The presentation summarized the review of scientific literature published since 1993. Numerous other papers from Finland, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand also examined the comparative toxicities of effluents from both ECF and TCF sequences. Differences between such effluents were minor in nature and supported earlier work that there is no significant differences between the toxicities of the two bleaching technologies. Many other papers investigated the impacts of pulp mill effluents on subtle biological responses in fish. No specific link to a particular process change and mitigation of subtle biological responses has been made.
Field studies show some subtle responses in some species downstream of some mills.
However, other studies show no responses and, on an encouraging note, a number of studies showed ecosystem recovery as a result of modernizations, improved secondary treatment, conversion to ECF, and internal process changes. A new report authored by a group of experts appointed by the Swedish Forest Industries Water and Air Pollution Research Foundation and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency concluded that following the introduction of the Environment Protection Act, there have been substantial reductions in emissions from the pulp and paper industry. The expert panel also examined the results from both laboratory and model ecosystem studies of biological effects of effluent from mills using low-kappa ECF and TCF bleaching and concluded that there is no clear difference in effect pattern or intensity between the effluents from such mills. The package contains detailed reforms designed to update current regulations, apply tougher requirements to some of the regulations, and to simplify the rules. The Ministry received comments in favor of the proposal and also a number of submissions suggesting the ministry proposals were premature based on the available evidence.