Looking Down River

The most striking feature of a decision late last month by U.S. District Judge Gene Carter was not its opening quote from famed physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who was talking about the physical evolution of the planet, but could have been usefully talking about ecosystems, the law, free trade or any large, complex system. More interesting was the considerable kindness the judge showed to Mallinckrodt officials, who years ago were supposed to test the Penobscot River to see whether the tens of thousands of pounds of mercury their company dumped there posed a health hazard. Threats to human health from mercury, by the way, are measured in tenths of micrograms.

First, the quote from Dr. Gell-Mann: “When dealing with any non-linear system, especially a complex one, you can’t just think in terms of parts or aspects and just add things up and say that the behavior of this and the behavior of that, added together, makes the whole thing. With a complex non-linear system you have to break it up into pieces and then study each aspect, and then study the very strong interaction between them all. Only [in] this way can you describe the whole system.”

Judge Carter used the quote, naturally, to highlight his thoughts behind the opinion, including the thought that a failure to look downstream of the former chlor-alkali plant in Orrington was a failure to take into account the strong interaction between what was dumped in Orrington and the effect on wildlife in Penobscot Bay. He properly ordered a study of that area to determine the amount of environmental damage or likely damage present.

Mercury becomes a hazard to people after microorganisms convert it to methylmercury, making it easily accumulated in fish and wildlife and, eventually, people, with the level of toxicity increasing as it moves up the food chain. That Mallinckrodt, which owned the plant years before Holtra-Chem purchased and eventually closed it last year, did not adequately test for this possibility means that it did not meet its regulatory or ethical duty. This was not a case of simply a missed test for a tiny spill; the dumping was part of the plant’s standard operation 30 years ago and the Environmental Protection Agency has refused repeatedly to accept Mallinckrodt reports on the situation because they failed to look down river.

The local plaintiff in this case, the Maine People’s Alliance, has done a tremendous service to the region by pressing ahead, year after year, with its concern about the health of the Penobscot. Judge Carter calmly ordered the study; what it turns up will say as much about strong interactions as the quote from Dr. Gell-Mann.