB’s directive.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has launched a web page for consumers with information on how to dispose of certain drugs, including several high-potency opioids and other selected controlled substances.

Photo from ONDCP

Because of all those drugs in all those medicine cabinets, teenagers no longer have to get their fix from the local drug pusher. It becomes easy to pick their poison with out leaving home to do it. And, in many cases, poison it is.

Many of these medicines have the potential to be harmful, even deadly, in a single dose if taken by someone other than the intended person.

Your emergency room staff or the local police drug squad can describe in gory detail the carnage that this abuse of someone else’s meds can cause.

The FDA recommends that these medicines be disposed of by flushing down the sink or toilet. The goal is to keep them away from children and others who could be harmed by taking them accidentally.

The FDA list three disposal methods for specific drugs.

– Some should be flushed down the sink or toilet.

– Others should be thrown away in the household trash after mixing them with some unpalatable substance, such as coffee grounds, and sealing them in a bag or other container.

–The best sounding option would be to  bring the unused meds back to the drug store. Many chain pharmacies have a “take back”   program.

The FDA is working with other groups to improve the use of several drug disposal methods, including drug take back programs.

“But, for some potent medicines that can cause harm or death if inadvertently taken by family members, the FDA currently recommends flushing them down the sink or toilet to immediately and permanently remove them from the home,” said Dr. Douglas Throckmorton, deputy center director of FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

An ER nurse at a Seattle hospital told me today that one a 14-year-old overdose victims she treated told her there is a Facebook site that that guides drug abusers on which prescription meds are worth stealing.
I spoke to three EPA clean water experts – one in Seattle and two at the agency’s headquarters – and none would talk on the record because they want to be team players. But all said dumping medication down the drain can present serious problems to drinking water quality.  The risk to salmon and waterfowl is also being studied.

“We know that water treatment plants can’t remove these meds from the drinking water and that it most likely may harm humans and fish down the road,” said one of the EPA water experts.

“What doesn’t need to be studied is the harm this stuff is doing to our children today so FDA is on a logical track.”

Here is a link to the FDA medication disposal website

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From health-Canada

The group behind the tiny study – Physicians for Social Responsibility – tested the volunteer’s blood and urine for six chemical groups representing 62 chemicals in all.

The biomonitoring targeted Bisphenol A, Mercury, Perfluorinated compounds, Phthalates, Polybrominated diphenyl, ethers and Triclosan. These were selected, the organization said, because they are chemicals that are used in the health care setting and have been associated with endocrine disruptors and certain diseases.

The PSR testing showed that 18 chemicals were detected in every single participant; all 20 had at least five of the six kinds of chemicals for which the group tested, and 13 of the participants had all six. Bisphenol A was found in all. Finally, 13 of the medical professionals had had dimethyl phthalate metabolites.

The organization called for the following actions:

• Take immediate action on the most dangerous chemicals and persistent, bioaccumulative toxic chemicals should be phased out of commerce.

• Hold industry responsible for the safety of their chemicals and products. And, chemical companies should be required to provide full information on the health and environmental impacts of all their chemicals.

• Use the best science to protect all people and vulnerable groups. Chemicals should meet a standard of safety for all people, including children, pregnant women, and workers.

The test subjects came from Alaska, California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Oregon and Washington.

In its research plan, the agency says it will identify producers and users of nanomaterial, determine what happens when it is released into the air, water and soil, and examine the effects of exposure to the subatomic particles on people, animals and crops.

However, some grizzled EPA scientists ¬– veterans of earlier bloody wars with corporations zealously guarding the composition of their laboratory concoctions — worry about whether EPA will have the political will and stamina to demand and get enough details on these man-made particles to actually evaluate their safety.

The report released yesterday had been ready for months, according to one scientist involved in its release.

“Everyone wanted their fingerprints on it so it went from desk to desk and office to office. It was like the days of the Bush administration, but the difference is this was finally released with only minimal weakening,” said the headquarters veteran, who declined to be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Those who have studied the potential for detrimental health effects say they are most concerned with devices called single- and double-walled carbon tubes and the graphite-like fullerenes or buckeyballs.

“There are many other nanotructures that the government should be worried about,” said a newly hired EPA policy analyst  who recently came from industry. “We know that we are dealing with commercial products worth perhaps billions and the pressure to stymie our research and that of other agencies will be enormous,”

He said he and others involved with nano believe that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and the Obama White House are both publicly and privately behind ensuring the safety of nanotechnology.

“But we know things change when the pressure is turned up. Look at all the Democrats who just voted against the government option in health insurance. Who would have predicted that?” he asked.

The agency has received hundreds of letters, petitions and appeals for it to study the nanoparticles that are being used in hundreds of consumer products already on the market and thousands more in the pipeline. Ultraprotective sunscreens, bacteria-fighting underwear, medicines, appliances and scores more are just a sample of what’s out there.

Reading the public docket, it’s clear that much of the angst among  environmental activists and the public health community centers on nanosilver, which is already being heavily used as an antimicrobial agent. Also on most lists are  zinc oxide, carbon nanotubes, carbon black, titanium and a variety of fibers and clay made from nanomaterial.

Pressure from inside EPA and elsewhere had been demanding action  early in the past Bush Administration, especially against carbon nanotubes which are used in vehicles, sports equipment and electronics. The handful of animal health studies that have been completed on these structures has shown asbestos-like disease and other serious health implications.

But many of EPA’s earlier efforts sputtered to a stop soon after being announced.

For example,  last June, EPA established significant new use rules for nanocarbon that would have required laboratories who were using the tubes in new products to notify EPA at least 90 days before work commenced . This so that EPA could evaluate the proposed use and, if needed, prohibit or restrict the activity.

In August, bucking to outside pressure, EPA revoked the new rules.

EPA says the new nano program will examine all aspects of nanomaterials in the environment, from their manufacture and use to their disposal or recycling.

Probably not.

Pollutants emitted from factories, traffic and cooking stoves half a world away could make the air you breathe in the United States more hazardous to your health, reports a committee of the National Academies.

For example, you might think that the air atop the towering Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest was a sure bet to be unpolluted.  But scientists have a tracked a polluted air mass as it moved over eight days from East Asia to a mountaintop in central Oregon.

Plumes of harmful air pollutants containing ozone; dust, sulfates, soot or mercury  and persistent organic pollutants such as DDT. All can be transported across oceans and continents, according to the report issued today by National Research Council.

Pollutants –  tracked from Asia to the U.S. and from the U.S. to Europe — have a negative impact on air quality far from their original sources.

Charles Kolb, chair of the committee that wrote the report, said “Air pollution does not recognize national borders; the atmosphere connects distant regions of our planet.”

“Emissions within any one country can affect human and ecosystem health in countries far downwind,” he added.

While it is difficult to quantify these influences, in some cases the impacts are significant from regulatory and public health perspectives, the scientists reported.

Tracked with satellite observations, the researchers watched pollutants transported aloft across the Northern Hemisphere and deliver significant concentrations to downwind continents.

The health impacts vary by pollutant.

For ozone and particulate matter — which cause respiratory problems and other health effects — the main concern is direct inhalation.

Therefore, even small incremental increases in atmospheric concentrations of ozone and particulate matter can have negative impacts.

For mercury and persistent organic pollutants, the main health concern is their gradual accumulation on land and in watersheds, creating an increase in human exposure via the food chain.

The report was sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, and National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences

Here is a link to a brief summary of the report.

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