Environmental endpoints

Volume ll/Number 4/April 1980

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Environmental Endpoints It has been about 30 years since there has been a recognition of the ability of human society to cause a widespread loss of or restricted use of marine resources through the entry of wastes. The understanding developed when scientists in the US, UK, and USSR became concerned about the introduction of the highly toxic, radioactive substances to the environment from the facilities used in the production of nuclear energy. Up to this time there had been a general acceptance of the use of the oceans as disposal space, During these past three decades a series of catastrophic events have identified other polluting materials entering the marine environment. Perhaps the most notorious incident involved the dischargeofmercurytoMinimataBay, Japan, by a chemical company engaged in the production of plastics and chemical intermediates. The mercury subsequently entered fish and shellfish. The consumption of these marine products by fishermen, their families and pets caused an epidemic of a neurological disease caused by methyl mercury. Over a hundred mortalities and a much greater number of morbidities resulted, In addition, financial and aesthetic resources of the oceans have been imperilled. The biocide Kepone was promiscuously released by a chemical plant to the James River, draining into southern Chesapeake Bay. This environmental insult was discovered after workers in the production area became ill through its ingestion. The Kepone contaminated the fish in the estuarine environment, resulting in a ban against their commercial harvesting. Losses of hundreds of millions of dollars to the fishing industry are estimated, The tar balls floating on the ocean's surface, the plastic litter on beaches and the soiling of our coastal zones with deliberately or accidentally released petroleum have made many seascapes less attractive, As a result of scientific intuition and of catastrophes, a large number of pollutants have been identified within the oceans. They can be categorized into nine groups: synthetic organic chemicals, oxidation products from the ozonation or chlorination of waste and cooling waters, artificial radionuclides, biostimulants such as phosphate and nitrate, micro-organisms, metals, fossil fuel derived compounds, litter and dredged materials. This awareness, coupled with monitoring activities, has reduced the possibility of additional catastrophic events. Nearly all of the identified pollutants in their present concentrations do not cause any apparent damage to the living or non-living resources of the sea or to humans through the consumption of fish and shellfish or through exposure in recreational areas. For others when pollution problems were identified, regulatory actions have reduced their fluxes to the oceans, Our concerns with marine pollution are part of a much larger and perhaps much more important p r o b l e m - a quantification of the ability of the oceans to accept a portion of the wastes of human societies. The peoples of the world utilize about three billion tons per year of mineral, foodand

forest products. Since the solid and liquid discards are in general not accumulated but are disposed, the identification of sites to accommodate these wastes is of paramount importance, especially if we wish to maintain environmental resources. The three options for waste receptacles are land, sea and air. Clearly, social and economic considerations must be coupled with scientific arguments to reach a decision as to the most reasonable disposal site for any given waste. An evaluation of the marine environment for waste disposal can only be made, I submit, with the caveat that the types and amounts of discharges must be regulated such that the resources of the oceans are kept in renewable states. Previous investigations of marine and terrestrial pollution problems provide guidance with respect to the possible disposal of benign and toxic wastes to the sea. The United Kingdom's regulation of radioactive wastes from the facilities in the nuclear fuel cycle to the Irish Sea have been effectively based upon the protection of human health from the ingestion of or exposure to artificially produced radionuclides. A most significant lesson has evolved from the banning of DDT and other pesticides on the basis of impacts upon non-target organisms. This action emphasized the concerns of society in protecting ecosystems as well as public health. The mercury tragedy in Minimata Bay, as well as the DDT story, established that scientists can reach an understanding of a critical pollution problem in the coastal zone and can propose remedial actions in times of decades or less. Finally, effective monitoring programmes have been devised to ascertain the health of the coastal ocean on both national and regional bases. Sentinel organisms such as bivalves and fish have been employed to provide measures of the exposurelevels of pollutants to the members of the marine biosphere. Historical records of pollution have been developed from studies of sediments. The assimilative capacity of a marine water body may be defined as that amount of a given material that can be contained within a body of seawater without producing an unacceptable impact, be it upon living organisms or upon the non-living resources. This amount, essentially determined by a titration of the polluting substances in the discharged material with the water body becomes evident at an endpoint. Pollutant concentrations that are determined before the endpoint are checkpoints. The identification of endpoints is clearly an important goal for environmental scientists. In pollution monitoring the endpoints have been determined for particular substances or groups of substances of like characteristics: the level of mercury in fish which are consumed by humans or the amounts of gamma emitting nuclides accumulated in beach areas which are frequented by people. Exposure levels in waters generally have been determined indirectly, primarily through the use of sentinel organisms, although directassayofconcentrationshavebeencarriedout. For the determination of the assimilative capacity, often the material to be discharged contains a number of pollutants, the analyses of which would be extremely costly. The collective impact of such materials upon the well-being of marine organisms can provide an endpoint. Already some biological effects are already well established, while others will require further assessment. Most important will be the development of novel techniques applicable to field use. A recent Workshop of US Scientists, at Crystal 85

Marine PollutionBulletin Mountain, Washington, in August 1979 concluded that the waste capacity of US coastal waters is not now fully utilized, based on assessments of four a r e a s - Puget Sound, the Southern California Bight, the New York Bight and Dumpsite 106 (off the eastern coast of the US). It further established that scientists can provide appropriate models which take into account physics, chemistry and biology to predict environmental concentrations of polluting substances in a given area. It now remains to provide easily measurable effects upon communities of organisms which can give us both endpoints and checkpoints in the titration of human discards with seawater,

EDWARD D. GOLDBERG

Canada: New tJeeaue, New Problems Canada is an oil exporting nation but distances are so great that the Atlantic provinces are fueled from OPEC rather than Alberta. The departure of 'our' supertanker from Kuwait in early January was headlined by the local press; now, Canadians were assured, they would not freeze in the dark before April. Small wonder that the gas field at Sable Island off Nova Scotia and the Hibernia oil strike on the Grand Banks are regarded with such interest - not lessened by Newfoundland Premier Brian Peckford's attempts to obtain federal recognition of provincial rights to offshore minerals, Because it was only 11 years ago that the first significant North Sea finds were made at Ekofisk, federal and provincial machinery in Atlantic Canada is rapidly adjusting itself to the significant possibility that they are on the edge of their own North Sea and that this will be the most significant global offshore development of the coming decade, as North SeawasoftheSeventies. Meanwhile, oil and gas exploration also proceeds actively throughout the Canadian Arctic. In 1979 a significant nnmberofexplorationwellswerespuddedalongtheshelfof Labrador and Baffin Island, in the Canadian arctic archipelago, and in the Beaufort Sea. With significant gas fields in the archipelago and oil off the Mackenzie Delta already under their belts, the members of APOA (Arctic Petroleum Operators Association) are investing heavily in the continuing search, while exploratory drilling continues on the Grand Banks throughout the present winter. The technological problems of exploring, evaluating, producing and transporting products under arctic conditions are novel and formidable; as the North Sea was to the Gulf of Mexico, so offshore Canada is to the North Sea; only the wave climate is less severe in the northwest than in the northeast Atlantic. The new problems resolve themselves, of course, simply into great distances, low temperatures and ice. Icebergs scour continental shelves to considerable d e p t h s - so how can pipelines safely be brought ashore? Sea ice, not to speak of icebergs or moving pressure ridges, exerts enormous horizontal pr~sure on objects placed in its p a t h - s o how to design arctic drill platforms? There are no industrial or population centres within thousands of miles of some potential production 86

sites - so how to respond rapidly to emergencies without extremely expensive stockpiling of material? And where is the manpower that was so massively deployed in coastal clean-up after Amoco Cadiz, Kurdistan, and the Santa Barbara blow-out? APOA members are investing heavily in exploration equipment and arctic engineering R & D often in partnership with the federal government through such organizations as the Joint Government/Industry Steering Committee on Problems of Arctic Hydrocarbon Development which is currently investigatingicescourandpermafrostproblems, as well as the impact of development on indigenous communities of Inuit people in the north. Meanwhile, Dome Petroleum launched a new phase of its ice research programme in the Beaufort Sea in 1979 with the commissioning of its new Arctic Class 4 icebreaker Kigoriak. APOA research projects cover a range of projects unthought of a decade ago: the use of artificial islands for drill rigs in shoal water (16 have already been constructed in the Beaufort); techniques for towing icebergs that may come blundering through production areas; the design of concrete monocones of huge dimension and weight to serve as drilling platforms in ice-covered waters; and the phenomenon of what has come to be called 'adfreeze', or the rendering of objects top-heavy by freezing spray. Heavy demands associated with all this activity are coming to be placed on Canadian oceanographers and hydrographers. Under the legislative arrangement that places responsibility for development beyond 60 ° N in the hands of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, all projects must be covered by environmental impact assessment of some formality. In the last several years or so a flood of EIS's has started to wash around Ottawa and the government research laboratories; PetroCanada's Arctic Pilot Project to test the validity of transporting natural gas from Melville Island (75°N) by LNG tanker through Lancaster Sound and Baffin Bay to one of our Atlantic ports is one of the larger projects currently passing through the Federal Environmental Assessment Review Office. Much more immediate and short-term are the assessments of the impact of individual exploratory drilling permits in Lancaster Sound, Davis Strait and the Baffin Island and Labrador coasts. South of 60°N, environmental impact assessment is a less formalized dialogue between the proponent and a clutch of federal departments; permits to continue exploratory drilling on the Grand Banks are the latest to pass through this filter, where the lead is taken by the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources. Industry, government and the universities are all responding to the demand for information, advice and assessment of environmental impacts quite separately from the major efforts put into new exploration and production technology for an untried environment. Effort has been very significantly diverted northwards by the government agencies, most urgently in response to the demand for safe navigation in the very sparsely charted north; Department of Transport icebreakers and survey ships of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans are hard at work each summer surveying narrow channels for large tankers in the arctic, and reviewing the Newfoundland and Labrador outports in expectation of the demands of the supply boats for the offshore industry to come. Oceanographers and wildlife biologists are laying the ground-work required to