EPA gave their highest level warning!

Biocides are rated with the highest toxicity category of the US EPA.While reading through some documents this morning, I ran across Critical Toxins Present, But Will Not Be Tested For — a report was written by Ken Summers for Ecology Action Centre. This pdf file has been posted on the documents page. It’s important, that a couple of the chemicals Ken speaks of in this report, be mentioned loud and clear.

  •  Methylene Bis (Thocyanate)
  • 2-(Thiocyanomethylthio) Benzothiozole

In Ken’s report it says that:

 Triangle Petroleum reported to Nova Scotia Environment that these were used in the hydraulic fracturing fluids, but AIS did not test for in the analysis of the hydraulic fracturing wastes. These two compounds are biocides to which the EPA gave their highest level warning: Toxicity Category 1.

Granted when I see words in reports like Methylene Bis (Thocyanate) or 2-(Thiocyanomethylthio) Benzothiozole… I just kind of gloss over them. Not being a scientist or chemist — they don’t really mean anything to me, and I have no idea what they mean. Then as I proceeded scanning articles this morning I ran across this one on a website called Before It’s News.

The author says:

 Both of these biocides are rated with the highest toxicity category of the US EPA. The concentration of 0.1% which AIS minimized in its submission, would be hundreds of times greater than any of the minimum exposure thresholds of concern for Toxicity Category 1.

If AIS didn’t test for it, how do they expect it to get filtered out of the wastewater they want to dump into the bay? And… it’s over 100x the minimum exposure threshold set out by the EPA.

Facebook post that got some attention.

I caught one of the councilors attention in January when I posted a picture of some dead fish, along with a smart remark that at least after poisoning the bay, the fishing would be a little easier for a while. He certainly wasn’t impressed. However, if you read the FAQ sheet for Methylene Bis (Thocyanate), you’ll see that it says:

 Methylene bis(thiocyanate) is practically nontoxic to moderately toxic to birds on an acute basis; highly toxic to very highly toxic to freshwater fish on an acute basis; and very highly toxic to aquatic invertebrates on an acute basis. Chronic effects were observed in freshwater fish and aquatic invertebrates.

Some birds won’t be affected, others will be, but the effects on the fish and aquatic invertebrates will be devastating — so the picture of the dead fish could be an omen of what’s to come if we don’t stop poison from being dumped into the bay.

You can read the report from the EPA website on Methylene Bis (Thocyanate). It’s a pdf file you can download here. You can read the report of 2-(Thiocyanomethylthio) Benzothiozole from the EPA website. It’s a pdf file too that you can download here. Both of these are risk assessment reports that go into a lot of detail.

Please keep in mind, these are only two of the chemicals used, that AIS knows about, but didn’t test for, and isn’t in any of their reports.