FINALLY! After five long years, Heal the Ocean launches our California Ocean Wastewater Discharge Report and Inventory!
We started the research for this report when we had an entirely different staff, and were located in an entirely different office. We have announced so many times that we were “nearly ready to release” this report that some people have most certainly thought to themselves, “Oh, sure…”
Why did it take so long?
First of all, the information about wastewater treatment plant operations in the State of California does not exist in any one place. Wastewater treatment plant methods of reporting according to requirements of their National Pollution Discharge Elimination System Discharge (NPDES) permits are not standardized, each report submitted to EPA has different information than the next treatment plant. Regional water quality control boards failed to have information or reports.
Heal the Ocean researchers plugged along with this problem for years, and our California Ocean Wastewater Discharge Report and Inventory contains accurate information for each wastewater treatment plant that discharges into the Pacific Ocean, from the Oregon border to San Diego/Tijuana! HTO intends this report be a valuable resource for the public agencies charged with ocean water quality, as well as an educational tool for wastewater regulators and policy makers.
Another reason for our elongated research time was that the information kept changing - and growing, and growing. And in a quite horrific way. While our focus was (and is) on bacteria that make our beaches unhealthy for swimming, the looming problem of chemicals in the ocean moved into our target range - and every day the subject grew larger, before our eyes. All of us had been hearing about endocrine disruptors causing sea animals to change sex, the proliferation of tumors in fish and about antibiotics making their way into the sea and posing a very real threat to swimmers, who could possibly pick up antibiotic resistance if they swam into these drugs.
Then, the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) appointed a special panel to look at the problem of these proliferating chemicals that make their way into the ocean undeterred by currently accepted wastewater treatment methods. Called “Contaminants of Emerging Concern” (CECs), these chemicals are included in almost any personal care product you buy. They are in shampoo, toothpaste, body lotions, aftershaves, baby lotions, and particularly in anti-bacterial soap. They are in knives, cutting boards, shoes - you name it. The picture is horrifying - not only for what is happening to our environment from these chemicals - but what we have been, unwittingly, putting on and into our bodies all these years!
HTO research associate Katherine Engel and I attended the SWRCB) panel hearings on CECs, hosted by the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP) in Costa Mesa. Katherine researched deeper into the subject of Personal Care Products and prepared a list of the most suspect chemicals - what products they are included in and why, and what health dangers each one poses to humans (as well as the environment). Day by day, we were aghast at what we were learning as a result of Katherine’s research. Her companion piece to our Report and Inventory is called “Bad for the Ocean, Bad for You…” - be sure you read it!
Also, please read her essay, “Personal Care Products - A Researcher’s Journey,” about how she personally felt as she discovered how chemical companies have bamboozled society for so long. Be sure to read this one, too!
Along the way I decided to take advantage of Katherine’s research and brought into the office two products I’d been using - a really expensive shampoo with a “pure” name I’d bought from the last hair stylist I’d gone to, and a hand/body lotion I’d been using for years. I plunked these two things on Katherine’s desk and asked her to give me a diagnosis of both.
Here’s what was in the shampoo, which I’d been daily massaging into my scalp: PVP, Butylene glycol (similar to Propylene glycol (PG), PEG-55 Propylene Glycoloeate, Cyclopentasiloxane, PEG-12 dimethicone (dimethicone), Trienthanolamine (TEA); Retinyl palmitate; Me
Methylchloroisoiazolinone (I’m not making this up); DMDM Hydantoin; Methylparaben; Perfume/fragrance; Yellow 5 (CI 19140); Yellow 6 (CI 15985) “Sunset Yellow”; and Titanium dioxide (CI 77891).
The hand/body lotion? Dimethicone; Distearyldimonium chloride; Steareth-21; Propylene glycol; Polysorbate 60; Dipotassium EDTA; Perfume/Fragrance; Triethanolamine (TEA); Diazolidinyl urea; Methylparaben and Propylparaben.
WELL! When I got home I took all of my personal care products - including one jar of face cream that cost $124 (!) - and put all of it into a paper bag for…for…I don’t know what. It is not good to throw these things down the drain, and landfills aren’t great either for disposing failed chemistry experiments.) Then I went to a few stores that sold a wide array of shampoos, lotions, facial formulas. Their labels have lovely pronounceable words, like lavender, fennel, coconut oil, and jojoba.
Heal the Ocean will be taking our Report and Inventory on the road, so to speak. We will be talking to state water agencies, politicians, experts and regulators. And while we’re at it, we will be encouraging all of you, our dear members, to free yourselves from chemicals. Read your labels! By discontinuing the use of chemicals, you will find yourselves empowered by making a wise change in direction for you and your family’s health. You will also be exercising an immediate remedy to one big problem of ocean pollution - by enacting what is called “source control.” This is something you can do immediately! Today! We thank you for joining us in this campaign.
Thank you for helping,
