At last!! Here's my chance to exploit the shark attacks while sounding responsible.

Almost everyone else in the media has been doing it for a solid month. What a story! It sure beats New Source Review, and Total Maximum Daily Loads. It's a fast track to the front page.

Of course, I do care about Jesse Arbogast, the poor kid who may never recover from the July 6 attack in Pensacola. I identify totally with Richard Peltier, the dad who punched out the shark trying vainly to save his 10-year-old son.

But it's also a great chance to reflect on how we cover hazards on the environmental beat. The shark story offers a kind of ink blot which can tell journalists and media a lot about themselves.

There's a good side and a bad side. The good: the shark attacks are an incredibly human story, and a lot of media handled it with humanity and compassion. The writing actually told people a lot about nature, about risk, and about themselves. A lot of the reporting maintained some perspective. Much coverage, while heavy, was not simply exploitative.

The bad side: media feeding frenzies can be as blind and almost as hurtful as shark frenzies. At worst, they simply exploit emotions like fear and grief to pump up ratings and circulation, without illuminating the subject or telling people what they need to know.

Stories like this have momentum. Personally, I wanted daily updates on how Jesse Arbogast was doing. But once there is a second-day and third-day story, it can tend to become a daily story by default. Editors want to know what's new on the shark front, and every new shark-nip, however minor, gets reported. Fatal attacks start to feed a media hunger. We see what we are looking for.

Editors and producers, who manage the news divisions of today's entertainment-industry conglomerates, make these coverage decisions with full consciousness. As I write this, it is hard to be unaware that Jeepers Creepers was the number one film at the box office. Hard to be unaware that it was Jaws, really, that finally kicked Steven Spielberg's humdrum career into overdrive. This is the age of news as summer movie.

Let's give credit where due: a lot of media have reported from the outset, right along with the gruesome details, that these attacks are nothing that unusual.

The September 4 Washington Post story on a fatal Virginia Beach, Virginia, shark attack, for example, made the point in the fourth and fifth grafs: "Despite well-publicized shark attacks in Florida this summer, attacks and fatalities around the world have declined. In Virginia, the last known shark attack occurred 28 years ago." Even though the Post put the shark hazard in perspective, they still ran the story on page one.

The keepers of the official statistics, the International Shark Attack File, bear those assertions out. Although final numbers for the year were not in, attacks for 2001 were running behind the pace for 2000 even as the headlines were getting bolder.

The waters were churned, as it were, by arrival August 12-19 of the The Discovery Channel's "Shark Week." OK, OK, you can't say TDC was exploiting the most recent attacks — this was the "14th Annual" Shark Week. But with a full-scale promotion that included critter-cams, "store events," and organized teenage sleepovers during a time when a significant fraction of the East Coast was vacationing at the beach, that was about all you could say. Time magazine's cover proclaimed "The Summer of the Shark."

It is hard to get perspective on the risks presented to people by their natural environment. We tend to be most afraid of things we think we have no control over — the Jaws syndrome. But many shark attacks are actually brought on by people. Tour operators chum the waters so that divers and tourists can see sharks, or even pet them. Bathers and surfers in places like Florida's Smyrna Beach insist on putting themselves into shark habitat. Many of them complained loudly of media hype this August when officials closed the beach for a day because a school of sharks had been sighted there.

Even louder were the complaints of beach business operators. In fact Florida Governor Jeb Bush (R) got into the act, complaining about the fairness of coverage, saying "…the amount of coverage is disproportional to the problem that we face."

But near the end of August 2001, the numbers were roughly as follows: about 42 shark attacks or bites worldwide — compared to 79 in all of 2000. Of those 42 attacks, 31 were in the United States and 24 of those were in Florida. Of those, 18 were in Volusia County (home of New Smyrna Beach). And of those, only two had required surgery.

Another perspective: while it is typical for one or maybe two humans to die in shark attacks yearly in the United States in the last decade (and about 7 fatalities a year worldwide), millions of sharks per year die at the hands of humans. Many deaths are from shark-finning, a practice in which fishermen catch sharks, remove their fins, and then release the sharks, who usually die.

Joseph A. Davis

Any reporter who pounds the environmental beat is likely to come back from the Society of Environmental Journalists' October 18-21 Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon, with enough stories to last a year.

Fish (most importantly salmon), forests (some very ancient), farms, First Nations, and fine journalism will all be on the program. It will be held otn the campus of Portland State University in downtown Portland, near some of the most interesting geography and hottest controversies going.

Conference organizers say they have confirmed an appearance by EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman who will be the keynote speaker during lunch on Friday, October 19. Following her remarks she will field questions from a panel of journalists, moderated by CNN's Natalie Pawelski. Panelists will include Charles Alexander of Time magazine, Elizabeth Arnold of National Public Radio, John Heilprin of the Associated Press, and Tim Wheeler of the Baltimore Sun. As this issue went to press, organizers were still waiting to hear whether Interior Secretary Gale Norton had accepted their invitation.

It will not be the kind of meeting where you never see the outside of hotel meeting rooms. Conference-goers will have a chance to ride in a forest-canopy crane, fly over controversial dams in small airplanes, climb a volcano, or visit a fishing village. The whole first day of the conference is given over to field trips.

Another major speaker will be conservation biologist Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International, who will talk about "the next mass extinction." Time magazine described Mittermeier, a primatologist, as "part scientist, part activist, part barker and part kid," in naming him to its gallery of "Heroes for the Planet."

Chairing the conference is broadcast journalist Christy George, Business and Environment Bureau Chief of Oregon Public Broadcasting's "Marketplace."

Another first at this conference will be a roundtable of more than a dozen EPA public information officers from around the country. They will take questions and discuss things like callback times and how they meet journalists' needs. Attendance at this session, to be held Saturday, September 20, 12:15 2:00 pm, will be limited, with signups at the registration desk.

But the problem at this conference, as is usual at SEJ meetings, will likely be too many news stories for any one reporter to chase. Topical breakout sessions will run on seven concurrent tracks. Those sessions each will feature several quotable experts or "players," and an experienced journalist -moderator to offer background and perspective. There will be four sessions — Friday and Saturday morning and afternoon — on each of the tracks — some 28 in all.

The "Future" track will cover issues ranging from the growing wave of sometimes-toxic junked computers to how science-fiction writers see Earth's environmental future. The "Globe" track will range from climate change scenarios to the transcontinental spread of PCBs and DDTs. A track on "The Land" will touch on everything from national parks to the Western Wise Use Movement. Still another track on "The Pacific Rim" will examine environmental issues facing China, the world's most populous nation and the environmental implications of Native American sovereignty.

For some conference-goers, the most valuable parts of the program are the less structured ones. A number of official and unofficial receptions will give journalists a chance to schmooze with colleagues, sources, or even potential employers. On top of those, there will be a "Beat Breakfast" and a "Network Lunch," where attendees can group themselves for mealtime discussion, with each table dedicated to a different topic.

Poster Sessions" will present newsy and interesting research in a format allowing journalists to check out what they want on their own timetable. Dozens of agencies and organizations will offer handouts at literature tables. This year's "Environmental Exposition" will allow companies to demonstrate all kinds of technology in a hands-on way, everything from the usual alt-fueled vehicles to hydropower and geothermal technology — but you might just come for all the hors d'oeuvres.

Registration for the conference is still open. You can view the entire program or register online at http://www.sej.org/confer/index1.htm. For questions not answered on the Web site, call the SEJ office at (215) 884-8174.

E-Beat Gets Groove Back

PETA Pulls Shark-Attack Ad

"Project Censored 2001" Lists Environmental Stories

1. World Bank and Multinational Corporations Seek to Privatize Water
3. U.S. Army's Psychological Operations Personnel Worked at CNN
5. U.S. Taxpayers Underwrite Global Nuclear Power Plant Sales
7. Independent Study Points to Dangers of Genetically Altered Foods (Dismissed by Media and Biotech Industry)
9. EPA Plans to Disburse Toxic/Radioactive Wastes into Denver's Sewage System
12. Cuba Leads the World in Organic Farming
14. Europe Holds Companies Environmentally Responsible, Despite U.S. Opposition
19. U.S. Using Dangerous Fungus to Eradicate Coca Plants in Colombia
23. Very Small Levels of Chemical Exposures Can be Dangerous

More at http://www.projectcensored.org/.

Nature Asks Contributors to Disclose Financial Interests

Toy Manufacturers Say No to Chemical Disclosure

“Accordingly, we do not believe that providing the consumer with knowledge of the chemical ingredients of toys will in any material sense advance the safety of toy products or the protection of consumers,” TIA president David A. Miller wrote Krupp. “In fact, it might mislead them.” ED published the April 3 letter in a June 11 ad in USA Today.

Krupp and ED assert that “Both the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Com-mission (CPSC) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have officially confirmed to us that they do not have systematic information on what chemicals are present in children’s pro-ducts.” TIA’s Miller, however, says “both the EPA and the CSPC know precisely what the consumer is getting.”

Backgrounder...

As the annual stratospheric ozone hole over the Antarctic reaches its peak in mid-late September, news coverage inevitably results. While terrorist attacks may sweep it off the front pages this year, it is a story that will recur year after year. On Oct. 16-19, 2001, the parties to the Montreal Protocol were scheduled to meet in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Why Cover Stratospheric Ozone Depletion?

The stratospheric ozone layer is critical to life on Earth. Before Earth's oxygen atmosphere formed, life was limited to the sea, because the sun's ultraviolet radiation would have been lethal to any creature living on land.

The ozone layer, which is formed as sunlight breaks down oxygen molecules, filters out the most harmful kinds of incoming solar ultraviolet. Chemicals put into the atmosphere by humans have eroded this protective layer, increasing certain dangers to people and other forms of life.

Perhaps the chief threat to human health from increased ultraviolet exposure is skin cancer. The causal connection between ultraviolet exposure and skin cancer is well-established scientifically. There are more than a million new cases of skin cancer yearly in the United States alone, thousands of them fatal. One in five Americans will develop skin cancer during their lifetime. Roughly one American dies every hour from skin cancer.

Story Ideas

1. How big is this year's Antarctic stratospheric ozone hole — which usually peaks in mid-late September? How does it compare to previous years? What is the overall trend over recent decades?

2. Is there a stratospheric ozone hole over the Arctic this year? How big is it and how does it compare to previous years?

3. How would people in your latitude be affected by stratospheric ozone depletion? What are the measured stratospheric ozone levels and the trends in them? What are the measured UV levels and the trends in them?

4. Can the ozone issue be ignored now that the Montreal Protocol and several additions to it have been agreed on and signed? — or is the problem an ongoing one? Why?

5. Since some of the major problem CFCs have been phased out under the Montreal Protocol, a black market in CFCs has emerged. What uses do businesses and industries in your area still make of CFCs? Where do they come from and where are they disposed of? Has EPA prosecuted anyone in your area for illegal traffic in CFCs lately? How do auto repair shops in your area handle CFCs and air conditioning system refrigerants?

6. What will the impact of the methyl bromide phase-out be in your area? Will it affect agriculture and food industries in your area?

7. What can individual consumers do to protect the ozone layer? What are the best practices for a consumer to follow in getting his or her auto air conditioning system serviced?

8. If there are semiconductor industries in your area, what are their practices with regard to halocarbon use and recovery?

Background and Context

Oxygen, the life-giving element that comprises about 20 percent of Earth's atmosphere, normally occurs in molecules consisting of two atoms of elemental oxygen chemically bound to each other. Ozone, a molecule made up of three oxygen atoms, is rarer and more unstable. At ground level, it is a pollutant which can irritate and damage people's lungs, but in the stratosphere, it protects us from harmful ultraviolet rays.

Incoming ultraviolet rays from the sun create ozone when they break apart normal oxygen molecules, and some of the atoms recombine to form ozone. Ozone in the stratosphere is constantly being created and destroyed in a dynamic and complex chain of chemical reactions. Stratospheric ozone is hardly a static or permanent thing, and its abundance at any given place and time is the result of an ever-changing balance of forces.

In 1974, two University of California chemists, F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, published a paper predicting that the buildup of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the stratosphere could radically alter the balance of stratospheric chemistry, because they functioned as a long-lived catalyst promoting destruction of ozone. In 1977, the federal government began banning nonessential uses of CFCs in aerosol spray products.

The issue was largely ignored until about 1985. In that year, many nations signed the Vienna Convention, which covered research and monitoring of stratospheric ozone, but said nothing about controlling CFCs. In the same year, a team of British scientists led by Dr. Joe Farman published data gathered the year before, revealing an astonishing discovery. They found a 40 percent ozone loss over Antarctica during the southern hemisphere spring - the "ozone hole." By 1987, nations had signed the Montreal Protocol, which called for CFC reductions of 50 percent by 1999.

The Montreal treaty was further amended in London in 1990, Copenhagen in 1992, Vienna in 1995, Montreal in 1997, and Beijing in 1999 — adding new ozone-depleting substances to be phased out and tightening deadlines.

The CFCs are really a whole family of chemical compounds, and part of a still-large chemical clan called the halocarbons, many of which can destroy ozone. Each compound has different uses, and each has different potential for destroying ozone. Since manufacturers decided voluntarily to stop making them, the most harmful and ubiquitous compounds, like CFC-11 and CFC-12, have largely been removed from legitimate commerce, at least in new uses.

But this hardly means the problem is "solved." For one thing, stability and non-reactivity were essentially the qualities that made these chemicals so attractive for various industrial uses in the first place. Many do not break down easily and persist for a long time — decades or centuries — once they get into the atmosphere. Their ozone-depleting effect will persist as a result, and we can expect annual ozone holes over the Antarctic to continue for decades.

For another thing, the CFC substitutes can create problems also. Some of the substitutes, such as the hydrochloro-fluorocarbons (HCFCs), have far less ozone-depleting effect, but still do deplete ozone. Others, such as the family known as hydrofluoro-carbons (HFCs), have no ozone-depleting effect, but do add to global climate warming.

The Montreal Protocol and the treaties extending it now go well beyond the CFCs which were the original concern. Other ozone-depleting chemicals it now addresses include halons (used in fire extinguishers), and methyl chloroform (an industrial solvent). One of the most controversial is methyl bromide, which is used as a pesticide in agriculture and food processing. Phase-out of methyl bromide has only just begun.

The World Meteorological Organization and other scientific groups concluded, in their 1998 scientific assessment, that “ The total combined abundance of ozone-depleting compounds in the lower atmosphere peaked in about 1994 and is now slowly declining. Total chlorine is declining, but total bromine is still increasing.” Bromine atoms have a stronger ozone-depleting effect than chlorine atoms.

Even if all provisions of the Montreal Protocol were fully enforced, the 1998 WMO assessment estimated that “the maximum ozone depletion is estimated to lie within the current decade or the next two decades,” with ultimate recovery only decades beyond that.

Sources and Players

• Office of Atmospheric Programs, Global Programs Division (formerly Stratospheric Protection Division), Drusilla Hufford (director), (202) 564-9101. One of the best all-around sources of information related to ozone depletion is EPA’s Ozone Depletion Homepage, maintained by this division: http://www.epa.gov/ozone/index.html.
• Stratospheric Ozone Protection Hotline toll-free at (800) 296- 1996 ((301) 614-3396 from outside the U.S. and Canada). The hotline can answer questions and send out fact sheets and other materials. It is also the number to call to report suspected illegal activity related to banned ozone-depleting substances.
• The EPA press officer responsible for stratospheric ozone issues is Dave Ryan, (202) 564-7827, ryan.dave@epa.gov

National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

• Several offices and labs within NOAA do work related to stratospheric ozone. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center maintains a Web site that allow you to monitor the development of the ozone hole in near-real-time at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/index.html. It also includes a number of other kinds of monitoring and analysis, as well as background, useful links, and daily UV forecasts.
• NOAA Press: Carmeyia Gillis (301-763-8000 x7163) or Greg Hernandez (202-482-3091).
• NOAA’s Aeronomy Lab in Boulder, Colorado, is the homebase for much of the agency’s research related to stratospheric ozone. Its director is Daniel L. Albritton, (303) 497-5785, Daniel.L.Albritton@noaa.gov. The Aeronomy Lab publishes the only online version of the Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 1998 (executive summary), which is the closest thing to an authoritative consensus statement on the scientific issues related to stratospheric ozone. The 1998 version is at http://www.al.noaa.gov/WWWHD/pubdocs/ Assessment98/executive-summary.html. See also the 1994 assessment at the same site (http://www.al.noaa.gov/WWWHD/pubdocs/Assessment94.html).Also useful is an update, titled “Environmental effects of ozone depletion:Interim Summary, August, 2000,” online at http://www.gcrio.org/ozone/unep2000summary.htm SRC="http://www.gcrio.org/ozone/unep2000summary.html" BORDER="0"l.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

• NOAA’s ozone hole tracker actually gets its data from satellites flown by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA puts its own presentation of the ozone hole data online at http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/.
• Another useful resource offered by NASA is actually a joint project with the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University (CIESIN) — the Stratospheric Ozone and Human Health Homepage. It is an authoritative collection of references and resources on human health effects. See http://www.ciesin.org/TG/OZ/ozome.htm, http://www.ciesin.org/TG/OZ/ozome.html.

UNEP “Ozone Secretariat”

• The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) maintains an organizational unit devoted to research, monitoring, and diplomacy related to the Montreal Protocol. While much of their information is very technical, it is also authoritative.
• The official Web site of the Ozone Secretariat (http://www.unep.ch/ozone/index.shtml) is a cornucopia of information and official documents about the treaties themselves.Official Contact: Michael Graber, Deputy Executive Secretary Nairobi), +254-2-623851, Fax: +254-2-623913, Michael.Graber@unep.org. Press contact: Patricia L. Jacobs (Nairobi), Tel.: +254-2-623088; Fax: +254-2-623692, Patricia.Jacobs@unep.org. Michael Williams (Geneva), +41-22-917 8242 or Jim Sniffen (New York), (212) 963-8098).

World Meteorological Organization

• The UN’s World Meteorological Organization often issues an assessment of the ozone hole by mid-late September. WMO press (Geneva): Taysir M. Al-Ghanem, +41-22-730 8315.

Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Polic

• ARAP is a coalition of companies who produce CFCs and related chemicals, who manufacture products that use these chemicals, or whose services rely on these chemicals. Contact: Dave Stirpe, director, (703) 243-0344, http://www.arap.org/. Currently, no environmental groups are focused exclusively on stratospheric ozone as an issue.