World Watch: September October 1992: Whitewash: Pursuing the Truth About Paper:

page 17 World wide, new paper produced in one year is about 240 million tons - or four times the weight of the world's total production of new automobiles. letter accused Time of allowing "junk science"

page 19 To influence its decision on what kind of paper to use in printing its magazines. Junk Science refers to 1985 evidence about chlorine bleaching, dioxins-most toxic carcinogenic known, tiny amounts cause cancer - In 1987 as UPA prepared to release its findings on the paper industry - heavy lobbying - API memo urged "Get EPA to characterize (dioxin emissions) as 'not a real threat to environment or public health'. In March 1990 API went a step farther, another study, five pathologists, finally it was persuaded to announce that dioxins weren't as dangerous as originally thought., but scientist in charge of restudying original report said , it still leaves dioxin as the most toxic carcinogenic known to man. Linda Birnbaum, EPA toxicologists 1990, dioxins "I've grown much more concerned about non-cancer effects involving the reproductive and immune systems." page 20 Green peace asked consumers to stop using chlorine - bleached paper.. October 1990, 20,000 letters to US, because of Greenpeace campaign Wesley Simmons, who lived on the Leaf River in Georgia, 40 miles downstream from a bleaching plant of the Georgia-Pacific Paper Company, sued the plant for trespass and nuisance, and for causing "fear of cancer." A jury awarded him $1,040,000. Other suits quickly followed. by 1991 more than 8,000 plaintiffs were lined up to sue the Leaf River plant alone. The paper industry put on notice method of making paper white a ticking legal time bomb. 1991 Beaumont, Texas, a $100. billion class-action lawsuit, possibly the largest claim for damages in US legal history, against API and 30 paper & Pulp manufactures, alleging "that they conspired to keep the dioxin discharges secret. "Minimize or discount the possibility or harmful effects, manipulate test data, and ... obtain favorable regulatory standards." Herman Melville had once written, "whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as if imparting special virtues of its own", it is the color of "innocence" and "purity" ... Melville also wrote "there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul that redness which affrights in blood. written about 1850. About 1% is all that is "real" waste in recycled paper, the rest is virgin wood.

page 21 lists standards set by some small companies: Baltimore based Atlantic Recycled Paper, Massachusetts Patriot Paper 60% post consumer waste. API announces goal of 40% recover of waste paper by 1995. only playing numbers...30 % of US paper is recovered now in paperboard cartons page 22 by 1995, us will increase paper production by 42% from 72 million tons to a projected 102 million tons., thus the net effect of the API program would be to leave more paper going to landfills than before the program began. Forest Service goal 45% recovery rate by 2040, ..reasons akin example: US manufacturing processes are less energy-efficient, US spoiled abundance cheap energy, vast forest given seemingly endless supply of cheap pulp. studies don't say: wood farming (for paper) in areas like the southeastern US displaces diverse, natural forests and wetlands. In Canada, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the world, old growth forests are being cut for paper directly. every ton of recycled paper saves 17 trees, and 3 cubic yards of landfill wood fibers can be recycled five to 10 times before they become too short, so with current technology, there has to be a continual injection of new fibers to the mix.

page 23 advertising is the prima donna of the service industries when effects of organo-chlorines were investigated as a major threat to health several decades ago, the focus was on cancers and mortalities among wildlife

page 24 scientists say organochlorines have become "environmental hormones" disrupting long-term biological functions in a wide range of wildlife, traveling up the food chain to the human dinner table - indirect exposure of dioxins leaching out of bleached paper products such as milk cartons and tissues. - handling on a regular basis the Chlorine Institute is quick to point out: Chlorine is used to purify drinking water, swimming pools, and cleaning agent in homes. It is when chlorine reacts with lignin dioxin is produced. evidence growing scientists right, even the smallest measurable quantities are a threat to human health. 1,000 chemicals are emitted by pulp mills. Many are carcinogenic, and the effects of others are only now being discovered.