In the 1980s, an oceanic exploration team led by Dr. Robert Ballard attempted the impossible: to discover the wreck of the ill-fated Titanic. The Titanic – whose tale has been recapped in books, movies, and other avenues of popular culture since its tragic maiden voyage in 1912 – would be found at depths over 13,000 feet below sea level in the North Atlantic, meaning specialized deep-sea diving equipment had to be built to withstand pressures of roughly 15 pounds per square inch (PSI). After following two failed expeditions in 1981 and 1984 led by Jack Grimm, Ballard managed to gather investments from the US Navy to build an unmanned submersible robot which would be tethered to his ship by a sturdy cable “leash.” Rather than go off of the triangulated position of the Titanic’s last-known distress signal as his colleagues had done before him, Ballard realized a new method may work better. Rather than searching for the Titanic along the unmapped seabed as a “needle in a haystack,” Ballard surmised that ship wrecks – including the Titanic – would litter the seabed with debris as it sank. Wrecks in shallow waters would sink more or less vertically to the ocean floor, but as the Titanic sank nearly 2.5 miles down, the debris area from the colossal vessel had to be much larger.

Ballard’s hypothesis was correct, and on September 1st, 1985, an obstruction came into view of the submersible drone’s camera: a boiler. Ballard and his team followed the trail of bread crumbs as they appeared in shapes of warped rusted metal until the hull of the Titanic came into view.

One of the Titanic’s many boilers in the underwater debris field.

Dr. Ballard’s discovery rooted him in history as perhaps the most famous deep-sea explorer of our age. He continues to explore unmapped areas of the world’s oceans and is intrigued with what we can learn from the waters covering 70% of our planet, as only 5% of Earth’s oceans have been explored.

While Ballard’s expeditions continue to uncover the mysteries of the depths below our planet’s surface, he is not the first to conduct them, nor has he explored the deepest-known area of the ocean floor: the Mariana Trench.

The Mariana Trench mapped by the dark ridge on the eastern edge of the Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Located on the border of the western Pacific Ocean and the eastern Philippine Sea, south of Japan and north of Papa New Guinea, the Mariana Trench is a 1,500 mile long, 40 mile wide crescent-shaped scar along the ocean floor. The Trench’s deepest point known as Challenger Deep lies some 7 miles below the surface. To put this in perspective, if you dropped Mt. Everest into Challenger Deep, the summit would still be more than a mile below the waves – so deep that sunlight could not reach it.

The Challenger Deep is named for the H.M.S. Challenger, a British vessel which first measured depths of the Trench to be 5 fathoms (roughly 4,475 feet) in 1875. That’s 28 years before the Wright brothers had their first successful flight in 1903 and 37 years before the Titanic set sail and sank in 1912. Another British vessel, aptly named Challenger II returned to the area in 1951 and measured the Challenger Deep to be closer to 7 miles below the surface using echo-sound mapping technology. Finally, in 1960, the Trieste submersible vessel reached the pitch-black depths of the Trench floor, measuring in at “6,300 fathoms” or 7.15 miles below the surface where the water temperature was measured to be 38 degrees Fahrenheit with pressures of 16,000 pounds or 8 tons PSI.

Despite the tremendous pressures, near-freezing temperatures, and distinct lack of any sunlight for over 6 miles through the water above, the two-man crew of the Trieste saw something incredible in this unforgiving environment: life. A single fish estimated to be some 18 inches in length appeared through the murk. Even in the darkest depths ever measured in Earth’s ocean, and despite the mere 20 minutes the Trieste spent along the Trench floor, the crew confirmed for themselves signs of life at 7 miles below the surface of the ocean. To quote Jeff Goldblum, “Life…finds a way.”

Photos of new species of deep-sea creatures found during Cameron’s 2012 dive.

Over 50 years later in 2012, famed movie director James Cameron would make a similar descent, but this time with lights and hi-definition cameras attached to the Deepsea Challenger submersible vessel. While most of the recorded footage did not obtain much media attention at the time due to “copyright protective coverings,” there were audio recordings from the depths that were available. Jennifer Frazer explains in her Scientific American article from April 2013 that through piecing bits of the two sources together she was able to detail some aspects of what was found at the bottom of the Trench.

“Amphipods…that fit in the team’s traps maxed out at 17 cm [long]. The ones that couldn’t reached 30. That’s one foot long.” Along with these large shrimp-like creatures were, “sea cucumbers…[which] specialize in roving the abyssal plains of the world, harvesting food from the sediment.” Eerily, these sea cucumbers, “were all pointed in the same direction,” and, “appeared to be frozen in place. The only thing that ever seemed to move were their feeding appendages.”

“A photo taken in 2009 by the unmanned submersible Nereus showing creatures at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.”

A brief video of some of the footage from the dive also showed a jellyfish as well as irregularly shaped structures resembling “crushed sand castles” home to Foraminifera, microscopic organisms which to an extent resemble large amoebas. What’s particularly interesting about these organisms, however, is that the “crushed sand castle” structure is actually a multitube network of these organisms allowing them to function similarly to as fungi would on land – working with bacteria in the abyssal zone to decompose organic compounds and return the minerals in these compounds to the sediment and gases to the water column. In short, it could be theorized that the presence of these organisms is what allows other species of life to grow and flourish at such depths by releasing oxygen gas back into the water.

Natalya Gallo, then a first-year graduate student of biological oceanography at Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UCSD, was a member of Cameron’s dive team. She estimated there may be 50-100 different species of Foraminifera in the Challenger Deep alone, and that’s not counting other species of micro-organisms.

Approaching this hypothesis from a scientific perspective means there must be one commonality across all forms of life in the Mariana Trench allowing them to thrive there. Food.

Organisms such as these commensal amphipods in the Mariana Trench feed off of scraps which are carried down from shallower oceanic regions.

The western Pacific Ocean is not primarily known for an abundance of food sources miles below the surface. Gallo claims that due to the distance from land and relatively inactive waters (compared to other oceanic areas) means that any bottom-dwelling life form making its home along the bottom of the Trench have mastered the ability to survive on scraps of any and everything they can get. The same holds true for the nearby New Britain Trench off the coast of Papa New Guinea. Although not as deep as the Mariana Trench (averaging roughly 4 miles deep compared to the Mariana’s 11 miles), this does allow for greater biodiversity in the New Britain trench, which in turn allows for more diverse sources of food. As Gallo is quoted in Frazer’s article, “the tale of these two trenches is a story of food.”

Likewise, New Britain Trench’s closer proximity to the landmass of Papa New Guinea makes it easier for debris from land to be eventually end up at the bottom of the Trench. “Palm fronds, leaves, sticks, and even coconuts” were seen by Gallo and other marine scientists from dive footage of the New Britain Trench. This debris is part of what attracts a broader range of marine life. Similarly, the scraps of this and other debris is carried away via oceanic current and underwater tectonic plate activity to other, deeper areas – including the Mariana Trench.

If we can understand how naturally-occurring debris such as plant material can originate on land and eventually end up miles below the ocean surface, we can then begin to understand how the same process can apply to other land-based materials. In particular, non-biodegradable materials that cannot be used as food by marine life. More definitively: man-made pollution.

Plastics and other man-made debris in the oceans have caused the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to become three times the size of France.

Any quick internet search including the words “ocean” and “trash” will result in an overwhelming number of articles and images detailing and showing the staggering amount of plastic and other waste we as humans have produced and allowed to wind up in our oceans. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a coalesced mass of plastic garbage now twice as large as Texas. The Patch was first discovered in 1997 by Charles Moore, who was sailing home to California from Hawaii when he, “was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic.”

And that’s just a piece of the problem.

In 2015, scientists estimated there to be some 5.25 trillion – with a “T” – pieces of plastic polluting the ocean, with nearly 270,000 tons of that floating on the surface. Below the waves, scientists believe there to be four billion pieces of microplastics per square kilometer on the floor of the deep sea.

Let’s recap real quick. Modern estimates of the Earth’s entire surface area, both underwater and on land, is said to be roughly 196.9 million square-miles, or 510 million square-kilometers. If we estimate Earth’s surface to be 70% covered by water, that means that there are 357 million square-kilometers of ocean floor, each one, potentially littered with four billion microplastics. Now, while I’m not sure off the top of my head what a number that large is called, I can show you what it looks like.

1,428,000,000,000,000,000,000 pieces of plastic across the ocean floors of the planet. Just plastic.

Not just debris – a crab has gotten tangled in plastic on the ocean floor.

We humans as a species have formed increasingly bad habits with disposing of our waste and its byproducts. If you read back through our previous blog blurbs and posts, it becomes quite clear that from the late 1800s through the 1970s and 1980s – before we were able to learn and know as much as we do know about the impact our actions have on our planet – it was largely assumed that waste runoff into rivers and lakes would eventually find its way to the ocean, where nature would “deal with it” in one way or another. This has yet to happen.

Debris from land can be carried out to sea and find its way to the sea bottom. Plastic has now shown to behave the same way. The difference between the two is that one is useful and biodegradable while the other, not being a naturally occurring substance doesn’t degrade when left to open exposure in the environment. Plastic is far from the only substance guilty of this behavior. Along with man-made plastics, a variety of man-made chemicals are unable to biodegrade naturally. Especially chemical compounds whose structure and physical nature cause them to be innately hydrophobic and therefore indissoluble in water.

In February of 2017, the results of a scientific study on the creatures which live in the Mariana Trench found that species of amphipods, smaller but similar to those Cameron’s team found during their 2012 dive to Challenger Deep, were contaminated with concentrations of PCBs, “50 times [higher] than crabs that survive in heavily polluted rivers in China.” The research team led by Alan Jamieson of Newcastle University in England found that the canyon slopes leading down into the Mariana Trench were littered with items of plastic garbage published their study in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal. The study suggests, similarly to Gallo’s observations and research on the ecosystems in the Mariana Trench, that POPs including PCBs – much like land debris and plastic waste – manage to infiltrate the deepest depths of the ocean as they are carried there over periods of time by currents, tectonic activity, as well as through dead and decomposing organisms which sink to the seabed upon death.

A depiction of “Whale Fall” when whales die, fall to the abyssal zone of the ocean, and are consumed by smaller marine animals.

We here at ecoSPEARS have talked at length more months now how PCBs are hydrophobic and unable to dissolve naturally in water. Instead, they tend to find their way into sediments and are consumed by marine organisms. These organisms are eaten by larger organisms, which are eaten by fish which in turn are eaten by larger fish, which are then consumed by even larger apex marine predators such as sea lions and orcas. This process is called biomagnification or bioaccumulation.

PCBs are accumulated in fat when consumed, so larger predatory creatures with higher percentages of fatty tissue accumulate more dangerous concentrations of PCBs. When these creatures die and sink to the seabed, their bodies begin to decompose. This process of decomposition is expedited with the help of smaller lifeforms that make their home on and near the ocean floor including crustaceans, amphipods, and microscopic organisms. Since PCBs cannot dissolve or otherwise be naturally destroyed in the environment, these organisms all receive the accumulated concentration of PCBs the larger animal was contaminated with at the time of its death.

“The very bottom of the deep trenches like the Mariana are inhabited by incredibly efficient scavenging animals,” Jamieson said in response to his research findings, “so any little bit of organic material that falls down, these guys turn up in huge numbers and devour it.” Jamieson’s words mirror Gallo’s in response to her research on lifeforms in the Mariana Trench.

A year prior to Jamieson’s research being published, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that the slopes of the Sirena Deep – the canyon leading down into the Mariana Trench – were littered with other man-made garbage items including plastic bags and empty cans of food and beer.

A tin of Spam nearly 5,000 meters below the surface on the canyon slopes leading down to the Mariana Trench.

It seems that the ways in which both pollutants and non-pollutants eventually make their way to the depths of ocean are remarkably (if not, exactly) the same. Taking all of this research into account, we can begin to piece together the bigger picture of exactly how such tremendous amounts of human waste, pollution, and contamination works its way over decades from its origin point to more than 11 miles below sea level. As miraculous as it is to find such an abundance of thriving ecosystems in what might be the most unforgiving conditions on our planet, it is equally disturbing and disheartening to realize that our own pollution is so persistent that it remains as potent and dangerous today as it was forty, fifty or more years ago.

This is exactly the reason why our team here at ecoSPEARS relies on and builds upon education and awareness in everything we do. If there is little-to-no general awareness to a problem or the scale of it, how do you begin to engage with unaware populations? There’s no simple or easy answer to this question. But when we look back through history, we can see that whenever a population of people becomes aware of a problem, they are able to band together to fight for a solution.

Even Dr. Ballard during his famous expedition to find the Titanic knew that to find the wreckage, to learn from it and to expand upon that learning, he had to educate and engage with enough people to help reach that legendary milestone together. Prior to this, failed expeditions had rendered the endeavor “impossible.” But as Nelson Mandela famously said, “It always seems impossible until it is done.”

The PCB problem we have created and face as a species isn’t going away on its own. Even with billions of dollars being funneled into PCB remediation every year by hundreds of companies and agencies worldwide, there remains so much more work to be done. As an individual, recognizing the existence of a problem is the most important first step you can take, but it’s only the first step. No one has ever changed the world by themselves. It takes a team. It takes a community to help each other in order to achieve the change they want to see in the world. The larger the problem they face, the larger their community needs to be. And this problem is one we all face. It will require all of us together to recognize, address, and ultimately solve the problem.

But that first step always begins with you. Thanks for reading.

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Want to learn more about ecoSPEARS? Our technology can help your community clean PCBs, PAHs, dioxins, and other contaminants from water and soil.

Email our team to let us know where we can help!

Read our study done with NASA and Golder Associates.

Read about the first ever field study done with SPEARS technology.

Interested in meeting our team? ecoSPEARS will be attending the following conferences and trade shows:

August 22-24, 2018: Georgia Environmental Conference

Jekyll Island, GA

In our ongoing quest to safeguard the environment, ecoSPEARS turns the spotlight on a group of insidious environmental villains: Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). These include notorious chemicals like Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDTs), Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), dioxins, and others. This blog post delves into the nature of these toxins, their impact, and our commitment to combating them.

The Chemistry of POPs

POPs, including DDTs and PCBs, share a common trait: their formidable chemical structures. PCBs, for instance, consist of biphenyl molecules attached to chlorine atoms. This structure grants them a notorious persistence in the environment. DDTs, similarly, are composed of chlorine atoms and phenyl rings, making them equally persistent and harmful.

DDTs: From Pesticides to Pollutants

Once hailed as a miracle pesticide, DDT’s dark side was exposed in Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” This chemical, used extensively for agricultural and disease control purposes, was eventually banned in the US in 1972. Its persistence in the environment and its bioaccumulation in wildlife and humans have had devastating effects, particularly on bird species like the Peregrine Falcon and Bald Eagle.

PAHs: The Ubiquitous Hydrocarbons

PAHs, another group of POPs, are organic compounds that can assume various structures while retaining their basic properties. Benzene, often considered an “honorary PAH,” exemplifies their stability and persistence. These hydrocarbons, found in fossil fuel emissions, pose significant health risks, including cancer and immune system damage.

Dioxins: The Durable Toxins

Dioxins, like TCDD, are highly stable and difficult to break down, accumulating in the food chain and causing long-term health issues. Their presence in incidents like the Seveso factory accident and their use in Agent Orange during the Vietnam War highlight their far-reaching and persistent nature.

ecoSPEARS’ Mission Against POPs

At ecoSPEARS, we understand the gravity of the POPs challenge. Our mission is to provide innovative solutions to eliminate these toxins from our environment. We believe in a holistic approach, combining scientific research, community engagement, and cutting-edge technology to tackle these pollutants head-on.

Conclusion

The journey to a cleaner, healthier planet is long but achievable. The resurgence of species like the Peregrine Falcon and Bald Eagle is a testament to the positive impact of environmental action. At ecoSPEARS, we are committed to this journey, aiming to give our waterways and lands a second chance at life. Join us in this crucial endeavor to protect our planet and future generations from the invisible threat of POPs.

For months our team has shared a string of articles focusing on polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). These toxic cancer-causing chemicals are organic man-made compounds originally used in electronic appliances, fire retardants, paints, and other industrial materials for nearly fifty years during the 20th-century. The chemical nature of PCBs causes them to be hydrophobic (non-dissoluble in water) making them highly persistent and nearly impossible to destroy once they enter our ecosystems.

The only options currently in practice to deal with PCBs are dredging and capping. Dredging the environment requires a specialized barge vessel with specialized machinery to dig up and dispose of sediment contaminated with PCBs. The dredged sediment is then moved to a designated landfill and “monitored.” Capping involves building a large “cap” of soil and ore to place over the PCB contamination.

Neither of these options removes PCBs from the environment, and neither solution has the ability to destroy PCBs. Both involve years of man-hours, hundreds of millions (or in some cases billions) of dollars spent on the cleanup project, followed by a series of reports published detailing the cleanup process and all involved stakeholders crossing their fingers that the PCBs don’t continue to leech into the surrounding soil or groundwater. Oftentimes when a cleanup project has legally concluded but PCB contamination lingers at the site, community officials will call for more dredging to be done.

More dredging isn’t the answer to the problem, more dredging only stirs up more sediment which resuspends more PCBs into the ecosystem. Imagine crashing your car, so you go and buy a new one only to purposefully crash the new car in order to compare how much better your garage looks without a car in it. It’s an asinine answer to a persistent and deadly issue.

Capping isn’t any more a solution to PCB contamination than a band-aid is to a severed artery, and “monitored natural recovery” is the environmental remediation equivalent of, “don’t call us, we’ll call you…in five years. Give or take. It depends. We’re busy people.”

As it stands the current status quo of PCB contamination and its harmful effects on us, our wildlife, our land and our water is nothing other than unacceptable. Production of PCBs have been banned for over forty years but their very nature allows them cycle through our environment until they’re consumed or otherwise absorbed by living organisms.

Will we allow another forty years to pass while passing a blind eye to the deadly toxins leeching into our sources of food, water, and air? Oh, yeah. You read that right. Our air. PCBs in some areas including the Hudson River in New York and New Bedford Harbor in Massachusetts have been allowed to sit for so long that they’re becoming airborne.

Communities afflicted by PCB-related illnesses are long overdue for closure. Our team here at ecoSPEARS is simply presenting a new solution to an old problem.

Every other week we will publish an original blog entry highlighting a specific community and the issues they face from PCBs and other deadly toxins. Today we’re going to look into the Hudson River Valley and the decades-long fight its citizens have waged to reclaim their health and the health of their environment.

“GE Factory at Fort Edward overlooking the Hudson River” (source: NPR file photo/innovationtrail.org – October 11, 2013)

In 2015, GE submitted all necessary paperwork to the federal Environmental Protection Agency saying they had adhered to the terms of a PCB remediation cleanup along a portion of the Upper Hudson River. The cleanup took six years and cost the corporation $1.7 billion (USD). The project saw teams working around the clock to dredge a 40-mile stretch of the Upper Hudson, 200 miles of which is a designated US Superfund site. Dredging was done in two phases and ultimately removed roughly 2.75 million cubic-yards of PCB-contaminated sediment from the bottom of the Hudson. Soon after completion, GE set plans in motion to close and eventually demolish two manufacturing plants in Hudson Falls and Fort Edwards, NY which were the primary sources of PCBs throughout the Hudson River Valley.

While all dredging operations were done by GE, independent teams of scientists provided analysis on sediment and water samples gathered to verify contamination levels and the EPA provided all oversight of the massive project. In 2017, GE became eligible for a Certificate of Completion by the EPA after the EPA’s five-year review of the project’s conclusion despite public outcry for more work to be done as concentrations of PCBs collected from thousands of samples along the Hudson remained hundreds of times higher than what is allowed by the state of New York.

As of January 2, 2018, the EPA has opted to freeze the project’s status of “completed” and days later said the agency would work with the DEC of New York to collect, analyze, and evaluate thousands of more samples from the lower Hudson River and nearby floodplains.

Although the decision is opposed by GE, it is supported by many environmentalists, activists, and especially New York officials including Governor Andrew Cuomo and DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos. “It is clear from the state’s ongoing research that EPA’s job is not done and they cannot declare that this remediation is complete,” Seggos said in November of 2017 prior to the EPA’s decision on the project’s status.

In January, both Seggos and Cuomo agreed that more dredging must be done to truly finish the project and GE’s lasting impact on the ecosystem of New York state for good.

It was around this same time that our very own John Omana, Director of Government Affairs and Land Use Entitlement for ecoSPEARS, called Commissioner Seggos’s office. “We’re going to help clean the Hudson River,” Omana said, “without dredging.”

More dredging isn’t the answer: it’s merely the best option out of a list of non-conclusive options to pull more PCBs from the riverbed. But a problem addressed is already half-solved. ecoSPEARS is currently positioned to close that gap to help afflicted communities rid themselves of PCBs for good.

Our company’s patented SPEARS technology, invented by NASA, provides an innovative and sustainable method to not only remove PCBs from soil and groundwater, but also to destroy them. Forever.

Prototype six-inch (6?) SPEARS used for deployment in our 2016 field test study with Golder Associates.

Forty years after their production being banned, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and the health defects they cause are still affecting our communities. Minden, an old coal mining town in West Virginia was recently labeled “the most toxic town” in the United States. Last December the EPA released a list of twenty-one Superfund sites being targeted for “immediate” and “intense” cleanup initiatives. Just last April in 2017, a report issued by The Guardian showed PCBs had been found in marine organisms 10,000 meters below the surface of the Pacific Ocean within the Mariana trench. The concentration of PCBs found there were “50 times greater” than crabs living near one of China’s most polluted waterways, the Liaohe River.

But how do PCBs find their way from a manufacturing plant in upstate New York to an ecosystem nearly 8,000 miles away, and six miles below sea level?

“PCBs tend to ‘biomagnify’ or ‘bioaccumulate’ over time,” says Dr. Phillip Maloney, co-inventor of the SPEARS technology at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. After being manufactured and dumped into bodies of water, “organisms lower on the food chain are contaminated by PCBs which are then later consumed by animals higher on the food chain. Over time, these animals higher on the food chain retain the PCBs they ingested and accumulate higher concentrations in their bodies.”

Humans are the top of our food chain.

A 2016 study by Scripps Institute of Oceanography suggests that in our current time, PCB contamination is likely found in fish all over the world. While health advisories may deter local anglers and children from swimming or fishing in contaminated areas, many areas of the world affected by PCBs have little-to-no knowledge of the dangers posed by their own ecosystem: dangers they did not cause. Many more are warned too late – if at all – to avoid consuming PCBs. Others, including many Native American tribes and Inuit people, have no choice as their diet have remained relatively unchanged for centuries. PCB contamination of Inuit people has been a known fact since the 1980s.

For those of you asking, “wait…I thought we were talking about the Hudson River?” We still are. The northernmost coasts of the Hudson Bay near the High Arctic flow south through northeastern Canada and down into New York, eventually emptying into the north Atlantic at the tip of Manhattan Island. Over several decades, PCBs originally discharged either into or in areas near the Hudson River have managed to find their way north and bioaccumulate into several different species of fish, which are then eaten by larger predators which in turn are consumed by Inuit near the Arctic border.

Inuit diet has remained unchanged for centuries and relies on sources of heavy, fatty meats including Walrus, Narwal, Caribou, and fish such as Salmon and Arctic Char. (source: Sep. 17, 2015 – sciencemag.org – Norbert Elseis-Hein/imageBROKER/Alamy)

The sources and adverse effects of PCBs are not new knowledge. After PCB production was banned by the federal government in 1979, it became rapidly apparent to citizens and governing bodies alike that the chemical would continue to harm life so long as it was allowed to persist in the environment.

In 1980, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Responsibility, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) after many US citizens and agencies alike recognized the adverse effects PCB exposure and ingestion have to human health. CERCLA aided in establishing a large Trust Fund (Superfund) to lend financial assistance to the response and cleaning of designated sites. The Superfund Task Force, a branch of the EPA responsible for designating and overseeing the remediation and cleanup process of contaminated sites, has since highlighted hundreds of locations in need of intense remediation due to contamination from PCBs and other toxic chemicals. The Hudson River Valley in New York has been at the forefront of the Superfund list and the environmental remediation issue in the US ever since.

For nearly thirty years General Electric (GE) dumped hundreds of tons of PCBs into the Hudson River from its manufacturing plants along the River’s banks. PCBs as man-made organic chemicals were often used in electric appliances as well as many common plastics, rubbers, paints and dyes until the 1970s. Under CERCLA, GE is responsible for the PCBs they dumped into the river over thirty years and is liable for the cleanup and removal of PCBs to reach a level such that the EPA is satisfied the process has followed regulations and met its goals.

However, GE, the EPA, the state of New York, and members of communities along the Hudson all share different views on the definitions of “liable,” “cleanup,” and “done” which, while perhaps leading to the necessary spark which prompted the EPA to collect and evaluate more samples of the Hudson River for PCBs, has also put a number of speedbumps along the river’s road to recovery. Such is the case with almost every Superfund site in the United States.

From all of these factors and more, the modern environmentalist and remediation movement focusing on PCBs and Superfund cleanup initiatives built in and grew out of the Hudson Valley in New York. As early as the 1990s state officials, environmental scientists, and activists were aware of the issues caused by PCBs in and around the floodplains of the Hudson and sparked campaigns to educate the public of these issues. Many of the organizations that came from this movement – Scenic Hudson, Riverkeeper, and Clearwater to name a few – are still active and engaged with their communities today. It is largely due to the decades of work, research, and education that organizations such as these have been able to give back to their community. And now here we are, years later, finally able to see it come to a head through recent events and news surrounding the Hudson River.

Barely three months ago, the entire state of New York was ready to gather their pitchforks and fight the EPA in court if more work was not done regarding GE’s cleanup of the Hudson. Now the EPA is not only acknowledging the worries of New York’s citizens, but is openly working with NYSDEC, its Commissioner Basil Seggos, and other officials under Governor Andrew Cuomo’s state offices to reach a reasonable, mutually agreeable decision for the health of New York’s environment.

To say the scale and depth of PCB contamination is massive – even in New York alone – would be a gross understatement. Despite the work that’s already been done to remediate PCBs from the environment their presence and the affects they have on humans and wildlife are not nearly as commonly known as one might expect. Especially to those not actively engaged in the fight. Perhaps it’s due to the amount of time it takes for cleanup projects to get the greenlight from government agencies and stakeholders of each site, or maybe it’s because of a general lack of interest from those not directly impacted.

A sign along the Hudson River advising against consuming fish from the river. New York’s “eat none” advisory for fish in the Upper Hudson has been in place for more than 40 years. (source: Jan. 16, 2013 – NOAA, Office of Response and Restoration)

Whether or not these are the underlying root of a gap in public knowledge of (or action against) PCBs are what drives our team at ecoSPEARS on not only highlighting affected communities, but also in investing our resources to educate current generations of the processes which caused contamination to become so widespread, as well as how we can all best tackle it head-on to mitigate the problem for the future.

Our team is dedicated to spreading the awareness of the PCB contamination issue, not simply because of what has or hasn’t already been done, but because the matter continues to be a pressing and vital problem for thousands of communities around the world. It is the undeniable, unalienable right that every life on Earth has available access to clean water, land, and air. To prevent or deny this right to anyone, anywhere, at any time for any reason is nothing other than an injustice to the betterment and enrichment of life everywhere. The SPEARS technology has had proven success removing AND destroying PCBs from the environment for good with no lasting ramifications on the ecosystem or the organisms that inhabit it.

Is this not the mission of those who share our outlook: to provide communities lacking a solution with one that solves the problem at its source without causing a rippling of future consequences?

Is it not the vision of those who share our desire to provide the earth with cleaner water so that those affected, and those not yet affected, no longer have to distance themselves from the natural beauty of the world in which we live because of errors made in the past and to prevent those errors from being made again in the future?

Is it not the driving cause of environmental activists globally to create a forum in order to generate a speaking floor for the voices of those who have gone unheard, suffered, and continue to suffer?

Is it so outlandish to believe that today in 2018, an age in which technology has never been more advanced, that environmental scientists have been able to produce the technology which offers a cradle-to-grave answer for the world’s toxic contamination?

There is a solution to the PCB problem, and it exists now. There has never been a better time to address the issue than now. If we allow contamination to persist as we already have it will balloon into a sore which cannot be cured; a cancer on our home planet that will leech the health of the future.

It is our hope here at ecoSPEARS that other states too will soon be able to recognize and acquire the support necessary to restore the status of their communities and ecosystems to their natural potential.

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For more information regarding the agencies or organizations mentioned in this blog post, please see a list of the following links:

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC)

Scenic Hudson

Riverkeeper

Hudson Sloop Clearwater

The Lucas Avenue Superfund site in Dunkirk, NY has been determined to have subterranean levels of contamination “much higher than expected” according to City DPW Director Randy Woodbury. The contamination is said to include lead, arsenic, cyanide, and PCBs.

The excess contamination is expected to slow down remediation and clean-up in the highly populated industrial area. Many citizens fear the contamination may spread and halt the remediation process if the underground cap is removed or otherwise disturbed.

Woodbury says the property is still owned privately, but the owner has “agreed to environmental easements for the cleanup” and may allow the DEC to lease the property to the city to expedite the remediation process.

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