University of Miami Law School University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository Articles Faculty and Deans 1993 Gathering Danger: The Urgent Need to Regulate Toxic Substances That Can Bioaccumulate Richard L. Williamson Jr. Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.miami.edu/fac_articles Part of the Environmental Law Commons, and the Health Law and Policy Commons Gathering Danger: The Urgent Need to Regulate Toxic Substances That Can Bioaccumulate Richard L. Williamson* Dennis T. Burton* James H. Clarke*** Lora E. Fleming*"** CONTENTS Introduction ................................................... 607 I. The Characteristics of Bioaccumulating Substances ......... 609 II. The Impacts of Bioaccumulating Substances ................ 613 A. Adverse Environmental Impacts ....................... 614 B. Potential Adverse Human Health Effects ............... 618 III. Determining Bioaccumulation Potential .................... 627 A. Traditional BCF Analysis ............................. 627 B. The Bioavailability Problem: Relationship to Persistence and Sorbtion .......................................... 628 C. Testing for Log P ..................................... 630 1. Log P and Bioaccumulation ........................ 630 2. Strength of Correlations ............................ 633 Copyright © 1993 by ECOLOGY LAW QUARTERLY * Associate Professor of Law, University of Miami. A.B. 1967, University of Southern California; M.A. 1977, American University; J.D. 1984, Harvard Law School. ** Senior Research Scientist, University of Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station, Wye Research and Education Center. B.S. 1965, Virginia Commonwealth University; Ph.D. (Zoology) 1970, Virginia Tech. *** Chairman and President, Eckenfelder, Inc., a major environmental consulting firm. B.S. 1967, Rockford College; Ph.D. (Theoretical Physical Chemistry) 1972, Johns Hopkins University. **** Assistant Professor of Medicine, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Miami. A.B. 1978, Radcliffe; M.Sc. (History of Science) 1979, Imperial College, University of London; M.P.H. (Public Health) 1984, Harvard; M.D. 1984, Harvard. Far too many people have assisted this effort with ideas, criticism, information, research assistance, and encouragement for us to thank them all. Moreover, some of those in govern- ment would prefer to remain anonymous. We would, however, especially like to thank Ms. Betty Blanco, Professor Thomas A. Clingan, Mr. D. Rick Davis, Michelle DeWald, Esq., Dr. E. Dewailly, Dr. Daniel J. Fisher, Ms. Rochelle Lieberman, Diane M. McGuire, Esq., Mr. Thomas 0. Munson, Professor Bernard H. Oxman, Dr. James Petty, Dr. Lorraine Twerdock, and Dr. Michael A. Unger. We also appreciate the financial support provided by the Univer- sity of Miami, the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station, and the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command. ECOLOGY LAW QUARTERLY [Vol. 20:605 3. Our Proposal ...................................... 635 4. Technical Issues in the Use of the Technique ....... 638 5. Cost Considerations ................................ 640 IV. Bioaccumulation in Current Toxics Regulation ............. 640 A. The Lack of Current Regulation ....................... 640 B. A Separate Regulatory Effort for Bioaccumulation ...... 642 C. How Toxic Substances Are Regulated Generally ........ 643 1. Fragmented Statutory Authority .................... 643 2. The Primary Responsibility Rests with Federal Administrative Agencies ........................... 645 3. Regulation Is Almost Exclusively Command and C ontrol ............................................ 647 4. Formal Cost-Benefit Analyses Are Generally Not R equired .......................................... 647 5. The Chemical-Specific Approach and the Overregulation/Underregulation Pattern ............ 648 D. The Advantages of Whole Release Testing Over a Chemical-Specific Approach ........................... 649 1. Evaluation of the Chemical-Specific Approach ...... 649 2. Regulation of a Group of Substances ............... 650 3. Regulation Based on the Toxic Properties of the Release as a W hole ................................ 651 V. A Proposal for Regulating High Log P Substances .......... 653 A. Overview of the Proposal .............................. 653 1. Testing ............................................ 653 2. Presumption and Possibility for Rebuttal ........... 654 3. Rem ediation ....................................... 654 4. Enforcem ent ....................................... 655 B. Discharges to Surface Waters Under the CWA .......... 656 1. Current Regulation ................................ 656 2. EPA's Proposal .................................... 663 3. O ur Proposal ...................................... 665 a. Establishing No Unacceptable Risk .............. 666 b. High Log P Reduction Evaluation .............. 668 c. Treatm ent ...................................... 669 d. Standards ...................................... 670 4. Legal Authority for Our Proposal .................. 673 5. C osts .............................................. 678 C. Screening Seafood Under the FFDCA .................. 679 D. Cleaning Up Contaminated Ground Water Under CERCLA and RCRA ................................. 683 E. Waste Management Under RCRA ..................... 688 F. Safe Drinking Water Act .............................. 693 G. Occupational Health and Safety Act ................... 700 19931 GATHERING DANGER H . Clean Air Act ......................................... 705 I. Toxic Substances Control Act ......................... 710 J. Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act .... 715 K. Screening of Contaminated Soils, Sludges, and Sedim ents ............................................. 716 Conclusion ..................................................... 717 Glossary ....................................................... 719 INTRODUCTION Dioxin. DDT. PCB's. PAH's.1 Over the past two decades, fear that these chemical substances will harm human health or the environ- ment has periodically swept through the public, the press, and Congress. These substances have three key qualities in common. 2 First, each class contains known toxic compounds.3 Second, in contrast to many chemi- cals, they tend to persist in the environment, sometimes for decades. Third, each class contains constituents that are unusually capable of bioaccumulating, that is, of building up in living tissues. The release of significant quantities of substances having all three properties-high tox- icity, persistence, and capacity to bioaccumulate-poses potentially se- vere risks for human health and the natural environment.4 Of course, there might be little reason for concern over a chemical's toxicity or its bioaccumulation potential if it is not persistent (i.e., if it degrades prior to exposure).5 Similarly, there is little reason to be concerned with sub- 1. These four classes of substances, their physical and chemical properties, and their toxicological effects are discussed throughout this article. 2. These classes are also "organic" chemicals, meaning that they contain carbon and, generally, that they are either naturally synthesized by living organisms or created artificially by human activity. They differ from metals and other "inorganic" chemicals, nearly all of which do not contain carbon. 3. Toxic substances are poisons, i.e., they cause death or other serious harm to an ex- posed organism. Because nearly all substances are poisonous to some organism in high enough doses, however, such a definition is not particularly useful. For the purposes of this article, toxic substances are those chemicals that, even in small doses, have the potential to damage the natural environment and/or adversely affect human health. 4. Numerous documents have recognized the three qualities of persistence, toxicity, and tendency to bioaccumulate as particularly important. For example, the new convention on the protection of the northeastern Atlantic contains the following statement: "For the purposes of this Annex, it shall, inter alia, be the duty of the Commission to draw up: (a) plans for the reduction and phasing out of substances that are toxic, persistent and liable to bioaccumulate arising form land-based courses .... " Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environ- ment of the North-East Atlantic, Annex I, art. 3, 32 I.L.M. 1069 (done Sept. 22, 1992). Simi- larly, the recent Baltic Sea Convention declares: "The identification and evaluation of substances shall be based on the intrinsic properties of substances, namely: persistency; toxicity and other noxious properties; tendency to bio-accumulation." 1992 Convention on the Protec- tion of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area (done Apr. 9, 1992), reprinted in Int'l Envtl. Rep. (BNA) 35:0401 (Mar. 1993); see also Richard L. Williamson, Jr., Building the InternationalEnvironmental Regime.- A Status Report, 21 U. MIAMI INTER-AM. L. REV. 679, 709 n. 120 (1990) (discussing earlier international conventions). 5. A substance that degrades almost completely before an organism can be exposed is ECOLOGY LAW QUARTERLY [Vol. 20:605 stances bioaccumulating if they are not toxic. 6 These points are moot, however. As we will show, all organic chemical substances that are par- ticularly likely to bioaccumulate are moderately to highly persistent in the environment; 7 all of them for which there are adequate test data are toxic.8 In this article we demonstrate that considerably greater regulation of