Google aided consultants with Omya study
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By Bruce Edwards Rutland Herald - Published: March 6, 2008
PITTSFORD — Google to the rescue.
If it wasn't for the popular Internet search engine, consultants may never have learned about the potential health risk of aminoethylethanolamine, or AEEA.
The chemical is a component of the flotation reagent that Omya Inc. uses to separate impurities from its calcium carbonate product at the Florence plant in Pittsford.
AEEA, which causes birth defects in laboratory rats, was found in groundwater on Omya's property. The chemical was also found in a nondrinking water spring on private property but at levels well below Vermont's safe drinking water standards of 20 parts-per-billion.
At a public meeting last Monday to discuss the findings of the 16-month Section 5 Study on the health and environmental impacts of Omya's operation, consultant Laura Green said the study team knew very little about AEEA until she did a Google search.
"Chemical companies that make this chemical started testing it back in 2002 and they learned in 2002 and then corroborated in '03 and '04 that (it) was surprisingly toxic to rat fetuses in their development," Green of Cambridge Environmental Inc., told those gathered last week at Lothrop School.
A 1979 federal law requires chemical companies to report such findings to the Environmental Protection Agency within 30 days, according to Green.
In fact, she said the chemical companies did report their findings to the EPA but that's where it stopped.
"The chemical companies never published any of this data," she said.
To compound the problem, Green said the EPA never shared that information with any other federal or state agencies. In effect, she said the studies filed with the EPA were relegated to an office at the agency never to see the light of day.
That's where they would have stayed, Green said, until she asked Google for some help.
"Thank God for Google," she said.
Last September, Green typed into the search engine the chemical identification number for AEEA: 111-41-1.
The search turned up hundreds of hits, which Green waded through until she found one hit that caught her attention. That hit, she said, was the report that documented that AEEA causes birth defects in laboratory rats.
"I mean we didn't know," she said. "We had been working on the project (Section 5 Study) for about a year at that point."
Green said Omya didn't know about the potential health risks of the chemical either."Not only did the chemical companies not publish it, they don't bother telling a lot of their customers," she said.
AEEA is soluble in water making it a potential serious health risk, Green said. The upside, she said, is that AEEA is also very biodegradable. The highest levels of AEEA are near the settling ponds where Omya deposits its marble waste or tailings. She said the further away from the waste pits, the less AEEA is found in groundwater and within 400 or so feet there are no detectable traces of AEEA.
What is troubling, she said, is that AEEA made its way off Omya's property.
"That's a little disquieting because that's private property and while it hasn't hurt anyone at those concentrations and no one drinks it … you'd kind of not like to see that at all," Green said.
She said the company has reduced the level of AEEA in its flotation reagent to about half the pervious level. She also said the company was working with its chemical supplier to eliminate it altogether, using a replacement chemical. But she added such an alternative may take time.
The Section 5 Study takes its name from the section of a 2005 law that mandated a look into the calcium carbonate company's human health and environmental impacts on the community.
Since the late 1970s, an estimated 2.5 million tons of marble waste has been deposited in old quarries. The independent $2.5 million study, paid for by Omya, concluded there is "no current threat to human health or the environment" and that "the potential for future threats appears small."
Contact Bruce Edwards at bruce.edwards@rutlandherald.com
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