Super fund

The public was outraged. It did not matter whether the pollution came from a chemical factory, power utilities, mines, petroleum, automobiles, or semiconductors the chemical industry s reputation was in free-fall. In 1990, the U.S. Congress established the Super Fund, requiring industry to pay for cleaning up hazardous waste. Major chemical manufacturers banded together in a voluntary effort to reduce factory emissions to almost zero and to police themselves. At the opposite extreme, some environmentalists called for the elimination of all toxic substances. 

The Super fund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) of 1986 (Public Law 99-499) extended and amended the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA or Superfund). This public law directed the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to prepare toxicological profiles for hazardous substances which are most commonly found at facilities on the CERCLA National Priorities List and which pose the most significant potential threat to human health, as determined by ATSDR and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The lists of the 250 most significant hazardous substances were published in the Federal Register on April 17, 1987, on October 20, 1988, on October 26, 1989, and on October 17, 1990. 

Steve Kroll-Smitb studies people affected by dangerous or extreme environments. More specifically, he s interested in how people cope when, due to lack of information and support, they are left to their own devices to understand and respond to environmental crises. He has studied people who live in Super Fund communities residents of Centralia, Pennsylvania, a town where a mine fire raged underground and people with multiple chemical sensitivities. 

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) [42 U.S.C. 9601 et scq.], as amended by the Super fund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) [Pub. L. 

Mr. Stossel provides the background to determine the real factors that can adversely affect your life span. He interviews numerous experts, and concludes that the media generally focuses on the bizarre, the mysterious, and the speculative— in sum, their attention is usually directed to relatively small risks. The program corrects misperceptions about the potential problems of asbestos in schools, pesticide residue on foods, and some Super-fund Sites. The video is very effective due to the many excellent examples of risks. 

In the early 1980s, the so-called super fund legislation created huge liabilities for companies faced with cleaning up contaminated sites. Despite this legislation, there was a shortfall in the measurement and disclosure of these liabilities in corporate financial statements. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) looked into this and created the following rules to ensure adequate environmental disclosure in Form K-10 ... 

A waste is a solid or liquid material that is no longer used. The EPA defines waste as hazardous if it has certain properties that could pose dangers to human health and the environment after it is discarded. The EPA considers a waste to be hazardous if it possesses certain characteristics (e.g., ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity, or toxicity) or if it is on a list of specific wastes determined by the EPA to be hazardous. RCRA regulations, found in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Title 40, Part 261, present the listed hazardous wastes, describe hazardous waste characteristics, and specify test methods for determining whether waste is hazardous. Complete lists of wastes identified by the EPA as hazardous can also be obtained from the EPA s RCRA/Super-fund Hotline at (800) 424-9346 or from the EPA regional offices. 

There are a number of federal laws that regulate hazardous materials, including the Super-fund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA), the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act (HMTA), the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), and the Clean Air Act. 

Efforts to better characterize the mechanism of action of SEB and related "super antigens" are being funded by NIH (at a very modest level), and USAMRIID is pursuing both passive and active immuno-protection. Administration of chicken-derived anti-SEB antibodies prior to, or up to 4 hours after, inhalation of an otherwise lethal dose of SEB protected nonhuman primates from death (but not from illness). Active immunization is felt to be the most promising line of defense due to the very rapid binding of the toxin (less than 5 minutes). 

On the liability side, the primary benefit occurs at the super-senior level. In cash-funded instruments, the level of funding for AAA risk is typically in the range of 40-70 bps. By contrast, super-senior implied funding of the top 70-90% of a synthetic deal usually can be achieved at a level of 7 to 17 bps via swap. The probabilistic view that this risk is safer than AAA is usually lost where notes must be issued. This benefit can often be worth 40 bps across 70% of the capital structure. 

In this atmosphere President Truman (Roosevelt had died a few months before the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan) had no difficulty securing funding for research on an even more powerful weapon known as the Super, or hydrogen bomb. 

The STAGS is a customer funded development that was designed to support the US Army Alternative Technologies to Incineration s Ton Container Survey. To date, only a part of this mission has been accomplished. As successful as the NAAP analysis of VX has been, it is obvious that we face new challenges as we move ahead to Tooele Army Depot, other storage facilities and toxic waste sites. It is the opion of this author that the STAGS has proven itself safe and effective for characterizing super toxic materials in the field and that it will serve a useful purpose and suceed in all of it s future missions. 

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