Farmers Protecting Our Health

Doug Durante, Clean Fuels Development Coalition

SDFU should take pride in the fact that the organization has taken a leadership role in calling for higher blends of ethanol. This has not just been an exercise in self interest to create greater demand and higher value for corn, but to truly protect public health from harmful emissions.

The proof in the pudding has been SDFU support for programs and policies to clean up gasoline through educational efforts like sponsoring the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists last summer, helping fund the CFDC Issue Briefs on Toxics in Gasoline, supporting the publication of the Book Gasolinegate: What’s in our Gasoline is Killing Us, and speaking out at every opportunity. Driving these efforts is the recognition over the past four decades that we have replaced lead in gasoline with benzene-based derivatives, essentially replacing a poison with a carcinogen. American agriculture, and South Dakota farmers, can use their skills and ability to produce a clean, renewable fuel to avoid the horrible health impacts that come from additives refiners have and continue to use to increase octane.

It was never supposed to be this way. South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle led a bipartisan effort as far back as 1990 in the Clean Air Act Amendments to require clean-burning octane enhancers rather than benzene-based compounds that had increased to alarming levels as lead was phased out.

Noted author, historian and ethanol supporter William Kovarik hosted an important symposium last month to make sure we never forget the devastating health effects of leaded gasoline and that we do not repeat the same mistakes with today’s carcinogens. It was the 100 year “anniversary” of a fateful meeting that put into motion the accepted addition of a toxic poison into our gasoline and subsequently into our air, soil and water.

“In May of 1925 the U.S Public Health Service concluded that despite known health impacts from lead there was insufficient evidence to ban it. EPA has allowed the replacement of poisonous lead with toxic carcinogenic compounds that represent a health threat on an even grander scale,” Kovarik said. “EPA’s negligence is an abuse of the public trust and is costing America literally trillions of dollars and millions of ruined lives.”

What we have tried to do at CFDC and with SDFU’s support, is bring this threat to light. Unlike the excuse in 1925 that we knew lead was bad but there was insufficient evidence to ban it, we have volumes of irrefutable evidence that the replacement for lead may be worse. The fine particulates emitted from gasoline are predominantly from the toxic aromatic octane enhancers. This family of toxics are referred to as BTEX—all benzene derived which the American Petroleum Institute once conceded in a Congressional hearing has no safe threshold. These particulates, just like wildfire smoke, secondhand smoke and toxic aerosols, can bypass the lungs and directly enter the bloodstream. Children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable. 

The fixation on climate change as opposed to human health has made this a back-burner issue at best. EPA has chased everything from agriculture soil dust to outdoor grilling of food when trying to limit particulates but ignoring the single largest source – the 140 billion gallons of BTEX-laden gasoline. This is particularly frustrating to us given that because of the Daschle amendment EPA is required to substantially reduce gasoline toxics as well as oil imports by replacing oil-derived BTEX with ethanol’s clean octane.   

We may have been given an opportunity to finally get EPA to take action, as we might have the right person in the right position of government to make a difference. CFDC joined with a diverse group of academics, authors and public policy veterans who have spent decades studying and writing about the dangers of lead and BTEX to write a letter to incoming Department of Justice official Adam Gustafson. We urged him to compel EPA compliance with mandatory Clean Air Act (CAA) provisions requiring reduction of toxic octane additives that have replaced lead. Gustafson has been nominated to serve as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Environment & Natural Resources Division, which would have jurisdiction and authority to enforce CAA requirements. The group appealed to Gustafson because of this key position and his history of calling out EPA’s failure to control deadly mobile source air toxics (MSATs) from BTEX.

We got lead out of gasoline because enough people made enough noise that the facts could not be ignored. The agriculture and ethanol communities need to follow the example of SDFU and demand the law be enforced and take pride that we have the solution. High octane with blends of 20, 25 and 30 percent ethanol represent a significant benefit to our health,  economy and national security. Learn from the lead experience, as Reid Detchon of the United Nations Climate Exchange noted, “we have seen this movie before: Let’s not have a sequel.”