In the hours following the announcement that Pactiv Evergreen’s paper mill property in Canton may have a new owner in the coming months, news came and fast and furious.

Pactiv Evergreen, owner of the shuttered papermill in Canton, has been working to clean up two separate seeps leaking toxic substances into the Pigeon River under an administrative order of consent (AOC) with the Environmental Protection Agency. 

March 1 marked the beginning of the 2024 ozone season as state and local environmental agencies renew their daily air quality forecasts for ozone across North Carolina. 

A recent update to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule directs nearly all of the nation’s water systems to conduct an inventory of service lines by October, checking for the presence of lead pipes due to their well-established health risks. 

The present administration is no friend to the environment. 

In a New York Times analysis, which was based on data from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, the Times reported more than 90 environmental rules and/or regulations had been or were in the process of being rolled back. According to the report, 58 rollbacks had already occurred and 37 were in process. 

If you want the opportunity to have knowledge about and input on actions, policies and/or decisions affecting property you own, you need to speak up now. The present administration and the USDA Forest Service announced, in June, plans to “streamline” the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) protocols when it comes to actions receiving federal funding on federal lands, which the public owns.

A multi-year effort by Burnsville Republican Rep. Michele Presnell to scrap vehicle emissions testing requirements in more than two dozen North Carolina counties finally got the green light from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

Our new denier-in-chief believes “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

It’s been 32 years since Benfield Industries in Hazelwood burned to the ground, 25 since the Environmental Protection Agency designated it as a Superfund site and 13 since cleanup on the site finished. 

But the work’s not done, according to the most recent EPA monitoring. The agency is hoping that its latest remediation plan for the former chemical distribution company site will take care of creosote contamination in Hazelwood once and for all. 

Despite years of negative publicity surrounding the contamination of soil at Barber’s Orchard, the actual health risk posed by the soil is miniscule, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The only health hazard comes from eating the soil, not just once or twice accidentally, but on a regular basis for 30 years.

“It’s 30 years of eating two grams of dirt per day,” said Jon Bornholm with the Environmental Protection Agency. “Kids were the main concerns because they are the ones more likely to eat some dirt.”

Consuming Barber’s Orchard dirt at that rate would increase the risk of getting cancer by one in 10,000, or by .01 percent.

According to the American Cancer Society, more than 30 percent of adults will get cancer. Eating dirt daily from Barber’s Orchard for 30 years would bump a person up from a 30 percent to a 30.01 percent chance of getting cancer.

There is no risk from touching the dirt, inhaling the dirt, eating vegetables grown in the dirt or eating livestock that grazed on the site — but only from direct and repeated digestion.

Monkeys to the rescue

Pollution in the soil varies from higher concentrations to none at all. Figuring out how much was too much was not easy. Could soil with only the slightest trace amounts be left where it is, or did it all have to go?

To answer that question researchers bagged up soil from Barber’s Orchard and sent it off to a lab where it was fed to monkeys. The monkeys were then studied to determine how much arsenic from the soil was actually absorbed into their blood stream. Pigs were also fed doses of the Barber’s Orchard soil.

The study equaled good news for taxpayers’ wallets. It turned out the absorption of arsenic from eating the soil was less than originally thought. The threshold for acceptable arsenic level was lowered from 40 parts per million to 80 parts per million.

That in turn downwardly revised how much soil had to be removed, from 117 acres to only 88 acres. And the price tag on the project fell from an estimated $24 million to $15 million.