EDITORIAL & OPINION — EPA targets essential nutrient — Rethinking zinc

Two missives in less than a month might appear excessive, but the United States government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just won’t stop displaying its scientific ignorance and incompetence.

A few weeks ago, we took the agency to task for its bungled “cleanup” of the Summitville minesite in Colorado — a matter well-documented by public record. Even a citizen’s monitoring group, which included local environmentalists, was disillusioned by the EPA’s display of incompetence and wasteful spending, not to mention the supposed white knight’s own discharges of “polluted waters.”

Now we’re shocked and appalled by the EPA’s recent proposal to label zinc as one of 53 persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals (PBTs) in the nation’s hazardous waste. It’s enough to make any mother think twice about applying zinc ointment to her baby’s bottom, or some sun screen to the little tyke’s face.

We’re not the only ones alarmed. Twenty-three members of the United States Congress have asked the EPA to rescind the proposal. The health and scientific communities are amazed, too, particularly as zinc has long enjoyed a government-endorsed recommended dietary allowance in human diets. We’ve rarely been in such fine company.

What’s amazing is that the EPA began its exercise with a list of more than 2,900 chemicals, which it then winnowed to 53, including zinc. I suppose we should be grateful that zinc was not lumped in with the poisons that dropped off the list — mustard gas, phosgene, paraquat, chlordane and malathion.

EPA’s main allegation against zinc is that it persists in the environment for a long, long time. Well, yes, but so do many other naturally occurring essential elements and compounds that are the building blocks of soils, sediments and even organisms — and thank heavens, too, because if they did not, life as we know it might not exist. Still, as we’ve seen before, such reasoning will not prevent some people from trying to repeal the laws of chemistry.

It’s hard not to feel sorry for zinc. After all, the poor thing was just going about its business, as it has for millennia, being an essential nutrient for humans, animals and plants — being useful as a metal and helping people live more productive and civilized lives.

Now it may soon become a dreaded PBT, to be studied and measured by an army of suspicious bureaucrats in white coats. The agency already has a national survey and study of chemical residues in fish as vehicles to measure progress in “reducing risks” from PBTs such as zinc. Yet when tests were done using the EPA’s own tools for measuring decreases in zinc “exposure,” they supported zinc’s nutritional importance. Nutritionists have long known that fish is an important dietary source of zinc. The testwork showed that only 19% of non-breast-fed children between the ages of one and three are receiving enough zinc, and that only 43% of seniors aged 71 or more receive adequate amounts.

It has long been said that government bureaucrats must find ways to spend money and keep people busy, because if they don’t, their budgets and employees get slashed. The EPA, despite the occasional government attempt at downsizing, has taken this strategy to an extreme. Over the years, it has developed a reputation as one of the most illogical, wasteful and adversarial agencies ever conceived.

It shouldn’t be that way. The EPA could be a standard-bearer of environmental excellence if it used better science, employed fewer bureaucrats and more people with “real world” experience, and if it demonstrated a greater willingness to work with others in solving environmental problems.

The bipartisan Congressional request urging the EPA to reconsider its anti-zinc stance should be heeded. The congressman might want to take the exercise a step further and request funds from the budget surplus to send some of the EPA’s bureaucrats back to school. May we suggest Science 101 and Common Sense 101?