Toxic Waste

by Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Alyson Saben, an investigator from the Food and Drug Administration's Boston district, leaned heavily against the side of the research ship Gloria Michelle, watching 10-foot waves crash into the small vessel.

"I had begun to feel pretty squeamish," Saben recalled, several months later, "and a few other people were already sick. So I just sat there with the rain splashing against my face, and I didn't even care if I went overboard or not."

At that moment it was very difficult for Saben, 28, a former Peace Corps volunteer with less than two years experience in FDA, to focus on the importance of her mission — sampling seafood for contamination in the stormy Atlantic waters off the coast of New England.

Several months earlier she hadn't even known about the problems associated with the waste disposal area she was sailing over. But awareness had come quickly and completely when she was assigned to coordinate the agency's efforts to sample seafood in and around the area ominously known to local seafarers as the "dump site."

Only 18 miles off the coast of Boston, the area appears on nautical maps as two overlapping circles, each approximately 2 miles across with an average depth of about 300 feet. The eastern boundary lies only 4 miles west of the rich fishing area known as the Stellwagen Bank.

The western circle, called the Massachusetts Bay Industrial Waste Site (or Foul Area), served as a dumping ground for toxic and radioactive materials from 1953 to 1976. The eastern part, officially classified as the Massachusetts Bay Disposal Site, was used for years as a dumping ground for materials dredged up from Boston Harbor and local channel bottoms.

During the summer of 1991, the International Wildlife Coalition, working under an Environmental Protection Agency grant, conducted an underwater side-scan video survey of part of the dump site using a remote-controlled underwater camera. Those films showed almost 100 objects dotting the ocean floor at some 18 survey sites. Sixty-four of the objects were identified as cement containers used to dispose of dangerous materials, and more than half of them had broken open.

The amount and type of waste material — some of it radioactive — from four decades of dumping raised a very real concern about pollution as well as contamination of seafood.

In November 1991, U.S. Congressman Gerry Studds (D-Mass.) chaired a public hearing about the dump site. The meeting was held at the Kennedy Library, whose grassy yards touch the ocean at Columbia Point in Boston's Dorchester section. If you draw a straight line in a northwest direction from the beach in front of the library, you would arrive at the dump site in about an hour's sailing time.

The hall was packed with the press, environmental groups, and the seafood industry, as well as representatives of FDA and other government agencies. U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) attended with Studds and listened intently as a cavalcade of witnesses offered both official and personal testimony to the extent of the dumping done off the Massachusetts coast since 1940.

The witnesses presented a collection of horror stories that included sloppy record-keeping and illegal mass dumping in nondesignated areas.

Congressman Studds wrote FDA's Office of Seafood, seeking help in assuring the public that seafood harvested from Massachusetts Bay is safe to eat. In the months that followed, media interest in the dumping sites increased.

FDA's Edward McDonnell, district director of the agency's Boston district, recalled that various media sources were reporting pollution in the waters off Massachusetts Bay. "People were outraged at the level of dumping in nondesignated waste sites," he said. "There was a great deal of public confusion. People were concerned about the food chain and were asking about the quality of seafood being taken out of Massachusetts Bay. We [FDA] felt that we could play an important role in such a risk assessment and at the same time contribute to solving the problem."

So Saben had her work cut out for her. Complex Task

Throughout the dreary days of a long New England winter, Saben found her assignment growing in scope and complexity.

"The task was small and focused to begin with," Saben recalled; then she found out that EPA was planning a study in the same area.

A partnership for the project between FDA, EPA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was agreed upon in March 1992. The federal agencies were joined by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which was working on the site study with EPA. Several other state agencies were also included in the project.

By late May, Saben and a host of workers from all the agencies were spending 12-hour-plus workdays traveling, trapping, filming, and generally gathering a wide range of samples from the gray waters and ocean floor of the dump site.

To accomplish the mission, Saben, John Lindsay (NOAA's Coastal Resource coordinator), and almost 100 others spent most of the time on three research vessels: the 127-foot Ferrel, the smaller Gloria Michelle, and the largest of the fleet, the 187- foot Seward Johnson with its four-person submarine, the Johnson Sea Link II.

Lindsay noted, "There was an expectation by the public that we were wasting money on an area that we had already studied. Some of our discoveries, such as low-level radiation, indicated that we really did not know a great deal about the site. It was worth being out there."

According to EPA's David Tomey, "We were aware of the public concerns and realized that fishermen were actually pulling barrels up [of waste material]. As a result of these concerns, grant money was developed for a study of this area. We looked at the perimeter of the disposal area just to see how far the dumpers had gone." Tomey is an aquatic biologist who has been with EPA over six years.

About the Author

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FDA is A United States government body that oversees medical devices, including contact lenses, intraocular lenses, excimer lasers and eyedrops. In the US, these products must be approved by the FDA before they can be marketed.