Trash Study Ignores Peril, Critics Claim Assurances About Garbage Incinerator Can’T Be Trusted, Foundation Says

A Spokane environmental foundation has trashed a recently completed study of Spokane’s garbage incinerator, saying the public can’t trust the study’s assurances that the plant is safe.

The Northwest Environmental Education Foundation says the study ignores the plant’s biggest potential danger - hazardous dioxin in burning garbage that enters the food chain in beef, dairy products and fish.

Washington state and Spokane officials didn’t deliver on their promises of an objective study, said Tim Connor, the foundation’s chief researcher and an author of a book on community epidemiology.

“This study was not worth the $300,000 spent on it. It represents a breach of trust with Spokane. I’ve seen many bad studies, but this one takes the cake,” Connor said at a City Hall press conference Friday.

In May, the state Board of Health asked the Spokane foundation to review the controversial study by scientist Kathryn Kelly, a Ph.D. toxicologist hired by a Spokane advisory committee in 1990.

The state Department of Health is also conducting a review of the state-funded study, which will be finished in late August.

Damon Taam, the city’s trash plant supervisor, listened to the foundation’s critique on Friday. He said he couldn’t respond until the state review is complete this summer.

“Because of the criticism, we’ve asked for the Health Department’s review,” he said.

Kelly could not be reached for comment Friday. In a March letter to Gov. Gary Locke, she defended her work and blamed the criticism on “a few vocal members of the community.”

“I am simply the messenger conveying the results,” she told Locke.

The foundation disagrees. “We think the scientist’s point of view can make a difference,” said Dr. Michael McCarthy, a children’s lung specialist and the foundation’s president.

While Kelly’s risk assessment used an acceptable scientific approach, she ignored data she could have included and may have underestimated the plant’s hazards, Connor said.

For instance, she didn’t study dioxin levels in cows grazing just north of the plant near Highway 2, in the path of the incinerator emissions.

To make its point, the group displayed a large photo - taken a week ago - of a herd of cattle grazing with the plant’s smokestack in the background.

Kelly excluded dioxin uptake in beef, fish and milk, which represents 98 percent of the dioxin that people absorb into their bodies, Connor said.

Dioxin has been linked to birth defects, chloracne and some cancers and also is suspected of causing endocrine system disruptions in animals and people at extremely low concentrations. Garbage incinerators are a major source of dioxin nationwide.

Other studies of trash incinerators have included dioxin accumulation in dairy and animal products, Connor said.

Kelly does mention dioxin uptake in breast milk, largely due to public concerns in Spokane that nursing mothers were excluded from the study, Connor said.

But her calculations omit dioxin in infants - and minimize it in the nursing mothers because of her exclusion of the beef and dairy pathways, the foundation says.

In Kelly’s study, “the breast-feeding mom is a lactose-intolerant vegetarian,” Connor said.

Despite growing national concerns about dioxin as an endocrine disruptor, “there’s not one word in her study on this,” Connor said.” Kelly’s work has generated controversy for several reasons.

While working on the Spokane incinerator study, she also worked as an industry lobbyist and consultant, clashing with Montana and Texas regulators over the safety of incineration. She also developed a personal relationship with Phil Williams, the city’s former engineering director and trash plant supervisor.

Last November, City Manager Bill Pupo fired Williams over the controversy, saying he’d lost confidence in him.

Kelly also wrote a 1995 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal attacking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to tighten dioxin standards. Her column drew a sharp rebuke from the chairman of the EPA’s science advisory board.

The incinerator study was a condition of a $60 million state grant to help build Spokane’s trash incinerator and close its leaking landfills. The project cost $134 million.

The Washington state Department of Ecology insisted on the study to reassure Spokane citizens of the trash plant’s safety at a time when similar projects were being canceled nationwide.

Now that the Spokane study is in trouble, the state Health Board should propose stricter conflict of interest guidelines for future studies, Connor said.

Ecology deserves some blame for going along with Kelly’s selection when it controlled the purse strings, Connor said.

“This was a state grant, and they let an (industry) advocate in. It’s preposterous to think she could deliver a credible report,” Connor said.

Ecology had nothing to do with picking Kelly, said Ecology spokeswoman Jani Gilbert.

“This was Spokane’s responsibility,” she said.