Bullseye Being Investigated by Oregon DEQ

The forum for discussion on business aspects of working with glass.

Moderator: Brad Walker

Lynn Perry
Posts: 128
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2003 5:27 pm
Location: East Tennessee

Re: Bullseye Being Investigated by Oregon DEQ

Post by Lynn Perry »

Getting your operation under environmental control and resuming production is great. However, I wonder if they can survive the law suits which are certain to come. I still remember Love Canal, and I recently watched the movie, "A Civil Action" plus I spent 31 years as a chemical engineer in the chemical industry with several of those years as an environmental coordinator. I worked for a highly ethical company which spared no expense protecting employees and the environment, and it was a constant, expensive cost of doing business.
Last edited by Lynn Perry on Mon Mar 07, 2016 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Lynn Perry
Morganica
Posts: 1079
Joined: Mon May 19, 2003 6:19 pm
Location: Portland, OR
Contact:

Re: Bullseye Being Investigated by Oregon DEQ

Post by Morganica »

Mike Jordan wrote:I'm just speculating, but I wonder if the elevated levels of arsenic and cadmium in the air that was detected and started all of this was related to the Feb winter sale that Bullseye has each year. I would suspect that since they sell so much glass during this that they had been producing more to get ready for it. I know when I use to go several times during the sale that they were moving a lot of glass and the shelves were pretty bare afterwards sometimes. Plus they have opened a couple of new resource centers that they have to stock. I wonder if all of this required them to produce a lot more glass which put a lot more of the chemicals into the air, which allowed the air sensors in the area to pick it up, triggering the investigation.

I guess it was only a matter of time, but it's reported that lawyers are starting to get involved (they are probably going house to house offering to help sue Bullseye), which means this could go on long after the actual contamination is resolved and will put more pressure on Bullseye. It's a real shame it couldn't have been detected when it was a lesser amount and Bullseye was given a chance to get it cleaned up before it hit the news stations.

Mike
Yep, you're just speculating, Mike. The monitoring was in October; the sale was last week. Let's not get a whole lot of carts ahead of the horses here: The stories in the Mercury are badly researched and not particularly well-written, and in some cases just flat-out incorrect. There are definitely issues, but for the most part we're dealing with a lot of families who've been told their children are being poisoned long before there's any evidence that there is danger of long-term health impacts.

I don't blame them for being terrified, and angry. I would be, too. But I *do* blame my tribe (journalists) for caring more about selling a story than actually getting the story right.

I've been following the story: The US Forest Service detected elevated levels of arsenic and cadmium in moss in multiple "hotspots" around the greater metro Portland area. They notified the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), who basically sat on it until prodded multiple times. At that point, DEQ installed 24-hour sampling monitors in the parking lot across from Bullseye, and left them there for a month last October.

The monitors picked up a lot of data, which we have been told showed levels of arsenic and cadmium that exceeded the minimum safety levels for Portland. DEQ finally notified other agencies in late January that there were problems and apparently also notified the press, which interviewed Bullseye management and set off a firestorm.
DEQ distilled the data into a public report: http://www.deq.state.or.us/nwr/docs/Pow ... nddata.pdf The report also shows high levels of chromium on some days, although the average levels are not above what's considered safe, apparently. (DEQ page on this is at http://www.deq.state.or.us/nwr/metalsemissions.htm )

Bullseye issued a press release announcing that it was suspending production of arsenic and cadmium glasses, and later also suspended chromium glasses. Uroboros, which has also had high readings, followed suit. Uro issued a release in which it says it doesn't produce glasses with arsenic, and that in a previous suspected contamination incident the contamination days were found not to match up with factory production. http://www.deq.state.or.us/nwr/docs/met ... toring.pdf

There are three other glass manufacturers in this area (boro), but no one I know has identified issues with them.

Ironically, Portland has some serious pollution issues without worrying about glass factories. There's a tendency for Portlanders to assume that, because they're so hung up on ecovegetarianwhateverism, they live in a pristine environment. In fact, we've got some pretty nasty superfund sites, one of the most polluted waterways in the US, an air quality level last summer that was actually worse than Beijing, some real heavy-hitter polluters (as far as the EPA is concerned), and we live next door to one of the most efficient heavy metals emitters known, i.e., volcanoes. There are, for example, some rather gooey plumes out in Hillsboro that are probably due to the semiconductor industries, and you can pretty much count on drycleaners messing up the air quality.

Here is an important point, though: The levels that were exceeded at Bullseye and Uroboros were basically indicator or alarm levels, i.e., they were alerts that there is a problem, not that there is proven harm. (at least according to DEQ so far). Those levels are set far below the danger levels, for the really good reason that if the first time you get an alert there's already harm being done, you're too late. If you're interested in this stuff, there's a guy named Duncan Parks who has some extremely good analysis of the data to date: http://wantonempiricist.blogspot.com/

Nor have there been any identified cancer clusters (which was the real fear), or other proven incidents of illness. There are elevated levels of soil contamination, but not overly elevated, and since volcanoes emit some copious quantities of chromium, arsenic, cadmium, sulfur dioxide, etc., it can be difficult to tell (especially given Mt. St Helens erupting all over the landscape).

Bullseye (and I believe also Uro, but don't quote me) were heavily criticized for not adequately filtering smokestacks. The argument there is that there is no regulation requiring such filtering. Much larger manufacturing facilities are required to use that kind of filtration, but small companies have relatively little output compared to the big guys, so the gain in pollution control is considered not worth the expense. The DEQ/EPA/OSHA and everyone else who's commented has said they are in full compliance with other safety/filtering compliance. The community overwhelmingly feels that is not enough, they should be made to comply at the same level as larger companies.

So Bullseye is working with a company, Sarbaco, to implement that filtration, but such things take time to implement, and in the meantime they are not producing a significant part of their inventory. Neither is Uroboros. I've no insight into either business but I can't think that's a very profitable scenario, or that it can go on very long.

Most of the surrounding community also feels (at least if you read Facebook or go to the meetings) that Bullseye should not use ANY toxic chemicals that might produce unhealthy emissions until the filtration is in place. I'm not sure there IS a glass made that couldn't potentially have a "toxic" chemical--someone more experienced than I should speak to that--so I suppose there might be a chance that other glasses would stop production, too. I have not heard anything that would indicate that, but it's certainly part of the public demand.

What worries me--aside from the obvious issues with losing our premiere glass manufacturers--is that there's a very real danger that the state and local agencies will decide it's a lot easier to kill the relatively small glass business in Portland, announce that they've "solved" the pollution problem, and let the real polluters go back to business as usual. In fact, if I were a corporate strategist with three or four companies I could name, I would be pushing very, very hard in that direction.
Cynthia Morgan
Marketeer, Webbist, Glassist
http://www.morganica.com/bloggery
http://www.cynthiamorgan.com

"I wrote, therefore I was." (me)
Mike Jordan
Posts: 94
Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2006 11:13 pm
Location: Hillsboro, OR
Contact:

Re: Bullseye Being Investigated by Oregon DEQ

Post by Mike Jordan »

Cynthia, there is nothing wrong with speculating... at least I said that was what I was doing. And being from the local area and having gone to a lot of their winter and summer sales, I know that they produce a lot of glass both before and after each sale. If their scrubbers are not functioning to meet air quality standards under normal production amounts, then yes, it is not a far reach to speculate that under heavier production schedules they are going to produce even greater amounts of contaminates. No carts and no horses were involved. There are a number of news agencies following up on this and I've never even seen the Mercury report (don't read it at all).

Yes, people are worried but there are also people AND lawyers that see this as a cash cow opportunity. They will do everything they can to get in on any legal action where money is going to have to be paid out. It's a fact of life and part of our society.

Mike
It's said that inside each of us is an artist trying to get out. Well mine got out... and I haven't seen him since.
Morganica
Posts: 1079
Joined: Mon May 19, 2003 6:19 pm
Location: Portland, OR
Contact:

Re: Bullseye Being Investigated by Oregon DEQ

Post by Morganica »

Mike Jordan wrote:Cynthia, there is nothing wrong with speculating... at least I said that was what I was doing. And being from the local area and having gone to a lot of their winter and summer sales, I know that they produce a lot of glass both before and after each sale. If their scrubbers are not functioning to meet air quality standards under normal production amounts, then yes, it is not a far reach to speculate that under heavier production schedules they are going to produce even greater amounts of contaminates. No carts and no horses were involved. There are a number of news agencies following up on this and I've never even seen the Mercury report (don't read it at all).

Yes, people are worried but there are also people AND lawyers that see this as a cash cow opportunity. They will do everything they can to get in on any legal action where money is going to have to be paid out. It's a fact of life and part of our society.

Mike
Nothing wrong with speculating, it's the assumptions that aren't very helpful. The cart before the horse refers to the fact that (A) DEQ has so far only identified Bullseye as a "probable" source; it has yet to make that an absolute or sole source. (B) As I mentioned, DEQ also identified another probable source, Uroboros, along with five other plumes in the greater metro area. Uroboros wasn't having a big sale to get ready for, and the other hotspots aren't near glass factories, so it is indeed a pretty far reach to suggest that Bullseye's sale led to the contaminants. And (C) there's been no mention of scrubbers not functioning so that they can't meet increased production; the controversy is about the law not requiring smokestack filtration for small glass companies and whether BE should have filtered their stacks anyway.

There are all kinds of rumors and misinformation flying around with this situation; we've got neighborhoodsful of families believing they've been poisoned, the EPA taking a very close look at all art glass manufacturers, including small specialty companies, local, state, and federal politicians grandstanding all over the place, and right now there's a shortage (or in some cases complete absence) of at least half the color palette normally available in COE 90 and some COE 96 glass, without any near-term plans I'm aware of for resuming production.

Seems like the closer we stick to actual facts, avoiding unwarranted assumptions, the better off everyone will be.
Cynthia Morgan
Marketeer, Webbist, Glassist
http://www.morganica.com/bloggery
http://www.cynthiamorgan.com

"I wrote, therefore I was." (me)
Warren Weiss
Posts: 137
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2003 8:06 pm
Location: Richmond, VA

Re: Bullseye Being Investigated by Oregon DEQ

Post by Warren Weiss »

Warren Weiss
Posts: 137
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2003 8:06 pm
Location: Richmond, VA

Re: Bullseye Being Investigated by Oregon DEQ

Post by Warren Weiss »

Bullseye is asking for help: http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=3b8 ... c43037cdc4
Warren
Barry Kaiser
Posts: 307
Joined: Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:54 pm
Location: North Carolina
Contact:

Re: Bullseye Being Investigated by Oregon DEQ

Post by Barry Kaiser »

Warren Weiss wrote:See attached:
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/i ... on_su.html

Warren

What a shock!!
Imaging a lawyer wanting to make money. Whoda thunk
Tod
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2006 5:47 pm
Location: Massachusetts

Re: Bullseye Being Investigated by Oregon DEQ

Post by Tod »

Is there any new news fro the western front?
please visit Beall Glass Studio on Face Book
Brad Walker
Site Admin
Posts: 1489
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2003 9:33 pm
Location: North Carolina, USA
Contact:

Re: Bullseye Being Investigated by Oregon DEQ

Post by Brad Walker »

Tod wrote:Is there any new news fro the western front?
Latest I've heard is that Bullseye is in the process of installing filters on their furnaces and expects to start making a limited quantity of cadmium containing glasses this coming week.

I've not heard anything on the current situation at Uroboros.
Post Reply