Times Beach

In any industrial facility, from offices to factories and laboratories, spills happen and create a variety of risks to workers. Inside a plant, spills result in chemicals on the floor, in the air, or on the workers themselves. When releases occur outside the plant (e.g., chemical releases from tank cars or trucks, the spread of noxious fumes from an internal spill), the potential for harm extends far beyond the facility, particularly with major catastrophes such as the Bhopal chemical release, the Exxon Valdez oil spill. New York s Love Canal, and dioxin-contaminated Times Beach in Missouri, have led several federal departments and agencies to enact protective regulations. These protections are aimed at protecting a much broader range of people, property, and the environment than most regulations administered by OSHA. 

A number of environmental issues have received widespread publicity (Table 7.1), from major accidents at plants (e.g., Seveso and Bhopal) to the global and regional impacts associated with energy utilization (e.g., carbon dioxide, acid rain, and photochemical oxidants), the improper disposal of chemical waste (e.g., Love Canal and Times Beach), and chemicals that have dispersed and bioaccumulated affecting wildlife (e.g., PCBs and DDT) and human health (e.g., cadmium, mercury, and asbestos). 

Site-specific Dioxins (Seveso, Love Canal, and Times Beach)... 

Soil contamination was not perceived as a problem until the 1970s, when incidents in the U.S. and Europe (Love Canal, NY Times Beach, MO Lekkerkerk, the Netherlands) awakened public awareness about the serious threats posed to human health and the environment by abandoned or improperly managed hazardous wastes. In response to the growing public concern, the U.S., the Netherlands, and a number of other European countries started a systematic effort beginning in 1980 to identify potentially contaminated sites, assess the level of contamination, establish priorities for remediation based on risk assessment studies and gradually implement the required remedial actions. 

Times Beach, MO soil, Walters and Guiseppi-Elie, 1988)... 

Times Beach, Missouri, was a sleepy town 17 miles west of St. 

Louis with a population of about 1,200 residents in the early 1970s. The town had been huilt on a flood plain on the banks of the Meramec River in the 1920s. Most of the homes in Times Beach were fairly simple, many of them constructed on stilts to protect them from the periodic flooding of the Meramec. 

According to EPA s initial plans, cleanup of the Times Beach area was to begin in 1984. However, a number of lawsuits delayed that process until 1990, when the EPA hired the Syntex Corporation to remove and incinerate contaminated soil and restore Times Beach to a safe area. That process was finally completed in July 1997, when the area was reopened as the 409-acre Route 66 State Park. 

At Times Beach, Missouri, a pharmaceutical and chemical company produced wastes that contained 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) from the production of hexachlorophene. The operational costs for a single HTTS unit was 110,000,000. A total of 265,000 tons of soil and debris were incinerated. This corresponds to a total unit cost for incineration of about 800 per ton (D184570, p. 243). 

In recent decades, much of the chemical industry has been scrutinized with respect to its products and practices. National stories on hazardous wastes generated by the industry (Love Canal, Times Beach) paint a picture of a toxic cornucopia. 

Times Beach, Missouri Dioxins, and hazardous wastes U.S. government... 

Roper, J.M., Chery, D.S. 1994. Sediment toxicity and bioaccumulation of toxicants in the Zebra Mussel, Dreissena polymorpha. Proceedings of The Fourth International Zebra Mussel Conference, Times Beach, New York, Madison, Wisconsin, March 1994, Department of Biology, Virginia Tech. 

Pollutant realism Is achieved when the test system Includes sufficient diversity of components and the physical and chemical properties so that the pollutant behaves In the test system as it would In nature. Pollutant realism Is lacking because, In most test protocols, the pollutant does not Interact with any part of the environment, except the organism. A lack of pollutant realism In traditional tests may result In overestimates of risk. As an example, substantial Information Is now available about the toxicity of TCDD to numerous species when they are exposed via Injection, Incubation, diet, or dermal application. At Times Beach, Missouri, the TCDD is In the soli, and because It has apparently been there for some time, It is probably tightly bound to the soil. Little Is published about the toxicity of TCDD bound to soil, for any means of exposure. Intuitively, I suspect the TCDD Is less toxic when bound to soil than In the forms commonly used In toxicity testing. Thus, the risks of TCDD-lnduced toxicity to humans at Times Beach may be much smaller than would be suggested by the results of traditional testing which lacks this aspect of pollutant realism. 

Time Beach soilAvater with 0.01% surfactant from Missouri at pH 4, 7, 8.5, Puri et al. 1989) 5.70, 5.09, 4.76 (Visalia soilAvater with 0.01% surfactant from California at pH 4, 7, 8.5, Puri et al. 1989) 6.44, 6.66 (batch equilibrium-sorption isotherms 2-d, 10-d isotherm, regression analysis for sorption of uncontaminated Time Beach soil from water, Walters et al. 1989)... 

The loss of 2,3,7,8-TCDD in contaminated soil has been studied under natural conditions in experimental plots at the Dioxin Research Facility, Times Beach, Missouri (Yanders et al. 1989). The 2,3,7,8-TCDD concentration profiles of sample cores taken at Times Beach in 1988 were virtually the same as those in cores taken in 1984. The authors concluded that the loss of 2,3,7,8-TCDD due to photolysis at Times Beach was minimal in the 4 years covered by the study (Yanders et al. 1989). Estimates of the half-life of TCDD on the soil surface range from 9 to 15 years, whereas the half-life in subsurface soil may range from 25 to 100 years (Paustenbach et al. 1992). 

Exposure Registries. Approximately 250 members were enrolled in the 2,3,7,8-TCDD Subregistry of the National Exposure Registry in 1991 (ATSDR 1996). These individuals were chosen because they participated in one or more of the Missouri Dioxin Health Studies and were reportedly exposed to CDDs at one of the four Times Beach, MO area CDD sites. Data collected for each member of the Dioxin Subregistry include demographic information, smoking and occupational histories, and self-reported... 

Cantor DS, Holder G, Cantor W, et al. 1994. In utero and postnatal exposure to 2,3,7,8-TCDD in Times Beach, Missouri 2. Impact on neurophysiological functioning, (unpublished literature)... 

Freeman RA, Hileman FD, Noble RW, et al. 1987. Experiments on the mobility of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin at Times Beach, Missouri. ACS Symp Ser 338 114-130. 

Umbreit TH, Hesse EJ, Gallo MA. 1986b. Comparative toxicity of TCDD contaminated soil from Times Beach, Missouri, and Newark, New Jersey. Chemosphere 15 2121-2124. 

Yanders AF, Orazio CE, Puri RK, et al. 1989. On translocation of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin Time dependent analysis at the Times Beach experimental site. Chemosphere 19 429-432. 

San Francisco, CA Mercury Contamination of San Francisco Bay Mojave, CA Edwards Air Force Base and Flexavalent Chromium St. Louis, MO Times Beach and Dioxin San Jose, CA Mercury in the Guadalupe River... 

In the Times Beach incident, a waste oil dealer removed about 20,000 gal of oil contaminated by 30 ppm of 2,3,7,8-tctrachlorodibcnzo-p-dioxin from a hexachlorophene manufacturing plant, (a) What mass of dioxin was involved (b) Some of this oil was sprayed in horse arenas, and in some spots in these arenas, the soil dioxin concentration was about 2000 ppb. What mass of this soil needed to be ingested by a 100 g guinea pig to reach the LD50 of 0.6 pg/kg ... 

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