This is the Environment Show. It's about our stewardship of the earth and the beauty
and mystery of life in all its forms. The Environment Show's and National Production
made possible by the W. Alton Jones Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Turner Foundation,
the JM Kaplan Fund and Hemings Motor News, the Bible of the Collector Carhabi, 1-800-CAR-HRE.
Your host is Peter Burley.
Coming up on this week's Environment Show, Mexican Environmental Minister Karabias says U.S.
corporations no longer relocate to Mexico to avoid environmental loss. Six million people
visit Brooklyn's Prospect Park each year. After 125 years of intense use, the park is showing
its age, but an ambitious renovation project hopes to bring it back. Hummingbirds buzz around
author Sue Ellen Campbell at her home in Colorado. And in the Earth calendar, the sun dagger strikes
the rocks at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. These stories and more coming up on this week's Environment
Show.
The expression that pollution does not respect political boundaries has become a cliche,
but pollution increasingly is a factor in international relations, particularly with respect to the
United States and Mexico. When the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA, was signed
between the U.S. Mexico and Canada, an environmental side agreement was incorporated in the treaty.
It established an international council of an environmental cooperation to deal with
environmental issues affecting the three countries. Since NAFTA was signed three years ago,
Mexico has enacted a new comprehensive law for the environment. Nevertheless, Americans have been
concerned that U.S. corporations flee to Mexico because environmental regulations are not as strict.
I asked Hulea Karabias about this when she attended the meeting of the council last week. Hulea
Karabias is the minister for the Environment, Natural Resources and Fisheries of Mexico.
A lot of Americans believe, perhaps wrongly, that one of the impacts of free or trade in NAFTA
is that American corporations flee to Mexico because there is less environmental restriction.
What do you say to people who make that accusation?
Well, first that was only a process at the beginning. Unfortunately, there has been no
possibility of demonstrating that hypothesis. We haven't had any situation at all that
industries or firms from Canada or the States have moved to our country because of a lower
legislation. Because it's not true that we have a lower legislation. We have a legislation
which in the problems that we have are as strong as the other ones. And we sometimes have
some standards which are not equally to the States and Canada because those are not contaminants
that are of the same importance for the world.
Minister Karabias is optimistic about progress being made on some of Mexico's toughest environmental
problems. Mexico City is a place which has received a lot of publicity because of the air quality
problems in that vast city. Is there any strategy or hope of improving air quality in Mexico City?
Yes, I'm absolutely sure that in the next years we're going to have a much better
air in Mexico City. We have a program now, a program that it was presented last year by
President Sedeo and it's a program that has four main activities. It's a cleaner industry,
cleaner vehicles, reordering the city and restoration of the surroundings.
With new technologies, with better combustibles, with economical incentives.
So with this matrix of variables, we can assure that in the next years we are going to be
in a better quality of the two main contaminants that are now the biggest problem which is ozone
and suspended particles. With this effort prolongated we can be sure that by the year,
perhaps 2010 we can have the quality of air in our cities.
A high priority for Minister Karabias is her program to protect special areas in Mexico.
She says Mexico is one of the countries with the most biodiversity in the world,
with all ecosystems represented except those of extreme cold.
6% of Mexico is now under special area designation. Her objective is to increase that to 10%.
How's it going to people accept this process? I'm sure some of them have real concerns when they
see it affecting their own homes or the places that they live. And especially when there is a lot
of commercial interest in that because in a lot of these areas we have forbidden the cut down
of the trees and the projects which are in a high impact. So we have to change those to small
impact like ecotourism and some other possibilities. What we have find is that local people, the
in habitats of these places, that have the tradition of living there, that have the non-ledges of
the use of their own natural resources. We don't have a position with them and we have a process of
together training, technologies and getting money for developing those projects. And we are improving with that.
What we have more problems is with the external people that is utilizing those resources
with a commercial interest and then we have a confrontation. But in each reserve we are doing the
managing plan which is a document that is a consensus with the inhabitants of what can be done and
what cannot be done. Once that we have those management plan then the things go move better.
That was Julia Carabius, Minister of Environment, Natural Resources and Fisheries of Mexico.
She's a cabinet officer in the Zadillo government. In a future environment show, we'll examine the
work of a council of environmental cooperation which is intended to better the environment of North
America, particularly with respect to those conditions brought about by increased trade between the
three North American countries. I'm Peter Burley.
3.2 million people live in Brooklyn, New York and another 11 million or so live nearby.
In this environment people in concrete can stretch for miles. But green Oasis do exist and
Prospect Park in Brooklyn is one of these places. 6 million people visit it each year. That's one
and a half million more people than visit the Grand Canyon. Although the park is 125 years old,
it still has the ability to enchant. Yet it is being loved to death. It simply cannot support so
many people. Now an ambitious project is underway to restore Prospect Park and keep it viable for
generations to come. The environment shows Thomas Lallie has this report. In the 1800s, city and
business leaders in Brooklyn, New York were envious. Central Park and rival Manhattan had just opened
and it was the place to be. So Brooklyn hired Central Park's masterful designer, Frederick law
Olmstedt and Calvard Vox, to design Prospect Park. It too was a smashing success.
Now 125 years later people still flock to the Great Lawn, which stretches for a mile or to the
extensive acreage of woods. Ed Toat is the director of landscape management for the Prospect Park
Alliance, a non-profit group which has formed to aid in the park's recovery. He says Olmstedt
Vox's original idea was to create forest in the city. Even though it's a very design park and
he clearly put a lot of thought into landscaping and contouring and where to put this tree and that
tree, the whole effect was still to be one that you felt like you were in nature, even though it
might have been a very engineered experience of nature. He felt very strongly that urban people
needed somewhere where they could experience nature because he felt nature had a profound effect
on people and as he put it, it had a civilizing effect, especially on urban dwellers who had no real
exposure to nature. To accomplish this, Olmstedt and Vox created areas of lawns, waterways, and
woodlands. Many areas give the illusion of solitude even though the bustling city is just a few
hundred yards away. And in places he really went crazy and really went for effect because he was
looking to give people what we might call today an oh wow experience. You might suddenly turn a
bend in the forest and suddenly have a view down a ravine at a waterfall and it would take your
breath away and you would say, isn't nature wonderful. But the plan wasn't foolproof. Christian
Zimmerman is the deputy director of design and construction for the Prospect Park Alliance. He says
Olmstedt and Vox underestimated how popular their creation would be and what the impact all those
people would have. There's comments that no sooner did they plan but it was getting trampled down
because you know, remember this was direct competition with New York City and and that age you were
to be seen, you know, the park drive was a promenade so and it went both ways back then. So the
carriage concoction of you strolling along and you'd see people and be seen. And the problems which
plagued the park from the beginning have only gotten worse. Soil compaction and erosion have
rendered some areas hard as concrete and without any top soil at all. In these places few plants can
grow and those that do are often non-native species. Ed Toarth says the problem is very simply
too many people on too small a space. One of the wonderful things about the park is it's quite
possible to have a sense when you're in the park that you're all alone and you're isolated and
you're having a wonderful experience and somehow this piece of pristine nature is yours and
yours alone and that's that really speaks to the again to the genius of the design. But it's just
not the reality and there have been times when this has been driven home to me and one of them is
if you come out here after a fresh snowfall and you really think you have the place to yourself and
if you do as I've done is come look 24 hours after a fresh snowfall go to the most isolated
place in the park and you'll find footprints there. Restoration won't come easy here in a
wooded area called the Ambergill a chain link fence keeps out visitors while a backhoe digs out
an old pond long since filled with sediment from the surrounding eroded hills. This is one of
those oh wow places and at one time the pond emptied over a waterfall the sound of the water would
bounce off the surrounding hills yet bushes kept the waterfall hidden from view until you got
to a stone bridge when suddenly it came into view today this entire scene is being rebuilt the old
boulders which made up the waterfall were dug up labeled and painstakingly put back according to
the original plans and photographs and the hills are being re-vegetated with thorny plants in hopes
of keeping people off them. Ed Toe says he hopes massive projects like this one will turn around the
process of destruction. One of the big problems was that the woods had become so open through time
through loss of understory that it became easier and easier for people to leave the path system
and just start roaming wherever they wanted to. So all the different ecological problems that we
identified today you know as things that we needed to address were all different aspects of
degradation that just fed off of each other. Soil compaction you know gradually killed off most
of the vegetation as the vegetation killed off more and more people roamed more and as they
roamed more the compaction worsened as the compaction worsened the erosion worsened so everything just
cycled on itself. So clearly one of our big goals is to is to re-vegetate. Funding for these projects
is not cheap the city is putting up some of the money and the rest is coming from the prospect park
alliance a private nonprofit group but Toe says urban parks are not wilderness areas he says they're
more like public gardens that need to be tended. That's the biggest message here you know this
doesn't come at no cost this isn't you know the wilds it never will be the wild and this is a
lesson that's going to grow across this country as we you know as suburban areas develop and the
truly rural disappears we are the we are the driving force of these ecosystems and if we want a
mountain bike and if we want to do this and we want to do that it comes at a price and so
management is important and that's the real lesson here these are not themes that are going to
take their living things are not going to make it on their own without our intervention.
The genius of prospect park is that it is still loved by so many people 125 years after it opened
but by virtue of those millions of visitors the landscape of prospect park is stressed far beyond
that which nature can endure keeping a green and healthy will take an unending stream of money
and patience for the environment show i'm Thomas Lalley.
Joining us now with an update on our listener comments is Stephanie Goishman.
Stephanie I understand that the accusation that greens will make us all reds
drew a tremendous reaction. We were flooded with calls and response to your interview with Holly
Swanson just to remind our listeners Swanson wrote a book called Set Up and Sold Out where she says
the green movement including all the national environmental organizations and other groups like
planned parenthood and the children's defense fund use Nazi tactics and are working for takeover
of our country by international communism here's what some people thought. Calling to comment on
the environmental show and I just wanted to express my belief that the woman that wrote the book
is absolutely correct thank you.
Hello I was listening to your show this George Lewis I'm from the problem is Erie
and you wanted to know if I oppose green I very definitely oppose green I think they are
very much like the Nazi organization of World War II and that was what your question was and I do
oppose them I oppose plan parenthood oppose all of the left wing things they have and I will continue
to oppose any organization of the green thank you. But most people thought otherwise.
Regarding the last little gig with Holly Swanson it's amazing that ignorance is still alive
and thriving evidently that was incredibly hard to hear very hard to hear thank you fine.
This is this is Gilbert I heard the interview with Holly what's her name and you said you wanted
to know what I thought of it I think she's just a little bit wild eyed.
This is a bill breach I heard your program on K.E.M. in Portellus about 235 it ended at 240
where Holly Swanson's book was being talked about and the fact that the Green Movement
or it's being made it with Nazi Germany and with communist backed and Gorbachev was one of the leaders
and I think that that is a terrible and somehow we must let it be known that that is a wrong
interpretation of what the environmental movement is all about.
All right my name is Chris Burke and I live out in the Berkshire Mountains as Massachusetts.
I'd like to address the caller's concern that the environmental movement has parallels with
the Nazi movement and the movement towards world communism. The essential characteristic of the
Nazi movement was that it was monolithic and absolute in doctrine in developing it combined
clever appeals of strength and uniformity to a defeated nation which was suffering
Titanic economic and social disruption coupled with coupled with this appeal was a willingness
to use intimidation and murder to terrorize those who disagreed. It cannot be disputed that much
damage has been done to the earth for many reasons large and small including short-sighted self-interest
and profit modus. Also it cannot be disputed that human beings as living creatures need a steady
supply of clean food, water and air. That's all for this week Peter. We hope you'll share your
comments as well. Tell us what you think our number is 1-888-49-Green.
We all have places which are special to us for some their city streets for others
they're deep in the wilderness. Sue Ellen Campbell is an author from Colorado. She reads from her
book Bringing the Mountain Home published by University of Arizona Press. She presents a portrait
of lazy summer days and the community of animals in her backyard. Hummingbird zip around me,
flashing green and purple, copper and vermilion darting close to check for nectar in my red t-shirt.
At first I flinched when they buzzed past my face but now I hold my breath to feel the breeze from
their wings. This morning my friend Mary and I startled a paragreen falcon standing on a tall stump.
It startled us too as it flapped ahead of us down the muddy cow-trodden trail past the
beaver ponds to a taller tree then as we followed to another. Now we're watching a pair of them
circle high against the pale cliffs of volcanic ash, harried by other birds too small from here to name.
Their scream is longer than a red-tailed hawks, high and piercing. We're in low beach chairs,
barefoot, settled with binoculars and glasses of wine between the back porch of this old
logger's cabin and a clump of willows by the creek. Mary stopped speaking mid-sentence,
points to our left. Just emerged from the willows as a weasel, nut-brown, dark-pointed face,
long-tail, pale yellow belly, the essence of sleekness. He stands still and looks at us.
In his mouth he carries a very small dead mouse, soft and thick like a miniature buffalo robe.
We freeze. A curve or two at a time he moves closer, right past Mary's chair.
Three inches from her foot he drops the mouse, stands upright, speeds toward my bare feet.
Pure reflex, I jump, squeak. He dashes to one side, we move quickly a few steps to the other.
Eyes still on us, he leaps out to the mouse, picks it up, zips under the cabin, vanishes.
Amazing, face to face with a weasel, a paragreen, hummingbirds.
Like subatomic particles we collide, bounce back, collide again, energies in a vortex,
sharing the space. One year later I sit in the same chair in the same place, riding these pages,
and a weasel appears, surely the same one, though now sounds mouse. Magic. Again he runs toward my
bare feet. This time I hold still until he's almost to me, wiggle my toes, and he's gone.
Sue Ellen Campbell, reading from her book, Bringing the Mountain Home, published by the University
of Arizona Press. Stay tuned, the Earth Calendar is next.
Every year at this time, people around the Northern Hemisphere marked the summer solstice,
the end of spring and the start of summer. It's the longest day of the year.
The environment shows Thomas Lallie, takes us to Chacok Canyon, New Mexico, where an ancient
society built markers to the solstice many hundreds of years ago. At our studios here in Albany,
New York, the sun rose this morning at 5.16am and won't go down till 8.38 tonight. It's the
summer solstice, the longest day of the year. During the summer solstice here in the Northern
Hemisphere, the Earth, the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth, is tipped towards the sun.
On the winter solstice, the Northern Hemisphere is tipped away from the sun.
On the equinoxes, the Northern and the Southern Hemisphere are equal distance from the sun.
GB Cornucopia is an interpretive ranger at Chaco Culture National Historic Park in Northwestern,
New Mexico. Chaco is the site of the Sundegger on Fajada Bute. Every year, for the week after the
solstice, a beam of light enters a thousand-year-old house at Chaco once occupied by Anastasi Native
Americans. The sunbeam strikes the center of a circle exactly at sunrise. Dabney Ford is the
park archaeologist at Chaco. It's a real quick event. Usually, for instance, up on Fajada Bute,
which is the solstice marker, the event takes, actually, it takes about an hour. But the time
when the dagger of light actually hits the center of the spiral, which marks
solstice, is all about 10 minutes. But is the sun dagger something the Anastasi
constructed, or is it just a coincidence? That's a hotly debated subject in academic circles these days.
Dabney Ford and GB Cornucopia say there are many sites at Chaco, which they believe
marks solstices, equinoxes, and even lunar events. But they say they haven't had enough time to
study them since most time is spent preserving the thousand-year-old homes at Chaco from the elements.
Ford and Cornucopia say it's quite likely that the Anastasi, like others around the world,
paid close attention to the seasons. Dabney Ford and GB Cornucopia say it's a
coincidence. The interest that we believe these people had was to be able to track where they were
in time. For most societies, keeping time has actually been a sacred activity for ceremonial
reasons. If you're a farmer, certainly the planting season is important. Keeping accurate
time of the seasons is really at the heart of many people's ability to survive in the
environments they find themselves in. GB Cornucopia say it's a coincidence. I don't know of any
culture that doesn't somehow formally record solstices, not so much equinoxes, but summer and winter solstices.
Ford explains that we keep time with clocks and calendars while the Anastasi kept time with places
like the Sundagger. But there is still a great deal to learn about the Anastasi. It's believed they
were an oral society and GB Cornucopia says all that's left to study are the buildings left behind
at places like Chaco. It's like a giant Rorschach test where all of your preconceived notions
can get projected out onto this stuff. And so we may never know the final answers.
So it's quite possible that the people gathered for the solstice sunrise at Chaco
may very well be interpreting it in a completely incorrect way. It makes you wonder what relics from
our society will motivate tourists to stare at a wall 1,000 years from now. This is the environment
show. Thanks for listening.
This is the environment show and I'm Peter Burley. Still ahead. Energy used to be almost free in
Russia so nobody cared much about conserving it, but times may be changing thanks to rising prices.
Is your house or office causing you to get sick? We talk green about indoor air pollution.
Hospital waste. There's too much of it and we can all do something about it.
And lightning shows the way home to the Carolina mountains. These stories still ahead on the
environment show.
Russians are in the habit of conserving energy. Under the communist system they paid almost
nothing for heat electricity and water. Today their energy system is still in bad shape.
It remains amazingly inefficient, wasting natural resources, creating unnecessary pollution
and costing the country much needed cash. But economic concerns may push the Russians to start
saving. Nancy Marshall reports from Moscow.
Most Russians aren't used to turning the lights off as they're leaving a room,
but they have started doing that because electricity rates are going up.
Water and heat are another matter. They're still fully controlled by the Russian government.
The government turns everyone's heat on on a designated day in the fall and turns it off in
the spring. Russian homes can get hot if there's a nearly spring and the heat still on.
The only way to turn the heat down is to open a window.
Russians don't have individual thermostats so can't actually control the heat themselves.
Water is handled the same way. You pay a set amount for your water, no matter how much you use.
All this means wasted natural resources and unnecessary pollution. The Russian government is
trying to change the situation, but it's slow going. Russian Prime Minister Viktor
Chernamyredin recently vented his frustration with the slow pace of change,
noting that even in new houses it's impossible to measure how much water and heat are being used.
Three days ago, muskivites came to me and said meters are being put into new buildings and homes,
but they don't work. Chernamyredin says the meters for water and heating don't work only the ones
for electricity. Can this really be the case? No one here seems the slightest bit put out by this.
Don't we care? The few environmental activists in Russia care, among them Edward Giesmetoulin,
of the Moscow Office of Greenpeace. He says Russia now loses 40 to 45 percent of the energy it
produces because of inefficient technology, things like leaky oil and gas pipelines. Giesmetoulin
says the government of the former Soviet Union created a centralized, inefficient energy system
30 years ago, as former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was building scores of bleak, towering
apartment blocks that now ring almost every city in Russia. Giesmetoulin says the system has
changed very little since then. When the decision was made, let's say in 60s during Russia of
time, that should we construct efficient houses or should we construct cheap and fast?
There he was, oh the Soviet Union is the biggest country in the world, we have a huge amount
of natural resources. So let's construct cheap and fast and we don't care about efficiency.
You see, the government and the ministries we are aiming to extract as much as possible to do,
to broad as much as possible. And nobody was really thinking about efficiency and how efficient
to use this energy. But Giesmetoulin says things are different now. Oil and gas prices have
risen in Russia, causing increased interest in conservation if only to save money.
Giesmetoulin says the Russian government has made just a token effort toward encouraging
energy conservation through a year old law that's very weak. There is a law which was accepted
last year and April last year about energy efficiency. But basically, this law is really weak. It
doesn't make anyone to save energy. It just basically says, oh it's nice, nice to save. And that's
it. And that's why a lot of energy experts have been criticizing this law that it's not really
providing the ways and not really making companies and making the government to save energy.
Giesmetoulin says Russian companies that do want to save energy run into a number of obstacles,
including the government's attitude. He claims that politically powerful oil and gas companies
are only interested in selling as much of their product as possible and are discouraging energy
conservation. Giesmetoulin says these energy companies put pressure on the government trying
to discourage legislation mandating energy saving measures. Outside of politics, he says Russian
businesses face practical obstacles to energy conservation. Not a lot of companies
even know the way how they can save energy, how they can save money because energy is money,
money is energy. And sometimes they have, for example, energy managers on the enterprises which
we are studying in some colleges and they know everything about energy. But they never
were taught how to save energy. They know how to manage it but not to save.
Still, Giesmetoulin thinks energy conservation is inevitable mainly because prices are rising
and both businesses and residential customers are feeling the pinch and at the very least,
turning lights and appliances off when they're not needed. An unintended benefit of the rising
prices could be a cleaner environment. For the environment show, I'm Nancy Marshall in Moscow.
We're talking green and I'm your host, Peter Burley. Today we're talking about indoor air pollution.
An aspect of the environment that affects all of us both in our homes and in our workplaces.
We want to hear from you. Our number is 1-888-49-Green and I have a couple of experts with me on the line.
One is Dr. Linda Ford. She is CEO of the Asma and Allergy Center in Omaha, Nebraska and she is
President-Elect of the American Lung Association. Since 1993, the Lung Association has built 13 healthy
houses as part of an experiment to test techniques and products to reduce health risks.
And also with me is Nadav Malin and he is editor of the Environmental Building News
publication in Brattleboro, Vermont. Dr. Ford, let me start with you. We talk about indoor air pollution
as an environmental problem but it's also a health problem. How much of a problem is it really
end up how do people know whether they're impacted by it? Well certainly a big problem.
It's what we've done with our indoor air over the last few years and trying to build more cost
conscious houses and decrease our expenses on heating and air conditioning costs.
Air pollution contributes to lung disease including respiratory infections as lung cancer
claims more than 300,000 lives from lung disease every year in the United States.
Lung disease is our third leading cause of death in the United States. So when we talk about it as a
function of indoor air pollution, what is it in indoor air that people need to worry about and it
causes these health problems? Well even in healthy people, people without any type of lung disease,
you have to talk about carbon monoxide and radon. Those are probably our two most
concerned areas of concern and healthy people. And people who have asthma on the other hand,
they have to be concerned not only with the carbon monoxide and the radon but also
to environmental allergens in their homes such as mold spores and house dust mines.
Now Nadav my understanding is though that in fact most of us have had experiences with people
putting down carpets that make you sick or whatever, how much of the building environment
is responsible for the indoor air pollution problems that causes people health concern?
Well to the extent that the air is worse inside the building than it is outside the building
which unfortunately is also often the case. It is the building environment that's responsible for that.
The furnishings as you mentioned putting down new carpet is often a factor initially,
carpet, new carpets tend to off-gas chemicals that come out of the polymers that the carpets are made
out of and those need to be vented to the outside preferably you want to open up an air
a carpet out before having it opened up inside your house or have the windows wide open and the
place well ventilated while the carpet is being installed and for a good time thereafter.
Well let me ask you something what you're suggesting are things you can do to guard against
something that you're bringing into your home that has a bad impact on your health. Why
bring it in to start with isn't there an alternative? That's a very good question. As a culture we
tend to really love carpets. Carpets are soft and they're comfortable and they have
bring good colors but people who have concerns and some people suffer from what we call
multiple chemical sensitivities which means that any number of chemicals can really set them off
not just in terms of allergies but really make them completely dysfunctional. Those people
really need to stay away from carpets and powerfully. Well again Dr. Linda Ford from the Asmon
Allergy Center what does the individual do or what should they think about in their home and in
their workplace to protect themselves from this kind of environmental hazard. If you're talking
about a healthy person without any lung disease such as asthma or allergic rhinitis you're
having if you're talking about the irritants that from the carpet itself but if you're on if you
have asthma or allergic rhinitis or a typical hay fever it's the house dust might inside the carpet
that can be a problem and even with the new ones or old carpets where it doesn't doesn't make
any difference what the age of the carpet is you'll have house dust mites in that carpet. So the
best thing to do is not to have it at all. To use hardwood floors or some other type of
hard surfaces instead of the carpet itself. Okay so your advice is stay away from carpets I'm sure
the carpet makers will be knocking down our phones. Well a good compromise is to use throw
rugs or area rugs that can be taken out and washed. That's correct. Okay well let's go to the
phones. Our number is 1-888-49-green we're talking green about indoor air pollution and I see we have
a call from Tom. Tom you're talking green in the environment show. Yes this is Tom Caini with the
National Association of Home Builders Research Center. Uh-huh so you know all about this carpet problem.
Well we've been studying indoor air quality for a few years and I was wondering if the health care
professions are seeing changes in lifestyle as a result of being more aware of these tug of
issues. Good question Dr. Ford what's happening out there? Not yet although we're trying to make
more people aware of what's happening however I have not seen a change in people's lifestyles.
They're still using carpet. They're still closing and trying to close up all the ventilation within
the home. Well again to get this in perspective Linda is this is this a real problem in the
United States. I mean we've got a lot of environmental problems a lot of health problems. Where does
indoor pollution fit into the scheme of things? What if you think about there are 14 um around 14
million Americans who have asthma about 3 of those are children. Now we stay inside 90% of our time
is indoors. Children the EPA has estimated the children stay 1.7 to 2.3 hours per day outside. The
rest of the time is inside the home. As adults we probably even have less of that so it's the indoor
air that's really more of the problem than the outdoor. Okay well let's go back to the phones. Our
number is 1 8 8 8 49 green. We're talking about indoor air pollution and I'm talking to John
Bauer from Indiana. John welcome you're talking green in the environment. Yeah I've written several
books on healthy construction and I've always advocated three basic principles. Eliminate,
separate and ventilate. I think it's first and foremost important to eliminate pollution sources
in a house and there's certainly some things you can't eliminate like insulation could be a problem
and for those things I suggest separating them very well from the living environment. In some
cases that means airtight construction. The house is tightly constructed the insulation can't bother you
and thirdly I recommend ventilating. I think all houses are getting tighter and tighter and they
get less natural air exchange so they really need mechanical ventilation today. So as we think
about chemical contaminants as opposed to dust and spores and so on Dr. Ford what is the
what is the thing that people need to be the most concerned about what's the most prevalent?
I think carbon dioxide and that I'd worry more about carbon monoxide than I would some of the other
ones. Really and that comes from where most of us think about auto-billic sauce or fireplaces.
Any fuel burning appliances and make sure that the appliances are ventilated to the outside. You'd
be surprised you know that people put in the gas appliances how it's not adequately ventilated.
It's wood putting fireplaces and coal and wood coals and woods go space heaters. Those can
are potential sources for carbon dioxide. Now John Bauer you're still on the Healthy House
Institute which you're involved with. What do you folks say about carbon monoxide and what should
the homeowner worry about? Carbon monoxide is probably the most deadly pollutant and people are
routinely encountering and it kills several hundred people in the US every year. The good news is
we experience low levels a lot of the time that don't kill us but the bad news is those low levels
can cost flu-like symptoms and I've seen medical reports that have stated that a quarter of the
people reporting they had to flu actually had low-level carbon monoxide poisoning.
And the short-term solution that I guess is to open the window? Well that's a very short-term
solution. The problem is when you burn anything whether it's natural gas or oil or wood or
camels or incense you're getting combustion by products and that carbon monoxide is a combustion
byproduct and it can enter the house if you have like an unvented fireplace or space heater
but it also enters the house very commonly because chimneys don't function like they're supposed to.
Those combustion byproducts are supposed to go up the flu and out of the house because
they're usually warm and warm air rises but in many houses the indoor air can become deep pressurized
and you imagine blowing air out with a closed dryer or a rain toad or something an equal volume
of air has got to come in somewhere else and it often comes down to chimneys. So you're second
right back in again? Exactly and this is quite common it probably happens at some time or another
and half the house is out there. Okay well John thanks for your call and the dov let me ask you
whether the environmental building news has is this an issue that you've covered and worked on
either the detection of carbon monoxide or things that need to be done? Yes it has in fact we wrote
several reviews of some of the carbon monoxide detectors that were out a few years ago and
unfortunately some of them got a bit of a bad rep that some of the early models tended to go off
at the wrong times or they were malfunctioning occasionally. For those of us that haven't seen
these things is this something like a smoke detector? It looks exactly like a smoke detector.
I get it with a battery that you stick on a roof or under your bed or something. That's exactly
it you mounted on a wall or ceiling and it looks a lot like a smoke detector and works with a
battery in a similar way. Now we've just got a little bit of time left. I know that a while ago the
EPA started talking about radon and a great length. Dr. Ford how much of a problem is this? What
does it do to people? Do they need to be concerned about it? It's another colorless, overless gap
and you can't tell if it's in your home until you get it detected. Detector on that. It
is occurs naturally in the soil and in rock and it can be a leading cause of some of our long
cancers. In fact in fact it's only second to cigarette smoke as far as the cause of long cancer.
Really I remember when it was first talked about everybody said this was the ideal target for EPA
because no industry was involved and no jobs would be lost because it came from the earth.
It does come from the earth and it's really not the radon but it's really a component called
the radon daughters or a breakdown product of radon that gives us our problem and it comes up through
the ground through the basement cracks and basement floors or in the walls or foundation.
And so quickly in our moment's remaining what does the homeowner do to find out whether this
is a problem for them? There are short term and long term tests. The short term means less than
90 days and the kit if you get a short term kit should be labeled that it meets the EPA
requirements. The same thing with the long term test which would be over 90 days. The long term
test is more accurate for us. So you can get a kit and test your home yourself? You sure can.
And that sounds like a good idea. I'd like to make the point that the installation is a good thing.
It reduces the environmental pollution outside if we burn less fuels to heater houses and it's
important to insulate well and ventilate well as opposed to leaving houses intentionally uninsulated
with it in a very reliable way. Good point. All right. I'm afraid our time is up. We've been talking
about indoor air pollution and my guests have been Dr. Linda Ford CEO of the Asman Nallergie Center
in Omaha, Nebraska and she is president-elect of the American Lung Association. Also with us has been
Nadav Malin. He is editor of Environmental Building News in Brattleboro, Vermont. Our number
is 1-888-49-green. We'd like to hear from you. I'm your host, Peter Burley.
While environmental conditions like indoor air affect our health, our health care system and
hospitals in particular affect the environment. Specifically, hospitals generate huge amounts of
waste. About 85% is plain ordinary trash and 10% is biohazardous waste, sometimes called red
bag waste. This goes all the way from equipment and supplies used in surgery to body parts.
The remaining 5% is hazardous waste, which includes toxic chemicals like mercury.
Holly Schener is the waste specialist at Fletcher Allen Healthcare in Burlington, Vermont
and the author of various books on hospital waste. She says that incineration has been the
method of choice to get rid of biomedical waste, but that 90% of it could be disposed of with
alternative technologies such as those that use steam and microwave. This would eliminate problems
associated with incineration. Most importantly, better segregation of waste at medical facilities
could reduce incineration and cost. She says too often she's seen pizza boxes and plastic
soda bottles in the biomedical waste stream. In her opinion, the majority of hospital administrators
are not far enough along in waste management and pollution prevention and the ongoing reorganization
of healthcare and the trend to look for outside companies to perform services like housekeeping
is making things worse. We're so stressed out now in healthcare with mergers and downsizing and
rapid evolution of care and there's just you know managed care and such a such a chaos going on
that waste is really not on the radar screen in healthcare. You know we're outsourcing critical
functions like housekeeping and food services and all these things and the folks who would be handling
the waste may not necessarily even have the skills to do it. One thing that is high on the radar
screen is cost. If one did a better job at handling waste, does that have to increase cost?
No it does not. In fact many of the hospitals that I've worked with in my consulting practice
are saving a million dollars a year, a half a million dollars a year by better management.
Segregating waste so that you minimize the amount that's in the biohazard category and still be
in full compliance saves a lot of money. To get to dispose of red bag or biohazard waste is about
10 times the cost of solid waste and then hazardous waste which would be things like batteries and
mercury and some of those other chemical solvents. I mean that's like one to six dollars a pound or
more. It's even more costly. So there's a tremendous economic incentive for healthcare facilities
hospitals to manage their waste to save money but you know through segregation. She says more
training is necessary so waste and pollution prevention is a concern of everybody in the healthcare
business. I think it's really critical that healthcare facilities, healthcare organizations
make it mandatory that all staff get some type of environmental education specific to waste
around waste segregation because it is not part of the curriculum. So just like they have mandatory
requirements for CPR and fire code and confidentiality that every employee must take those
mandatories every year. We need to add waste management to the mandatories annually so that every
employee whether they're cutting open hearts or scrubbing toilets you know every employee working
in healthcare facility is very clear about what waste goes where and also that we do have some
mandatory education for the folks involved with procurement so that the people bringing the
products into the organization are very clear about you know what is the chemical composition of
the materials they're bringing in how are they going to be disposed what's the cost and which the
environmental impact. So those are a couple things I would throw in. Unlike some environmental problems
that we can't do much about, Shania says we all can help solve this one. The place to start is to
ask your local hospital or your doctor who is affiliated with it what's being done to segregate
waste what's being done to reduce it to screen incoming supplies and to train the entire facility staff
without a push from the community she fears that better management of waste is something health
facilities just won't get around to. Summer is here and that means hot days broken up here and there
by a passing thunderstorm. Sometimes lightning is so bright the sky lights up like a giant camera
flash. Southern Rail is a bluegrass band with roots in the southern Appalachians. Their 1993 release
is entitled Carolina Lightning. It explains how the highway to their home lights up.
North Carolina Lightning. Silver threads across the sky. North Carolina Lightning. Thunder rolled
in from our mind. Light my way down the highway. Those rain is pouring down.
Come the morning I'll be home in the mountains that I love.
Six thirty five in the evening and the sky is black and grey. Corressing the tops of the mountains.
All these clouds are here to stay. Howling and slew the valley. Shake the trees against the sky.
It can't shake the power that cold me to keep rolling down the road.
And the rain is pouring down. I see my foolish life flash before me. All the roads that I've traveled.
All the hills that I've climbed and I wonder why ever went away. And now I'll be coming home to stay.
Coming home to stay. North Carolina Lightning. Silver threads across the sky.
Show me the way to tomorrow as my home is drawing my mind. Don't let me ever think of leaving.
I'll scare me home if I try. Come the morning I'll be home in the mountains that I love.
My Carolina home. My Carolina home.
I'll scare you home if I try. Come the morning I'll be home in the mountains that I love.
My Carolina home. My Carolina home.
Southern Rail with their song Carolina Lightning off their 1993 release to the same name.
May Lightning light your way home as well.
Thanks for being with us on this week's Environment Show. I'm Peter Burley.
For cassette copy of the program called 1-888-49-Green and asked for show number 390.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions which is solely responsible for its content.
Dr. Ellen Schartock is the executive producer Thomas Lale is producer and Stephanie Goyceman is the associate producer.
The Environment Show is made possible by the W. W. Alton Jones Foundation, the Turner Foundation,
the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the Packard Foundation, and Hemings Motor News, the monthly Bible of the
collector Carhovy 1-800-CAR-HRE. So long and join us next week for the Environment Show.
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