The rockwool controversy pits WV "beautiful county" against manufacturing.
Expert weighs in on potential effects of Rockwool facility
By CLARISSA COTTRILL
and JOSH KELLEY
RANSON — Since July, concerned citizens from Jefferson County and beyond have spoken out at local government meetings against the impending Rockwool facility and its potential impacts on residents' health and the environment, but one state expert has weighed in on the issue.
According to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Air Quality Report, the chemicals to potentially be emitted from the two 21-story tall smoke stacks include formaldehyde, sulfur-dioxide, lead, carbon monoxide, soot, large and small particulate matter and sulfuric acid.
While there has been public outcry, the actual effects of these emissions are up in the air, according to West Virginia University Clinical Associate Professor Dr. Michael McCawley.
"In toxicology we are fully aware that it is the dose that truly makes the poison. In this case we do not know the dose yet," McCawley said. "Therefore, we cannot say with any certainty what the level of alarm should be."
The exact health effects of these emissions cannot be determined without knowledge about the interaction between the emissions, weather and terrain, which according to McCawley, highlights an issue with the Air Quality Permit process.
"The air permit does a poor job of answering the issue," he said. "So there is no wonder that citizens are in an uproar."
Those protesting the Rockwool facility that will produce stone wool used in building insulation for housing and other industrial projects have voiced concerns about the risk of cancer from the emissions and the impact on children's health because of its proximity to North Jefferson Elementary School.
"This is an issue of not only public safety, but environmental safety," said Regina Hendrix of the Eastern Panhandle Chapter of The Sierra Club at a Jefferson County Commission meeting this month. "You're either going to have hundreds of families staying, or hundreds of families leaving. I am not the first one to say it tonight, but I certainly won't be the last."
Expert opinion
Knowing what chemicals are among pollutants and how they are regulated can help the public understand the emissions coming from Rockwool and how people, animals and the environment will be affected, according to McCawley.
McCawley spent more than 27 years as a Public Health Service Officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, studying miners' health, occupational respiratory disease, aerosol measurement and ultrafine particles, according to WVU's website. He has experience working with wood dust, volcanic ash, diesel, coal mine dust, silica and beryllium.
"With the majority of these chemicals, these companies must tread carefully with how much of these pollutants they emit," he said. "Some, like formaldehyde, are not regulated by the WVDEP, but are regulated by the federal government."
The chemicals Rockwool will emit are slated to comply with federal regulations, according to a statement the company release earlier this month.
"Once up and running, we will continuously monitor and report on our operations to ensure ongoing compliance with all regulatory requirements," the statement said.
The upcoming Rockwool facility will have to demonstrate compliance to the federal limits for phenol, formaldehyde and menthol within 180 days of being operational, according to a press release from the company.
Rockwool Group North America President Trent Ogilvie said his team has been working with local authorities on establishing the Ranson facility between a series of closed meetings with city, county and state officials Aug. 8.
"We have followed all regulations to ensure that we are well below the regulation standard," he said. "We see the regulation standards and we try to go below those to make sure we have a bugger in case something should happen. With (Volatile Organic Compounds) like formaldehyde, we will only allow 0.23 micrograms per meter cubed. This is 10 times lower than Virginia's standard."
According to information supplied from Rockwool, the company uses "Best Achievable Control Technologies," which are used to keep emissions below federal and state limits.
Other information from the company said although the state of West Virginia does not require "air modeling" – a mathematical simulation of how pollutants are dispersed in the atmosphere – the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency passed the MACT, or Maximum Achievable Control Technology, standards in 2015. These standards placed federal limits on all mineral wool insulation manufacturers, including Rockwool, a company factsheet said.
The response the human body has to these regulated chemicals can come in the form of inflammation and the severity varies based on exposure levels, McCawley said.
"The body produces chemicals in response to irritations, like a bug bite, and in doing so can cause inflammation to occur," he said. "The problem with inflammation is that it is the basis of almost all chronic diseases like heart and lung disease, but it can also greatly affect those that suffer from asthma and other problems."
In addition to the issue of inflammation, McCawley said VOCs provide support for the public's concerns about cancer risks.
"The VOCs are one of the primary sources of cancer risk, especially benzene," he said. "The VOCs, however, are not usually counted among the National Ambient Air Quality Standard criteria air pollutants. Among the NAAQS pollutants, the particulate matter would pose the highest cancer risk, all things being equal, though possibly not have as high a potential as VOCs for potency as a carcinogen."
A carcinogen is defined by the CDC as a cancer-causing agent often either in the environment or in the workplace.
Public concern of cancer risk is coupled with those who have issue with the facility being so close to North Jefferson Elementary School, Wildwood Middle School and T.A. Lowery causing many to protest at Jefferson County Schools Board of Education meetings.
"How (the emissions) affect kids will depend on weather and terrain," McCawley said. "It is fairly complicated to predict. Children's risk of exposure is similar to the risk of cancer … it all depends on the amount of exposure. Too much means they'll get sick fast. A little exposure means they just got exposed to some chemicals … it is still bad regardless."
Protests continue
While the risks of these exact levels of emissions remain questionable, the public outcry to Rockwool in recent weeks has been continuous. Crowds between 30 and 300 showed up at several Jefferson County Commission, Charles Town City Council and JCBOE meetings to voice their concerns. The Sierra Club, Citizens Concerned With Rockwool, Eastern Panhandle Protectors Group and other organizations have come out against the project.
"I speak for many when we say that there will be a lot of families moving out if Rockwool moves in," resident and online group member Leigh Smith said at an Aug. 8 Charles Town City Council meeting. "I am not going to have my kids growing up and going a school 2 miles away from that facility."
Rockwool's plans to open its Ranson location was announced in July 2017, according to Journal reports. This will be Rockwool's second facility in the U.S. The first is located in Byhalia, Mississippi.
Government officials and bodies have also joined the conversation. The JCBOE has asked the facility to conduct a Human Health Risk assessment to learn more facts in order to support or reject the project.
Jefferson County Commissioner Jane Tabb has also come out in opposition to the project.
"After listening to concerned citizens, doing my own research and much soul searching, I can no longer support the Rockwool project due to air quality issues," she said in a statement. "The Rockwool plant location has the potential to impact a large number of school age children and others with health issues. I do not feel that the Clean Air standards are adequate to avoid negative impacts to our citizens and visitors. I acknowledge that Rockwool has met all the legal requirements to proceed with the project. However, the air quality issues are a game changer for me and I will work to turn this around."
While the exact effects of pollution from Rockwool remain unknown, McCawley said this highlights an issue in the permit process and he feels the public is justified in its reaction.
"Until there is political pressure to change how permitting is done, nothing is going to change," he said. "People should; therefore, protest loud and long, throw up roadblocks every change they get and exact a political price from the regulators who allow any new sources of pollution."
Another step forward to McCawley would be to practice transparency and have more sampling sites for projects like this set up, including some run by the WVDEP, Rockwool and oversight groups.
"If the plant is interested in being a good neighbor it should be interested in doing so transparently and openly with the community," he said. "There is no perform solution but there may be, for the time being, ones that are better than what we've got
Harpers Ferry, WV
PARIS – Forty years ago, on December 29, 1978, the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China released the official communiqué from its third plenary session, launching the greatest economic-growth experiment in human history. In newspeak understandable to CPC insiders, the country's leaders, channeling the wishes of Deng Xiaoping, announced a series of unprecedented "modernizations" that would transform one of the world's least developed countries into a leading economic power
In 2014, China overtook the United States as the world's largest economy (based on purchasing power parity). Its per capita GDP, 40 times lower than that of the United States in 1980, has grown by a factor of 58, and is now just 3.4 times lower (according to IMF data). In effect, around 15% of humanity has experienced 10% average income growth every year for four decades.
But China's dizzying rise has also dispelled three leading myths about the impact of economic growth. The first is that growth reduces inequality and increases happiness. In 1955, the economist Simon Kuznets hypothesized that income inequality would increase sharply and then decline – in the pattern of an inverted "U" or a bell – as countries underwent economic development. Given the pace of China's economic growth since 1978, its experience refutes this claim more powerfully than any other case.
China, after all, is now one of the world's most unequal countries. For the last ten years, its Gini coefficient has hovered around 0.5, up from around 0.3 in 1980 (a coefficient of 1 means a single individual owns everything). In fact, the relationship between growth and inequality over time has followed a peculiar pattern: China's Gini coefficient has increased with growth, and decreased when growth has slowed.
Moreover, according to data from the World Inequality Database, the share of China's national income accruing to the richest 10% increased from 27% to 41% between 1978 and 2015, and doubled for the top 1%. At the same time, the share of national income going to the poorest 50% fell from 26% to 14%. These data are consistent with other sources showing that while per capitaGDP grew by a factor of 14 between 1990 and 2010, the top quintile's share of national income increased at the expense of the bottom four.
To be sure, these are relative inequalities, and China has undeniably reduced absolute poverty. Most Chinese once lived under conditions of high equality and high misery; today, they live in an unequal society where the income of the poorest 10% grew by almost 65% between 1980 and 2015.Given such progress, one might think the Chinese have also grown happier. But the opposite seems to be true. In a chapter for the 2017 World Happiness Report, Richard A. Easterlin, Fei Wang, and Shun Wang make a convincing case that while China's GDP has skyrocketed, its citizens' reported subjective wellbeing has declined, especially among poorer and older cohorts. Even more surprising, though Chinese subjective wellbeing remains below its 1990 level, it actually ticked up over the past decade, when growth was slower than in the 1990-2005 period.
The second myth dispelled by China's rapid growth is that economic liberalism eventually breeds political liberalism.Recall that in 1989, just months before Western liberal democracy appeared to have triumphed over Soviet communism, China crushed a student revolt in Tiananmen Square, killing some 10,000 of its own citizens. Since then, the country's political trajectory has not changed. If anything, the Chinese state's arbitrary and unfair exercise of power has become much more efficient.
Capitalism with Chinese characteristics implies the presence of a strong state in all areas of national life. While the technocracy facilitates economic expansion, the state's massive security apparatus muzzles civil liberties and political rights. Rather than becoming more democratic, China became a pioneer of the kind of authoritarian neoliberalism now seen in Turkey, Brazil, Hungary, India, and elsewhere.2
Lastly, economic growth can no longer be defended as the best environmental policy. In 2007, then-Premier Wen Jiabao famously described China's development model as "unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable," owing not least to its deleterious ecological impact. Still, the hope was always that economic growth would follow an "environmental Kuznets curve," thus preventing or at least mitigating a full-scale disaster. It has not.
Recent data show that China is now the largest extractor of natural resources in a global economy that is becoming ever more resource-intensive. In 2010, China represented 14% of global GDP, but consumed 17% of all biomass, 29% of fossil fuels, and 44% of metal ores. Its domestic consumption of all natural resources now accounts for one-third of the global total, compared to just one-quarter for all developed countries.
Moreover, China now contributes 28% of global carbon-dioxide emissions – twice as much as the US, three times more than the European Union, and four times more than India. Between 1978 and 2016, China's annual CO2 emissions grew from 1.5 billion tons to ten billion tons, and from 1.8 tons to 7.2 tons in per capita terms, compared to the world average of 4.2 tons.
As is well documented, water, groundwater, and air pollution in China has reached a crisis point. And that, incidentally, also poses a problem for those who believe that capitalism is the key driver of environmental destruction. After all, the most ecologically unsustainable country in history is nominally communist.
At the CPC's 19th National Congress in October 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke of a fundamental "contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life." China, he confirmed, was committed to the transition to "ecological civilization" begun by the 13th Five-Year Plan in 2016. Apparently, the greatest episode of economic growth in human history has ended.