Sounding the death knell on chlorine-bleached paper - Point of View - Column

Although the computer revolution threatens to reduce entire volumes of text to small compact disks, people still desire the sensation of curling up in a quiet comer with a magazine. Unknown to them, though, is that one of the world's most benign products - print publications - could actually be hazardous to their health.

Paper, including magazine paper, has been identified by scientific research as one of the culprits in spreading dioxin, furans and other toxic chemicals, not only into our environment, but into our bodies. White paper, brighter than white, so long viewed as the measure of quality for printing papers, now appears to be a toxic whitewash when viewed in terms of human health.

Chlorine bleaching is not a necessary process in manufacturing quality printing paper. More and more paper mills are quietly switching to non-chlorine-bleached paper-making for reasons connected to "market signals." These signals are largely based on the growing alarm of federal agencies, private corporations and environmental organizations regarding toxic chemical contamination.

The paper-making process that produces chlorine-bleached magazine paper creates some 1,000 organochlorine compounds. The average pulp mill dumps 70,000 pounds of toxic organochlorines into waterways each day. Dioxin and furans are just two organochlorines released.

Most of the dioxin that enters our bodies comes from the food chain. Paper mill effluent, when it enters waterways, moves downstream and into the ecosystem that produces the food we eat. Last January, a jury awarded $3.2 million to plaintiffs who sued Georgia-Pacific's Leaf River pulp operations plant for contaminating a river with dioxin.

In March 1992, the grand-daddy of them all - a class action suit filed against the American Paper Institute (API) and 30 paper companies for $100 billion - alleged a cover-up by these companies of the health risks connected to chlorine bleaching. Although the lawsuit was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, the die was cast. Ed Ayers of The World Watch Institute recently stated, "Suddenly, the paper industry had been put on notice that its main method of making paper white had become a ticking legal time bomb."

Action in Congress

The time bomb finally exploded on September 10, 1992, when the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Justice Department sued companies such as International Paper, Consolidated Paper, Georgia Pacific and others for violations of the Clean Water Act. Eliminating chlorine entirely from the paper-making process is called for.

Congress is now taking serious steps to sunset the use of chlorine bleaching by pulp and paper mills. U.S. Rep. Bill Richardson, a New Mexico Democrat, has, for example, introduced legislation (H.R. 4949) that would "phase out the use of chlorine compounds in the production of pulp and paper."

Clearly, the magazine industry has an important role in this debate by virtue of the amount of paper it consumes. And without much fanfare, the publishing community has already set an example by acknowledging its desire to use environmentally friendly paper.

Aside from the environmental and health issues associated with chlorine-bleached paper, magazine publishers should be cogniz,.int of the growing alarm that dioxin has caused in the European Community. Germany has already started refusing paper products manufactured with chlorine.

Unless the United States catches up to European chlorine-free paper-makers, not only will sales to the Common Market decline, but exclusive reliance on the U.S. market will ultimately strangle the earnings of American paper companies. We live in a global marketplace, and it is demanding chlorine-free paper.

The magazine industry can lobby Congress to pass legislation to accelerate the change from chlorine-bleached paper to Totally Chlorine Free (TCF) papers using hydrogen peroxide, oxygen brightening or ozone brightening.

To start with, Congress can pass legislation that will give investment tax credits to paper mills that make environmental capital expenditures for nonchlorine-bleaching processes. Similarly, publishers should receive tax exemptions for purchasing chlorine-free paper. Not only will this increase demand, but the benefits throughout society, measured in reduced health-care costs alone, make it worth doing.

Contrary to API's assertion that "large-scale purchasing of totally chlorine-free products would result in unwarranted increases in the purchase of foreign pulps at the expense of U.S. pulp production and U.S. workers," U.S. paper mills can be given a window of opportunity to clean up their act.

Make no mistake, the paper industry will face enormous financial hurdles in retooling mills to produce chlorine-free paper. Some estimates put this figure at $10 billion. The financial cost, however, may be dwarfed when measured against the financial risk associated with further litigation. At the very least, the health of paper workers, together with readers and other consumers, deserves quick action on this issue.

George Pappas is the New York City-based Eastern regional representing for Lyons Falls Pulp & Paper, a maker of chlorine-free paper. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics, and the author of articles on the environment, economic trade and politics.

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