Toxic

LAST WEEK a quietly scathing report by the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed what some have long suspected: In the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse, the agency systematically misled New Yorkers about the risks the resulting air pollution posed to their health. And it did so under pressure from the White House. The Bush administration has misled the public on many issues, from the budget outlook to the Iraqi threat. But this particular deception seems, at first sight, not just callous but gratuitous.

Groundwater contamination from toxic waste dumped decades ago at a nearby factory in the Severn area has prompted widespread testing of residential wells and put eight homes on bottled water, state officials said. The eight households have been notified that they have unsafe levels of industrial solvents in their wells, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment, and two other homes have been found to have levels below those deemed to pose health risks. State officials said they are anxious to complete testing for the chemicals — including possible carcinogens — at dozens of other homes that had yet to respond to requests to check their wells.

Fourth of five articles ANZHEN, China -- Nitrogen fertilizer has lifted the yoke off Hua Xijin's shoulders. Before the "green revolution" came to China, it took roughly 6 tons of river mud to fertilize a rice paddy small enough to fit in the corner of a football field. Hua carried the mud on his back, 130 pounds at a time, in bamboo baskets lashed to a wooden pole. Now 58-year-old Hua spends about a week each planting season sprinkling his field with hundreds of pounds of chemical fertilizer, leaving plenty of time for playing mah-jong or fishing in a nearby river.

A recent post on the Lab Rescue Facebook page broke my heart: a woman wrote that her beloved dog died unexpectedly, and that an autopsy showed that her liver had been completely destroyed. The culprit? Heliotrope, a common flowering plant the woman had on her deck that the dog nibbled on. Most of us know to watch out for pet-toxic plants around Christmas and Easter, but we don't think that what's growing in our yards might be just as dangerous. I took a look at the ASPCA's list of pet-toxic plants this morning, and was really surprised to see that some of the things in my yard are dangerous to the Labragator.

The thief who swiped a semitrailer in eastern Baltimore County may have gotten more than expected -- 9,600 pounds of toxic material.County police are looking for the 53-foot-long trailer, which was headed for a Georgia warehouse when it was stolen July 5. Its cargo included 96 steel drums of chromium trioxide, an orange, flaky, toxic material used in car manufacturing."

Ventilation systems are being installed by the state in three homes in Baltimore's Westport neighborhood, according to state officials, after tests found toxic vapors seeping into the dwellings from long-abandoned industrial sites nearby that had been the focus of an emergency hazardous-waste cleanup decades ago. In addition, said James Carroll of the Maryland Department of the Environment, efforts are under way to treat potentially cancer-causing solvents...

County utilities workers yesterday sealed off a wastewater line froma Brooklyn Park pharmaceutical company to prevent another chemical spill into the public sewer system.Sewer service to Kanasco Ltd. was cut off at noon after company officials failed to respond to a 24-hour notice asking them to explain the leak of a powerful industrial solvent Sunday night, the latest of seven spills at the plant.Traces of methylene chloride, the same toxic solvent spilled by Kanasco in 1988, were found in a milky liquid flowing from a pipe intothe sewer system, said Jody Vollmar, spokeswoman for the Department of Utilities.

The blue-green algae that bloomed in tidal rivers throughout the upper Chesapeake Bay last month was toxic, an independent laboratory has confirmed, but so far has not harmed wildlife or caused human health problems, state officials said yesterday. Some strains of the algae, identified as Microcystis aeruginosa, can cause skin problems and flu-like symptoms in humans and can sicken or kill livestock or pets that drink it. Tests performed at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, confirmed the presence of the algae's toxin, said Rob Magnien, director of tidewater ecosystems assessments for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Johns Hopkins Hospital's medical practices may be cutting edge, but its methods of handling garbage and toxic wastes put it near the back of the pack in efforts to prevent pollution, according to a Washington environmental research group.In a survey of 50 of the nation's top hospitals, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group found that some are trying to cut their share of air pollutants by burning less waste, while reducing the amount of harmful chemicals, like mercury, that they use.Medical waste incinerators are ranked by the Environmental Protection Agency as one of the nation's top sources of toxic air pollution.

CASCADE, Md. - A recently closed Army base might not be everyone's idea of paradise, but Sharon Garcia saw enough to like about Fort Ritchie and its picturesque mountain setting to move her family here a few years ago. The place grew on her. She bowled in a league at the Sunshine Lanes. Her neighbors came to her door with cookies. And her son Jonathan found friends among the children settling with their families into the modest townhouses that once housed soldiers. Then the base's past intruded.

Amid the wreckage of the Mitt Romney presidential debacle and the Republican scramble to find a new savior, now comes ... yet another Bush! The ruminations of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, son of one former president and younger brother of another, on maybe seeking the presidency in 2016 raises among other possibilities another campaign clash of the Bush and Clinton dynasties. The talk of Jeb, now touring the talk-show circuit peddling his new book, "Immigration Wars," conjures up a matchmaker's dream of one political heir against another, former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In the 20 years she's lived on the outskirts of Salisbury, Arlene White said she'd never noticed anything unusual about her tap water. Now, though, White and dozens of neighbors are drinking bottled water and limiting their bathing after tests found unsafe levels of a toxic chemical in their household wells. A handful of residents, including Brian Bracken, have had large tanks hooked up to their homes, filled with treated water trucked in from nearby Fruitland. Local, state and federal officials are scrambling to provide safe, clean water to homes southeast of the Eastern Shore's largest city even as they acknowledge that they don't know the source or extent of the groundwater contamination.

Decades after first discovering the problem, state officials have settled on a $27 million plan to keep a cancer-causing chemical in the ground at the Dundalk Marine Terminal from seeping into the Patapsco River and blowing into nearby residential areas. Under the plan, Honeywell International Inc. and the Maryland Port Administration jointly pledged to re-line leaky storm drains beneath the state-owned shipping facility, which have run yellow at times with chromium-tainted water. They also vowed to see that pavement covering the contaminated soil remains intact so it can't become airborne.

I am so relieved that I don't live in a swing state. I can sleep through Nov. 6 and wake up knowing that Maryland's Electoral College votes will be safely in President Barack Obama's pocket - or Gov. Martin O'Malley will be in witness protection. Or I can do my civic duty and vote, without having to produce my birth certificate (the long form) and a cheek swab for a DNA test. Voter suppression is what they are doing in swing states this election - it's the flip side of loading people in a van to take them to the polls on Election Day. But if I lived in a state like Pennsylvania, Maryland's neighbor to the north, or Virginia, our neighbor to the south, I would have to spend the next two months listening to the 60s station on XM radio or watching old episodes of "Modern Family" on the DVR to avoid the political ads that are going to fill the air. President Obama and Mitt Romney are going to spend more than $1 billion on TV ads, and most of it will be in swing states.

Maryland may have some of the nation's strictest limits on power plant pollution, but its residents are still breathing more toxic emissions from those facilities than in most other states. The state's reliance on burning coal for electricity appears to be the underlying reason, it seems. That's the upshot of a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council that tallies the 20 states with the highest levels of hazardous air pollutants from power plants in 2010. Maryland ranks 19th, well down the list from big coal-mining and -burning states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia, but just ahead of tiny Delaware.

Baltimore residents and visitors "may notice a bright green liquid flowing through the Inner Harbor and other waterways" Wednesday, but they shouldn't be alarmed, city public works officials said Tuesday. The liquid is a non-toxic dye the department plans to inject into the city's aging sanitation system as part of a large-scale test to determine where leaks are occurring, the department said in a news release. The approach will help the public works department "to cost-effectively target critical repairs to the system," the department said.

The Sanctuary, a retired World War II-era vessel languishing in Baltimore waters for years, contains high levels of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, according to a report obtained yesterday by The Sun. The survey, performed in July by a company that once considered buying the former Navy hospital ship, confirms the suspicions of environmentalists. It contradicts assertions by the new owner, Potomac Navigation Inc., that the vessel contains few PCBs. The Delaware-registered company plans to take the vessel to Greece in the next few weeks, but concerns raised by a Seattle environmental group, the Basel Action Network, could delay the process.

Hazardous material control teams from the Maryland Department of the Environment continued their search yesterday for the source of toxic benzene fumes discovered leaking into the basement of a house in the 3400 block of View Ridge Circle on Monday.High levels of the dangerous fumes were found coming from a crack between the foundation and the floor of the home of Charles J. Ehrenfeld Jr.He and his wife were evacuated from the house overnight by county health officials.Mr. Ehrenfeld and his wife told fire department officials they had smelled a gasoline-like odor in the house for several weeks and the smell had been getting worse until it became overpowering Monday, said Lineboro Fire Chief John L. Krebs.

Despite dramatic progress in reducing Americans' exposure to lead over the past 25 years, a growing body of research finds that children and adults still face health risks from even very low levels of the toxic metal in their blood. A recent government study, prepared with help of researchers from Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health, tallies the wide-ranging damage low-level lead exposure can do, beyond the well-documented effects of reducing youngsters' IQ and undermining their ability to learn and control their behavior.

People aren't the only ones at risk from eating mercury-contaminated fish, since coal-burning power plants have liberally sprinkled the toxic metal across the earth's waters.  But it appears that captive dolphins have a little less to worry about in that regard than their wild counterparts. A new study by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the National Aquarium in Baltimore found that the aquarium's captive bottlenose dolphins have lower levels of mercury in their bodies than wild dolphins tested off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of Florida.