Bellingham Comments from Digital Recorder - EISs for the Proposed ...

GATEWAY PACIFIC TERMINAL EIS SCOPING HEARING VOL. I
COURT REPORTER: GWEN BRASS PROCEEDING DATE: October 27, 2012
Page 70
known. I'm talking about the heavy metals cadmium and
selenium. Both are lethal to living organisms even in very,
very small amounts. For example, cadmium kills shellfish,
dungeness crabs and Pacific oysters at only five to ten parts
per billion.
To try to understand this amount, consider that five
parts per billion is comparable to a couple of seconds in a
century.
If it doesn't kill them, cadmium is still a problem
with shellfish since they bioaccumulate concentrated as much as
40,000 times what's in their -- in the environment they live
in.
Other creatures that eat shellfish like sea birds and
also humans are especially vulnerable. In humans it causes
renal failure, osteoporosis, it's also associated with breast
cancer and with learning disabilities in children.
Selenium, like cadmium, works its evil in small, small
quantities. Five to fifteen parts per billion can cause fatal
deformities in 80 to 90 percent of the offspring of egg-laying
aquatic species. We're talking about dungeness crab, Pacific
oysters, and also herring. I fear that selenium from a coal
port terminal at Cherry Point could extinguish that crucial and
unique population of herring.
Together with cadmium, it can also harm dungeness
crab, the Pacific oyster populations of Puget Sound, and other