CHRISTOPHER W. BITTNER
Environmental Scientist, Level 3
Utah Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste
Q Which exposure scenarios, if any, did you suggest might be deleted from the January, '96 version of the TOCDF Risk Assessment?
A Without having the comments in front of me, the only one I recall was the breast-feeding infant exposure to dioxin.
Q You do recall that one?
A Yes, I do recall that one.
Q Your comment which suggested that that might be deleted, that scenario for the breast-feeding infant, was that comment based on something you read in the EPA guidance documents Mr. Gray provided you?
A No, it was not.
Q If you have, let's just take dioxin as an example, a dioxin exposure that's either been measured or estimated that is of a value higher than a calculated reference dose, assuming that one had one handy, that would mean, would it not, that you could not say with assurance that the exposure would be safe?
A You could not--if you had--we're talking a hazard quotient, I presume, and, yes, if that was greater than one you would not be assured to say that was a safe exposure.
Q ...My question was did the January, '96 version of the Tooele Risk Assessment...address non-cancer risk from dioxin exposure in any manner for any population?
A Not that I recall.
Q Okay. Have you seen any version of the Tooele Risk Assessment
prior or later to the one you're thinking of that does address dioxin non -
cancer risk for any population in any manner?
A I saw no versions prior to the one I reviewed.
Q If you could, answer my question more precisely.
A No.
Q You've seen no versions at any time that addresses dioxin non - cancer risk in any manner?
A That is correct.
Q Well, did EPA choose the methodology used in the TOCDF Risk Assessment version that you're referring to for the infant?
A That's what I was told.
Q Okay. Who told you that?
A I believe Rachel Shilton.
Q All right. So were you not involved in the follow-up decisions which led to the February, '96 version of this Risk Assessment in which the infant was deleted?
A Yes, I was involved in that I provided information.
Q All right. Well, tell me what information you provided and to whom.
A That the methodology did not mean anything. I mean, it did not give you an answer whether the emissions from the incinerator were safe to a breast-fed infant or not.
Q So in what form did you communicate to DEQ that there was no alternative method for addressing infant exposure to dioxin?
A Verbally.
Q Was it in this meeting you're describing?
A Yes.
Q Was that the first time you communicated it?
A The first time to my recollection, yes.
Q All right. Now, prior to that meeting you had read, as you testified, EPA's Super Fund guidance, the risk assessment guidance for Super Fund, which explains how one can actually calculate a reference dose if one is not immediately available; is that correct?
A Yes.
Q All right. So why didn't you recommend that methodology as an alternative in this case for dioxin exposure either for the infant or the adult for non-cancer risk?
A The methodology doesn't get around the existing uncertainty.
Q Could you be as specific as you could possibly be as to which uncertainties are, in your view, the troublesome ones in this case?
A How toxic are dioxins? That's the troublesome uncertainty.
Q Isn't that uncertainty routinely dealt with by the use of safety factors based on animal studies?
A That is one way it's dealt with.
Q You're aware that there have been animal studies with dioxin exposure which show that it has considerable toxicity in a variety of ways, are you not?
A Yes.
Q In fact, are you aware of any chemical on the face of this earth that is capable of causing death in animals at lower doses than dioxin?
A No, I'm not aware of any.
Q All right. It's considered to be at least one of the most powerful poisons around, isn't it?
A I've heard it characterized that way.
Q Yeah. All right. so it's not really your opinion, is it, that there's so much uncertainty that you consider dioxin to be essentially harmless?
A No, I do not consider dioxin essentially harmless.
Q Okay. Now, have you ever attempted to determine in your own opinion what a reasonable reference dose or virtually safe dose would be for dioxin considering the animal studies and whatever safety factor you would consider appropriate?
A No, I have not.
Q Has anyone ever asked you to do that?
A No.
Q Have you discussed that possibility with Dr. Canter?
A Me deriving a reference dose?
Q Or anyone doing it by that methodology?
A I probably asked Dr. Canter if EPA was close to deriving one.
Q What was her answer?
A To the best of my recollection, she said that their reassessment, she didn't know when that would be finalized. As you know, that was a review draft, and so when it would be issued in draft she didn't know. She did not see an RFD being developed in the short term or possibly ever.
Q Possibly ever. Did she explain why she would say possibly ever?
A I guess the distinction was between a reference dose and virtually safe dose and that the current methodology for deriving reference doses is not applicable for dioxins.
Q Dorothy told you this, Dorothy Canter?
A Yes.
Q Did she tell you why the traditional methodology of deriving a reference dose would not be applicable to dioxins?
A Because of the high background doses, it's a biocumulative compound, and that's the two I remember.
Q Well, okay. Help me out. Do you understand the logic of her statement that because you were already highly exposed to dioxin by this high background exposure that they would affect the scientific methodology for determining how much dioxin would cause harm?
A You know, she probably didn't say high background, but due to background doses.
Q Well, whether she said high or not, is there any logic to how much you're exposed to and how much it takes to cause harm? Is there any logic between those two, scientifically speaking?
A Scientifically speaking, no.
Q So you're telling me that being the best qualified risk assessor and toxicologist in the Division which would deal with this facility, you nonetheless don't know how the decision was made or by whom or when to remove the infant breast-feeding scenario for dioxin from the Risk Assessment; is that what you're tell me?
A Yes...
Q All right. did you or anyone else at DEQ inform David Layland of EPA that the infant breast-feeding scenario that he had recommended was going to be removes from the Risk Assessment?
A I did not.
Q All right. Who did?
A From my understanding from talking with Rachel, and this is not extremely clear in my mind, but that she did discuss it with him or somebody else at EPA, and EPA agreed with my interpretation of that methodology.
Q Did they agree to remove the scenario entirely?
A I don't know.
Q Do you know whether anyone told EPA that the scenario was to be removed entirely?
A I don't know.
Q All right. Is it the current practice in the field for at least
incinerators or combustors that a Screening Level Risk Assessment is
done prior to a trial burn and a Site Specific Risk Assessment is done
following a trial burn? Is that your understanding?
A Yeah, that's my understanding of it.
Q Now, in this case someone at DEQ decided to incorporate some site specific factors at variance with the default screening level assumptions prior to the trial burn, did they not?
A That's correct.
Q Do you know who did that?
A No, I don't.
Q So when you did this review of the guidance documents from EPA to compare with the Tooele Risk Assessment, did you understand at the time you had the most current guidance available for those particular documents?
A Yes, that was my understanding.
Q How did you reach that conclusion? How did you know, for example, that you weren't looking at an April, '94 guidance document that had been superseded by a December, '94 guidance document in which the infant breast-feeding scenario was recommended or concluded? How do you know that?
A I don't know that.
Q ...Assuming that we have a farmer of resident scenario where you have an adult and a child in the very same household, all right? Same location, same facility, same time period exposure. The difference is where you have the adult and the adult habits and the infant who then becomes a child, and the infant is breast-feeding for one or two years. Would you expect a greater dioxin exposure to the adult or to the infant and the child and consequently a greater or lesser cancer risk?
A Following EPA methodology, I would expect a higher exposure with the infant exposure.
Q All right. For the cancer risk?
A Yes, over the equivalent time period.
Q I understand. The methodology for calculating that cancer risk using EPA procedures is fairly well-established, is it not?
A Yes.
Q And the dioxin reassessment controversy or issue, whatever you would care to call it regarding the reference dose, has no particular application or implications for the cancer risk calculation, does it?
A Not directly.
Q Is there anything in the dioxin reassessment for EPA in '94 that would prevent a calculation of dioxin cancer risk by someone such as yourself?
A No.
Q Do you know who in DEQ made the decision, or their contractors, to not calculate a cancer risk for the infant and child exposed to dioxin for this facility?
A No.
Q ...Is there an assessment of exposure in utero to the developing fetus in any version of the Tooele Risk Assessments?
A Not in any I reviewed.
Q Okay. I understand. Now, do you know whether PCB emissions, polychlorinated biphenyls, were addressed in your Risk Assessment, or I should in the Tooele Risk Assessment?
A I believe they were.
Q They were? Was that for both cancer and non-cancer effects?
A I don't remember.
Q Were you involved in any decisions whether or not to address non- cancer adverse effects from PCB exposure in these assessments?
A No, I don't ever recall that being discussed.
Q All right. and you don't remember what the final outcome was in terms of whether PCB non-cancer effects were, in fact, included in the final Risk Assessment?
A No, I don't recall.
Q Are you aware of any versions of the Risk Assessment for Tooele, the Tooele facility or any attachments to it that have been destroyed or lost?
A Yes.
Q What do you understand was destroyed or lost exactly?
A The draft I reviewed I believe was destroyed.
Q What happened to the appendices for the January, '96 version for DEQ's copies?
A I don't know.
Q What happened to your copy of the appendices?
A I never had a copy. I believe DEQ had two copies. One was--let's see. One was in the library, I think, and one as on the desk. They were provided to me.
Q Has DEQ, to your knowledge, performed any Risk Assessment addressing the accidental release of nerve agent at the Tooele facility?
A The only thing, depending on how you classify it, would be the incinerator operating under upset conditions.
Q I was thinking of something more accidental than a combustion upset, perhaps and explosion of a weapon or some breach of large container or something.
A To my knowledge, no, DEQ has never done that.
Q Have you done any review of the Army's accident assessment to determine their veracity or accuracy?
A No, I have not.
Q Is any such review planned?
A Not by myself.
Q Do you know whether DEQ has performed any such analysis of the veracity or accuracy of the Army's accident analyses?
A Not to my knowledge.
Q Do you know whether DEQ has any planned?
A Not to my knowledge.
Q Do you know what exposure would be expected for an infant breast feeding in the United States for dioxin on average in this particular time, 1996?
A No, I wouldn't know that.
Q I beg your pardon?
A No.
Q That was a no?
A Yes, that's a no.
Q Do you think risk assessors would be able to predict dioxin-like compounds from incinerators? Are they trained to do that?
A No. Did you hear? I said no.
Q I'm sorry. I heard no response.
A Okay. I guess I'm not triggering the mike.
Q So the answer is no, they're not trained to do that?
A Yes, that's correct, the answer was no.
Q Thank you. do you know how much dioxin and dioxin-like compounds will be emitted from the Tooele facility during operation?
A No, I don't know that.
Q Do you understand that those Tooele Risk Assessments do or do not include estimates for brominated dioxins, dioxin-like PCBs and the sulfur analogs that we've mentioned?
A I do believe there's estimates in there for PCBs, nothing on the sulfur analogs, and what was the other one?
Q Brominated dioxins.
A And there was no direct estimates for the brominated.
Q Your reference to no direct estimates I take it to be your reference to these risk assessments for these unidentified compounds?
A That is correct.
Q Are you familiar with the concept in the field of risk assessment that the risk posed by exposure to two or more chemicals in combination may be greater than the additive effects of the chemicals alone?
A We don't deal with it in risk assessment. We deal with it in toxicology.
Q Risk assessments don't address estimates of the combined effects of a combination of chemicals?
A They assume additive effects. They do not evaluate synergistic effects.
Q You're saying they do not, and they assume as if somehow this is set in stone that no risk assessment has ever or could ever address synergy?
A No, it's not set in stone.
Q It's just a practice?
A It's the practice.
Q So if dioxin-like compounds and PCB compounds and other compounds, maybe nerve agents, had a greater effect when the exposure occurred in combination, if they did, this Risk Assessment does not address that phenomena; is that correct?
A It does not address synergistic effects.
Q do you know whether or not any of the chemicals emitted from the Tooele facility might have synergistic effects when populations are exposed to the combinations?
A I don't know of any specifically. With the number of chemicals, though, it could.
Q All right. There are, what, a few hundred chemicals at least that will be emitted from the Tooele facility? Would that be your expectation?
A Well, there's a lot. I don't know how many.
Q Likely more than a hundred?
A Yeah, likely more than a hundred.
Q All right. Chlorinated dioxins would be among them?
A Likely.
Q Polychlorinated biphenyls would also be expected to be emitted; correct?
A If we don't detect them, we would assume they are being emitted, but I can't recall if they are being emitted or not.
Q At the moment I'm asking you about test results as much as what you would expect from our general knowledge. You understand that there would be some PCBs in the waste feed?
A Yes. It would be below the detection level, but I would expect some.
Q Do you also understand that PCBs, or course that means polychlorinated biphenyls, are created in combustion as products of incomplete combustion even when they are not present in the waste feed?
A No.
Q You don't understand that?
A No, I wasn't aware of that.
Q Do you know it's false, that it's not true?
A No, I don't know it's false.
Q Okay. I understand. Have you reviewed the recent study which was described in the journal called "Science" in recent months about the synergistic effects of certain pesticides and PCBs?
A No, I haven't reviewed the actual article.
Q You're aware that it exists?
A Yes.
Q That was a yes?
A Yes.
Q Okay. Thank you. Are you aware of the general result of that study that for the chemicals used in that study and the dosage used that synergistic effects were noted showing as high as a 1600 times greater toxicity for combinations of chemicals compared to the chemicals acting alone?
A My understanding is they did observe a synergistic effect with an increase in the affinity for estrogen receptors.
Q You're saying there may or may not be a toxic effect?
A Yes.
Q Do you recall that that effect, whether we agree that it's adverse of not, toxic or not, was in the neighborhood of in some cases more that 1500 times higher than would be expected by additivity alone?
A If that's what you say it is, yeah. I mean, it was a high number.
Q So at some point in time there was the contemplation that the dunnage incinerator would not be operated?
A Yes.
Q And that was apparently connected to the concern about the dioxin emissions?
A I can't make that link.
Q Do you know what else it might have been attributed to?
A Something about the operating design.
Q It may have had problems with operating?
A That it wasn't efficient, or I really don't know. I wasn't directly involved with that.
Q Has DEQ concerned itself with insuring that employees who work at the TOCDF facility are not exposed to nerve agent?
A Not to my knowledge. In a direct way, they have not.
Q All right. If you had information in your possession that you felt was reliable that indicated an existing exposure from existing sources to a particular compound, whether it's dioxin or something else, it doesn't matter, but that that existing exposure exceeded your estimate of a virtually safe dose for that chemical compound, how would you treat in a Risk Assessment the issue of additional exposures created to that same compound from a new proposed facility.
A Hypothetically, I would look at the incremental portion contributed by the source that we're evaluating or not. I mean, maybe not do anything. Maybe just evaluate the total risk.
Q And to evaluate the total risk would mean the risk from the new source combined with the existing sources?
A That's correct.
Q And in that circumstance, if you're starting with an exposure that exceeds your virtually safe dose and adding to it from the new source, there's not too much flexibility as to the outcome, is there? You're going to get a total exposure that, or course, continues to be above the virtually safe dose?
A Right.
Q All right. so then it becomes, I guess, a policy question about what you do with it?
A That's correct, because that risk may exist whether the new source is there or not.
Q But the additional exposure would increase that risk, would it not?
A Yeah, but it may be a minuscule increase.
Q Or may not?
A Or may not.
Q I understand, but it's true, Mr. Bittner, is it not, that the animal studies for dioxins and even other toxic compounds show that species can differ from other species in their sensitivity to dioxins and other chemicals by orders of magnitude?
A That's true.
Q All right. so when we allow an exposure to any compound to exceed the reference dose, whatever we call it, the virtually safe dose, we're cutting into the safety factors in areas where there is real scientific uncertainty about the sensitivity of the human population and individuals within it compared to the animal studies. Is that not correct?
A I would agree with that.
Q You would?
A Yes.
Q Thank you. Now, we don't really know how to predict a danger level for most of these compounds for humans, do we?
A For ones we have epidemiological studies, we do.
Q Right, epidemiological studies on humans.
A Correct.
Q Right. That would probably be the exception rather than the rule for the chemicals emitted from an incinerator, would it not, where we have that high quality data where we really can say this is the danger level?
A Yeah, I would agree with that in general.
Q So we don't have the luxury of saying with certainty, for example, for dioxin and other compounds emitted from the Tooele facility what the actual threshold level is, for example, for non-cancer effects We really don't know what that is, do we?
A No, we do not.
Q So the more you cut into those safety factors by allowing exposures above reference dose, the closer you're coming to the actual threshold. We just don't know where it is. Is that a fair statement?
A That is correct.
Q When you had the conversation with Dr. Dorothy Canter of the EPA...
Q Did she approve for EPA or herself on her own behalf the deletion of the entire infant breast-feeding scenario from the Tooele Risk Assessments?
A No, I don't recall that she approved or disapproved.
Q Did she know that cancer risk for infants was not included in the Tooele Risk Assessment or was deleted from it?
A I don't recall if we discussed that.
Q Do you know whether or not she had approved or would approve of deleting cancer risk for infants exposed to dioxin?...
A ...I don't know.
Q I believe you've previously testified that you do not know made the decision not to address cancer risks in infants from dioxin in this Risk Assessment; is that correct?
A No, I have no direct knowledge of that.
Q Do have indirect knowledge of it?
A Well, that it was Dennis Downs who ultimately made the ultimate decision.
Q You're not a certified toxicologist?
A No, I am not.
Q Have you ever performed a risk assessment for a hazardous waste facility yourself?
A By myself, no.
Q What was your role in that particular Tooele RCRA risk assessment work?
A Assessing human health, and I played a supporting role with the ecological, but mainly it was human health
Q Human health risk assessment?
A Uh-huh, yes.
Q Anything to do with dioxin involved in that particular study?
A Yes.
Q Was there an assessment of dioxin exposure and the risks therefrom?
A Yes, there was.
Q How did that assessment address dioxin non-cancer effects?
A It did not address non-cancer effects of dioxin exposures.
Q It excluded them?
A Yes.
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