Status of the Chemical Waste Drums (DDT) Dumped Off the Coast of Los Angeles County Decades Ago.

[NNadir]

The paper to which I'll refer in this post is this one: Wide-Area Debris Field and Seabed Characterization of a Deep Ocean Dump Site Surveyed by Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Sophia T. Merrifield, Sean Celona, Ryan A. McCarthy, Andrew Pietruszka, Heidi Batchelor, Robert Hess, Andrew Nager, Raymond Young, Kurt Sadorf, Lisa A. Levin, David L. Valentine, James E. Conrad, and Eric J. Terrill Environmental Science & Technology 2023 57 (46), 18162-18171.

This issue of the scientific journal Environmental Science & Technology is largely devoted to the role of AI/machine learning as a tool in Environmental Science.

This particular paper is open to the public to read; no subscription is required.

These drums contain the now banned insecticide DDT, which is known to interfere with shell formation of birds; banning it was a major milestone in Environmental Law, which in this generation is decaying like the drums. They also contain oil refining residues from the many refineries in the LA area, in Torrance, El Segundo, and Wilmington.

The drums are off the coast of Palos Verdes (a wealthy enclave in LA county) in the San Pedro undersea basin, between Palos Verdes and Catalina Island.

My generation will leave the planet in much worse shape than we found it, as did the previous generation who dumped these drums, although on scale we easily exceeded: We used up the world's best ores but worse, rejected the only technology that might have prevented climate change.

Again, the paper is open sourced, but a few excerpts are in order:

The historical practice of ocean dumping in United States waters has been driven by both the economics of hazard disposal and a desire to place contaminants far from population centers. With the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 and a growing body of science that revealed the negative impacts of dumping to the environment, the process became federally regulated with strict guidelines and a permit approval process when the 1972 Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act was passed by Congress (MPRSA (1)). Twenty-six years later, an outright ban of industrial waste dumping was enacted through the Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1998 (Public Law 100-688), with remaining permitted dumping activities limited to sewage and dredge spoil disposal. Prior to legal protection, the ocean was a favored disposal site for industrial waste, with 23 known sites used offshore the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific Coasts. (2) Disposal took the form of both containerized waste and bulk dumping. (3)

Southern California’s coastal ocean hosts productive fisheries, is home to now protected ecosystems, and has an established tourism industry that is based on coastal recreation. Dump sites offshore California were established as early as the 1930s, became regulated in 1961, and were used for a variety of industrial purposes including disposal of waste from oil and gas production and the chemical manufacturing industry. Concern over these historical practices and their impact on the environment were described to the California Regional Water Quality Board in 1985. (5) The report documented extensive regulated dumping of a variety of bulk and containerized materials and the possibility of short-dumping, disposal prior to reaching the sanctioned dumping location. The San Pedro Basin, located in Southern California waters between Santa Catalina Island and Palos Verdes Peninsula at depths ranging from 600 to 900 m, was a dump site for military munitions (6) and a range of industrial wastes, including waste from refineries and chemical production. This included waste byproduct containing the pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), generated by the Montrose Chemical Corporation. Between 1947 and 1961, up to 700 t of DDT contained within acid sludge were dumped. (5) While only accounting for a small fraction of the total overall waste recorded as dumped, the DDT waste byproducts are of particular concern due to the long life of the chemical. DDT is now well understood to be both toxic and stable with long-lasting negative environmental impacts (7) including contamination of food webs, altering reproduction cycles, and contributing to cancer within wildlife. (8,9) As an endocrine disrupter and immune suppressor, recent studies have demonstrated human health linkages between DDT exposure from fish consumption and breast cancer in women that can be passed down through generations. (10) Interest is growing to develop a long-term strategy to assess the risk this dump site poses for both the surrounding marine ecosystem (11) and the coastal population of Southern California. To date, no systematic survey of the locations and conditions of the dump site has been conducted, due in part to the historical technical challenges associated with deep water survey. Although the presence of DDT in seafloor sediment samples has been recognized for decades, (12,13) it was only recently that surveys investigated whether barrels found on the seafloor could be a source. (14) Several studies have been published documenting the negative impacts of DDT to the marine food web in Southern California including birds, (15) dolphins, (9) and humans. (16)...

Graphics may be observed by opening the full article using the link.

I note, with some disgust, that the reason for dumping the drums with disregard for future generations was "economics." It was "cheap" to just dump the chemical waste drums in the ocean. The question of course, is "'cheap' for whom?" It's not cheap for us, this generation, it's a liability. Many pseudo-environmentalists - at least I attach the prefix "pseudo" to them - argue for example that solar cells and wind turbines are "cheap." Nevertheless, in less than 30 years, all of the wilderness rendered into industrial parks for this ineffective fantasy - if "effectiveness involved addressing the most serious environmental issue before us, climate change - will be largely chemical waste sites with rotting infrastructure. Of course, the decision by my awful generation to embrace this mass and land intensive garbage was never about climate change. It was about stopping the required growth of nuclear energy, which was our last best hope for a sustainable energy system. In this, the dangerous so called "renewable energy" fantasy was successful at entrenching the use of fossil fuels and preventing the growth of our last best hope for a sustainable world.

I'm given to platitudes and cliches in my writing these days, so I'll appeal to glass houses and throwing stones.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

Have a nice weekend.

[calimary]

1. Depressing, isn't it.

So what, if anything, can we do about it?

I’ve often wondered if the answer is loading a rocket with these containers full of poison, and shooting them into the sun so they’d burn up. Would that even make any sense? Is it even remotely doable?

[NNadir]

3. The idea of shooting wastes into space is often raised, but is actually worse than the wastes themselves.

Launching matter into space is environmentally odious owing to the energy requirements.

My preferred option for dealing with halogenated organic species, of which DDT is member of a subset, relatively minor now in comparison to fluorinated species, far more troubling that DDT at this point, is radiolysis, given my appreciation of the value of radioactive things, a subset of free radical decomposition. Since gamma and x-ray radiation are highly energetic, they can break the problematic carbon-fluorine bond which has energy roughly comparable to the far UV range, to which x-rays and gamma rays can easily be down-converted, although down conversion is not necessary. (This would be an excellent way to utilize so called "nuclear waste." ) Other free radical generation approaches are well known, and often industrially applied, in particular ozonolysis, and chlorination, although the later often generates chlorinated by products which are themselves problematic.

Interestingly, the current issue of Environmental Science and Technology, Volume 57, Issue 47, which I am currently exploring, is all about the issue of purifying water of contaminants, and there is much discussion of free radical reactions therein.

[moniss]

2. Well the idea of cost shifting environmental

impacts is nothing new and one can go all the way back to "Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered" by E.F. Schumacher from 1973 for example and the discussion of appropriate technologies, unbridled consumerism and environmental impacts. The crux of the matter can be demonstrated to be a conflict that persists regardless of the source of energy for a nation.

Over consumption will exhaust the planet's resources no matter what the energy source we use. It is a sad but true fact that the easier availability of energy has become the greater the appetite has grown for creature comforts, possessions, more "food" selections etc. One can make the argument that a cheap, virtually perpetual and unlimited supply of energy would in fact hasten the demise of the resources on the planet.

Our current system rewards the producer of any product or service no matter how truly useless as long as Madison Avenue and a willing stock market are able to manufacture a "want". No matter how useless or illusory any gain might be to the general consumer/investor. The system is not set for change any time soon either with money being the controlling factor in all of government.

The idea of environmental salvation or destruction based on our energy sources will be illusory as well without concurrent major shifts away from overpopulation, unbridled capitalism and rampant consumerism. There is little hope that is going to happen given the nature of governments currently becoming more nationalistic and more bought and paid for by the very forces who benefit from the unbridled capitalism and consumerism.

I am not suggesting that moving towards renewables is a bad thing. I am only saying it is neither salvation or total destruction by itself. We are very much in a scenario where the underdeveloped countries in the world are rightly looking at the person in California who has 6 cars in the driveway for a 2 person house and says, rightly so, that it is not right for them to go without while the person in California goes to excess. But who wants to tell America that having China produce millions of little plastic pinwheels to stick out on the lawns of America must end? Everybody in the chain is happy. The big retailer, the Chinese factory, the Chinese worker and the end user who sits on their porch swing watching the pinwheels spin merrily in the late afternoon sun while sipping a cool drink and breathing a sigh of contentment because everything is alright.

Certainly without major social upheaval/industrial change on a never before seen scale we have little chance. The fact that despite decades of major emissions improvements in transportation and other areas our CO2 levels keep increasing. Many of us said 20 years ago and longer that if we did not make huge changes and do so rapidly we were going past the tipping point. But even if we had made the energy supply changes we cannot get away from the other deeply entrenched factors in this multi-faceted problem we face. Schumacher and others tried to get us to see the urgency and dire situation we face. So now we face the situation of the very real scenario of desperately digging in the ground for lithium because we're convinced it will save us from the effects of what we dug out of the ground before. I know some people will say I'm pessimistic but why would I think that America will somehow reign ourselves in when all I have to do is look at the last 20+ years of conduct with automotive emissions. As we reduced the emissions and improved efficiency we simultaneously jacked up speed limits all over the country. So higher speeds equals increased consumption and more emissions than if we had left speed limits alone. But here in America it is like an insult to Motherhood and Apple Pie to suggest that we buy less, drive less, use less or limit ourselves much in any way at all. If the speed limit is 70 then they drive 80 and if it's 80 they drive 90.

It is irrefutable, absent a miracle, that we can continue on for hundreds of years more without reduction of consumption, conservation and population control. The hundreds may be far shorter given accelerating climate change, famine, disease, conflict etc. So que on up everybody and make our grand environmental and social choices of shot or hung. Now the usual disclaimer for legal purposes: This is not intended to treat or cure any disease or condition. If you should develop a rash or experience bleeding discontinue use and seek medical treatment. Any alterations may void your warranty. Your mileage may vary.

[chia]

4. First I've heard of this, and I'm a CA native. Thank you for posting.