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Greenlist(tm) Bulletin 01/05/2007

This is the weekly bulletin of the TURI Library, reporting a selection of recently published titles we have acquired. Our pledge is to keep the bulletin relevant to your work and brief -- no more than 10 titles. You are welcome to send a message to jan@turi.org if you would like more information on any of the articles listed here.

Titles here, abstracts below them:

Painting the Town Green
Regulators Move Forward on Ban of Children's Jewelry Containing Too Much Lead
Boston Ready to Go Green
Obstructing Authority: Does the EPA Have the Power to Ensure Commercial Chemicals Are Safe?
Sustainability: Science or Fiction
Environmental aspects of laser-based and conventional tool and die manufacturing
Europe Signs Up to Tough New Chemical Laws
The State of Childhood Asthma, United States, 1980–2005
Well Dressed? The Present and Future Sustainability of Clothing and Textiles in the United Kingdom
American Energy: The Renewable Path to Energy Security

1. Painting the Town Green

AUTHOR Blanchfield, Lindsey

SOURCE ICIS Chemical Business Americas, v270 n19, November 20 - December 3, 2006, pp46-47

ABSTRACT A green giant seemed to have touched almost everything at the International Coatings Expo, which took place in New Orleans in early November. The green theme resonated throughout the event, with exhibitors, attendees and speakers. Obtaining low-to-no volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and moving from solvent-based to water-based products are increasingly the strongest focal points for many manufacturers supplying goods to the coatings sector. And this is due in no small part to regulations at home and abroad. Manufacturers for the coatings market understand the current and future challenges in their path and are working to make the needed formulaic changes to lower VOCs.

2. Regulators Move Forward on Ban of Children's Jewelry Containing Too Much Lead

AUTHOR Metzler, Natasha T.

SOURCE Environmental News Network, December 29, 2006

ABSTRACT A government regulatory agency has taken steps toward banning children's jewelry containing small amounts of lead, which was responsible for more than a dozen product recalls in the past two years. The Consumer Product Safety Commission voted unanimously to move forward in a process that could ultimately lead to a ban on children's jewelry containing more than .06 percent lead by weight. The commission currently has two members and one vacancy. "Our goal is not to continue to do recall after recall," CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson said. "We've had upwards of 14 recalls since 2004."

WEB LINK http://enn.com/today.html?id=11935

3. Boston Ready to Go Green

AUTHOR Palmer, Thomas C.

SOURCE Boston Globe, December 20, 2006

ABSTRACT Boston is expected to become the first major city in the nation to require private developers to adhere to a strict set of so-called green-building standards, officials said yesterday. The standards will be required before permits are issued for all projects of 50,000 square feet or more. The goal is to make new buildings more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, by promoting, for example, use of efficient heating and cooling systems, recycled building materials, and careful separation and disposal of waste. City officials said they will ask the Boston Redevelopment Authority tomorrow to incorporate the green building standards into municipal zoning laws, following the recommendations of a task force appointed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino in 2003. The standards are expected to be formally adopted by the Boston Zoning Commission in January after a public comment period.

WEB LINK http://www.boston.com/business/articles/
2006/12/20/boston_ready_to_go_green/

4. Obstructing Authority: Does the EPA Have the Power to Ensure Commercial Chemicals Are Safe?

AUTHOR Phillips, Melissa Lee

SOURCE Environmental Health Perspectives, v114 n12, December 2006, ppA706-709

ABSTRACT Before 1976, the U.S. government had virtually no records of what chemicals were imported, manufactured, used, or released into the environment and no way of regulating these chemicals before they appeared on the market. That changed when Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which required that chemical companies inform the EPA of the chemicals they currently used in American products and that they submit approval requests for any new chemical entering manufacture. Thirty years later, however, observers are asking how well TSCA has lived up to its initial promise and what powers the EPA actually has—questions Congress asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate. A report released in June 2005 by the GAO titled Chemical Regulation: Options Exist to Improve EPA's Ability to Assess Health Risks and Manage Its Chemical Review Program claims that the TSCA legislation failed to empower the EPA to ensure the safety of chemicals used in the United States. On 2 August 2006, John B. Stephenson, director of natural resources and environment at the director of natural resources and environment at the GAO, testified on the report's findings before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Several other environmental scientists also testified in support of the GAO's position that TSCA is in need of a major reworking if it is to adequately protect the health of U.S. citizens and the environment. "Overhaul of TSCA is long overdue," testified Lynn Goldman, former EPA assistant administrator for Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances and now a professor of environmental health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "Minus congressional action on TSCA, we will continue to see the erosion of federal management of chemicals on many levels." Several other experts, however, testified that TSCA has mostly accomplished what it was designed to do. James B. Gulliford, the current EPA assistant administrator for Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances, stated, "TSCA provides the agency with the necessary authority to ensure that new chemicals are adequately reviewed, that EPA can require reporting or development of information needed to assess existing chemicals, and that those chemicals that pose an unreasonable risk can be effectively controlled." When the EPA first began reviewing chemicals under TSCA in the late 1970s, about 62,000 chemicals were already in commerce, and TSCA did not require companies to provide any health or environmental safety data on these chemicals. Rather, Goldman says, "Existing chemicals were grandfathered in, and then EPA was given certain authorities to gather data to assess and to regulate them." In practice, regulating existing chemicals has been difficult, Stephenson says. The EPA has required testing of only about 200 of these grandfathered chemicals, and it has banned only five chemicals or chemical groups, according to Stephenson. He says this is largely because TSCA places the burden of proof on the EPA to show that a chemical is dangerous rather than on the chemical company to show that it is safe. If EPA scientists suspect, based on existing information, that an existing chemical may pose a risk, the agency must go through a long rule-making process in order to get that information from the chemical industry, Stephenson says. This process can take years to complete.

WEB LINK http://www.ehponline.org/members/2006/114-12/spheres.html

5. Sustainability: Science or Fiction

AUTHOR Martens, Pim

SOURCE Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, v2 n1, Spring 2006, pp36-41

ABSTRACT It is clear that in making the concept of sustainable development concrete, one has to take into account a number of practical elements and obstacles. There is little doubt that integrated approaches are required to support sustainable development. Therefore, a new research paradigm is needed that is better able to reflect the complexity and the multidimensional character of sustainable development. The new paradigm, referred to as sustainability science, must be able to encompass different magnitudes of scales (of time, space, and function), multiple balances (dynamics), multiple actors (interests) and multiple failures (systemic faults). I also think that sustainability science has to play a major role in the integration of different styles of knowledge creation in order to bridge the gulf between science, practice, and politics—which is central to successfully moving the new paradigm forward.

WEB LINK http://ejournal.nbii.org/archives/
vol2iss1/communityessay.martens.html

6. Environmental aspects of laser-based and conventional tool and die manufacturing

AUTHOR Morrow, W.R.; Qi, H.; Kim, I.; Mazumder, J.; Skerlos, S.J.

SOURCE Journal of Cleaner Production, v15 n10, 2007, pp932-943

ABSTRACT Solid Freeform Fabrication (SFF) technologies such as Direct Metal Deposition (DMD) have made it possible to eliminate environmentally polluting supply chain activities in the tooling industry and to repair and remanufacture valuable tools and dies. In this article, we investigate three case studies to reveal the extent to which DMD-based manufacturing of molds and dies can currently achieve reduced environmental emissions and energy consumption relative to conventional manufacturing pathways. It is shown that DMD’s greatest opportunity to reduce the environmental impact of tool and die manufacturing will come from its ability to enable remanufacturing. Laser-based remanufacturing of tooling is shown to reduce cost and environmental impact simultaneously, especially as the scale of the tool increases.

7. Europe Signs Up to Tough New Chemical Laws

SOURCE NewScientist.com, December 13, 2006

ABSTRACT After years of debate, the European Union adopted its largest legal framework ever in December. REACH entails the "registration, evaluation and authorisation" of some 30,000 commercial chemicals, over half of which have never been tested for toxicity before. Even green campaigners, who are not entirely happy with the final package, call it the most progressive chemicals legislation in the world. Its effects will not be seen for a while. Companies will only have to register chemicals they make, import or use after the European Chemicals Central Agency starts up in Helsinki, Finland, in 2008. At first they will register only chemicals they make in quantities over 1000 tonnes a year, with quantities over a tonne by 2019. However, REACH will still require firms in Europe to produce environmental and human safety data for tens of thousands of chemicals. Information only exists for about 12,000 chemicals in use, so the next decade will see frenzied testing of the rest. The European parliamentarians overwhelmingly approved the legislation on its second reading by a majority of 529 votes for and 98 against, ending more than three years of lobbying and political wrangling. It means that companies will now shoulder the burden of proving that their chemicals are safe. The current 40-year-old system has obliged public authorities to prove that such products are dangerous.

WEB LINK http://www.newscientist.com/
article.ns?id=dn10792&feedId=online-news_rss20

8. The State of Childhood Asthma, United States, 1980–2005

AUTHOR Akinbami, Lara

SOURCE Advance Data From Vital and Health Statistics, Number 381, December 12, 2006, rev. December 29, 2006

ABSTRACT Millions of children in the United States are affected by asthma, a chronic respiratory disease characterized by attacks of difficulty breathing. An asthma attack is a distressing and potentially life-threatening experience. Scientific advances have greatly improved the understanding of the mechanisms that cause asthma attacks and have led to effective medical interventions to prevent morbidity and improve quality of life. Yet, the burden in prevalence, health care use, and mortality remains high. Asthma remains a significant public health problem in the United States. This brief report presents overall trends in childhood asthma over the past two decades and examines the burden of asthma through each stage of childhood and among children of different race and ethnic groups. While data for prevalence, health care use, and mortality are major indicators of the impact of asthma on children, asthma symptoms that are unrecognized or not severe enough to warrant emergency care or hospitalization can still lower quality of life. Part of recent efforts to address the burden of asthma involves developing methods to track symptoms and disease management. When available, these new sources of data will provide greater insight into the burden of asthma and the impact of intervention efforts.

WEB LINK http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad381.pdf

9. Well Dressed? The Present and Future Sustainability of Clothing and Textiles in the United Kingdom

DATE 2006

SOURCE University of Cambridge. Institute for Manufacturing

ABSTRACT Our clothes are getting cheaper, they follow fashion more rapidly and we’re buying more and more of them. At the same time, we hear more about poor working conditions in clothing factories, the greenhouse effect is becoming more threatening and the UK is facing a crisis in disposing of its waste. What should we do? This report aims to help answer that question, by looking at what might happen if the way that our clothes are made and used were to be changed. What would happen if we used different fibres, or different farming practices? What would be the consequence of washing our clothes in a different way, or keeping our carpets for longer? What would happen if more of our clothes were disposed of through clothes banks? In the UK we are already awash with information on these questions – so why read this report? Firstly, the report is intended to be neutral – it does not have an agenda, or seek to promote a particular change or approach. Secondly, it attempts to take a very broad view of the sector – encompassing the views of business, government and campaigners and trying to reflect the widest definitions of ‘sustainability’. Thirdly, it attempts to identify the potential for significant and lasting change by looking at what might happen if a whole industrial sector were to experience a change.

WEB LINK http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/sustainability/projects/
mass/UK_textiles.pdf

10. American Energy: The Renewable Path to Energy Security

DATE 2006

SOURCE Worldwatch Institute; Center for American Progress

ABSTRACT If there was ever a time when a major shift in the U.S. energy economy was possible, it is now. Three decades of pioneering research and development by both the government and the private sector have yielded a host of promising new technologies that turn abundant domestic energy sources—including solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, biomass, and ocean energy—into transportation fuels, electricity, and heat. Today, renewable resources provide just over 6 percent of total U.S. energy, but that figure could increase rapidly in the years ahead. Many of the new technologies that harness renewables are, or soon will be, economically competitive with the fossil fuels that meet 85 percent of U.S. energy needs. With oil prices soaring, the security risks of petroleum dependence growing, and the environmental costs of today’s fuels becoming more apparent, the country faces compelling reasons to put these technologies to use on a large scale. Energy transitions take time, and no single technology will solve our energy problems. But renewable energy technologies, combined with substantial improvements in energy efficiency, have the potential to gradually transform the U.S. energy system in ways that will benefit all Americans. The transition is easier to envision if you look at the way the oil age emerged rapidly and unexpectedly in the first two decades of the 20th century, propelled by technologies such as refineries and internal combustion engines and driven by the efforts of entrepreneurs such as John D. Rockefeller.

WEB LINK http://images1.americanprogress.org/il80web20037/
americanenergynow/AmericanEnergy.pdf

You are welcome to send a message to jan@turi.org if you would like more information on any of these resources. Also, please tell us what topics you are particularly interested in monitoring, and who else should see GREENLIST. An online search of the TURI Library catalog can be done at http://greenlist.turi.org/ for greater topic coverage.

Compiled by the TURI Library, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 2007

This page updated Friday January 12 2007

TURI - Toxics Use Reduction Institute

Greenlist(tm) Bulletin 01/05/2007