In November, the Clinton Administration signed into rule a new package of water and air standards for the nation's pulp mills. The new rule applies to most mills in the country, including the Georgia Pacific plant in downtown Bellingham. While the rule is over 1,200 pages long, with many sub-sections and technical sections, the gist of it boils down to bleaching technology. Most mills in the U.S. use either elemental chlorine or chlorine dioxide to de-lignify and bleach pulp. Chlorine and chlorinated chemicals are of concern because their use can result in the production of dioxins and their close cousins the furans, a highly toxic family of cancer-causing chemicals that settle in fish and, in turn, in humans who eat the fish caught near pulp mills.
Airborne dioxin is carried by the wind to settle on food crops and grazing lands.
In addition to being a carcinogen, dioxin has been linked to neurological problems as well as problems of immunity, reproduction and development. The new rule requires most mills to transition away from elemental chlorine and adopt chlorine dioxide bleaching processes, instead. All affected mills will be required to have their new bleaching technologies on-line within three years. This move will markedly reduce dioxin and furan production by pulp and paper mills. Many environmental and indigenous rights groups, however, feel that the Environmental Protection Agency did not go far enough.