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Food and radiation aren’t two words that most people like to hear in the same sentence. Add the word ‘airport’ and that apprehension becomes almost palpable. If, however, a proposed project moves forward, O’ahu might soon become home to Hawai’i’s first-ever Cobalt-60 irradiator, an underwater facility that would use low-dose radiation to kill insects on fruits, vegetables and flowers leaving the islands. And it would be located right next to Honolulu International Airport.

Not surprisingly, environmentalists are trying to block construction of the irradiator. And their motivations are based on more than just the standard not-in-my-backyard reaction against all things radioactive. According to David Henkin, an attorney with the environmental watchdog group Earthjustice who is representing the Concerned Citizens of Honolulu, there are two major questions to be asked about the irradiator. One, given the threat of terrorism, what is the logic in putting the facility next to an airport? And two, how do we know that irradiated food is safe to eat?

Henkin’s ostensible target is Pa’ina Hawai’i, LLC, the company that has proposed building the facility. But his real foe is actually much larger. It’s the state itself. For years, Hawai’i’s Department of Agriculture has pushed to make the Honolulu irradiator a reality.

That makes Lyle Wong unpopular–at least among many environmentalists. Wong, the head of the Agriculture Department’s plant industry division, has argued for years that an irradiator could save Hawai’i’s agriculture industry from economic demise.

‘We have four of the worst fruit flies in the world,’ Wong says. Because of those pests, the United States Drug Administration has quarantined all Hawai’i-grown raw fruit exports. For Wong, irradiation will provide the state with a safe, low-cost way of shipping fruit off the island.

How irradiation works

Can eating irradiated foods cause cancer?

Colon cancer kills about 60,000 Americans every year. Consuming irradiated foods might compound that risk.

That’s according to Dr. William Au, a professor at the University of Texas’ Department of Preventative Medicine and Community Health. His opinions are based on years of research on the dangers of consuming irradiated foods. He could be called as an expert witness in the case of the Concerned Citizens of Honolulu versus Pa’ina Hawai’i LLC, the group that has proposed building an irradiator next to Honolulu International Airport.

Au’s concerns stem from the fact that irradiation creates radiolytic products, such as 2-alkylcyclobutanones, or 2-ACBs. Au studies indicate that those chemicals can build up to toxic levels in human tissue. ‘Consumption of the improper diet together with food that contains 2-ACB, which acts as a tumor promoter, can increase the risk for the development of colon cancer,’ the scientist wrote in a written declaration to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He added that 2-ACBs have been found in irradiated mangos and papayas, two fruits proposed for processing at the Honolulu irradiator.

Fears over these ‘nuked foods’ became very real for many New Zealanders about two years ago, when the New Zealand Herald reported that mangos that had been irradiated in Australia developed unusual ‘blotches.’ A primary fear, said Bob Tait, a spokesman for the New Zealand organization, Friends of the Earth, is that the fruit developed a secondary infection that it could not fend off because of sterilization that occurred during the irradiation process.

Irradiated food is exposed to a measured amount of ionizing radiation, according to the Center for Consumer Research website. The process occurs in a special room–an underwater room in the case of the Honolulu irradiator–where chemical bonds are broken as in cooking.

There are several different types of irradiation. Since the mid-1990s, for example, the Big Island has housed an electron beam, as opposed to nuclear, irradiator. Pa’ina, however, would like to build a Cobalt-60 irradiator, which uses gamma ray technology.

Irradiation can serve several purposes. At extremely low doses it can stop foods such as onions and potatoes from sprouting, thereby increasing their shelf life. Slightly higher doses kill off fruit flies and other insects, while higher doses kill pathogens that can cause food-borne illnesses, like [E.coli]. The highest treatment available makes food, according to the CCR website, ’shelf stable.’ In other words, irradiated items should last as long as canned food. As a testament to the safety of irradiated food, consider this tidbit from Consumer Research: ‘Astronauts have eaten shelf stable irradiated foods since the beginning of the space program.’

Is it safe?

Wong says yes. And he is backed up by the World Health Organization, the United Nations, the American Diabetic Association and the United States Food and Drug Administration, to name a few. ‘The critics will say irradiator fluid is unhealthy, not safe. That is not the consensus or opinion of the scientific community–the legitimate scientific community worldwide,’ he says.

The only thing stopping the widespread use of irradiation to kill pests, according to Wong, is ‘public perception,’ a perception that is not based on sound science.

‘You cannot simply assert that something is bad,’ Wong adds. ‘The assertion itself doesn’t make the case.’

Wong points out that irradiators have been used on fruit traveling between Australia and New Zealand for several years. A Honolulu irradiator, he says, could provide a similar reciprocal relationship between the mainland United States and Hawai’i. Wong believes that the question people must ask is ‘would the United States allow us to ship fruit to the mainland if irradiation was unsafe?’

There is much that we might not know about the safety of irradiated food. In fact, the FDA has yet to adopt a valid testing procedure for irradiated food, or so says Dr. William Au, a professor at the University of Texas’ Department of Preventative Medicine and Community Health who has been studying the effects of irradiation on humans for several years.

According to Au, the FDA has two broad testing procedures for determining the safety of food. Chemicals that are artificially introduced into food, such as food coloring, dyes and flavor enhancers, undergo a rigorous safety check on their own. For chemicals that aren’t artificially introduced, however, the food is tested as a whole. Under current FDA guidelines, irradiated food falls into the latter category.

The problem with irradiation, Au says, is that it introduces new chemicals into food. The UT professor is particularly worried about a chemical known as 2-alkylcyclobutanones, or 2-ACBs. Seemingly unique to foods that have been irradiated, the effects of 2-ACBs have not been fully evaluated in humans. ‘I recommended that these radiolytic products that are unique to the irradiation process should be tested for safety as pure chemicals,’ he says.

Given the unknowns surrounding this chemical, Au concludes, ‘If I have a choice [for] myself or my family, I certainly would not eat irradiated food.’

Terrorism threat

With a significant chunk of the scientific community supporting irradiation, the future of Pa’ina’s project might seem all but secured. Wong isn’t ready to make that assertion. Henkin after all has a track record of success, making him a ‘formidable opponent.’

The Earthjustice attorney has already made considerable headway. In October 2005, he won a petition to join the licensing proceedings going before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission–the federal agency in charge of testing the irradiator’s safety. And in March 2006, following extensive litigation, he reached an agreement with the NRC requiring an environmental assessment of the proposal. The NRC held a public meeting Feb. 1 to discuss the draft and will likely issue a final report within the next month or so.

Will it help Hawai’i’s agriculture industry?

Hawai’i is home to four of the most vicious fruit flies in the world. For that reason, the federal government has longstanding quarantines on all fruits and flowers traveling out of the state. Irradiation, at least according to Dr. Lyle Wong, could open up agricultural pathways between the mainland United States and Hawai’i.
Moreover, says Wong, Hawaiian exports are already irradiated before entering the mainland marketplace. But because Hawai’i currently lacks the facilities to treat commodities here on the islands, fruits and flowers are typically treated at facilities across the mainland. In a pilot project some 10 years ago, Wong tested the economic feasibility of treating Hawaiian commodities at an irradiator in Chicago. That pilot program indicated that the demand for the fruit is there, he says, but the process is time consuming and costly. It’s not efficient, he says, for fruits to first travel off the islands, get treated in Chicago and then get shipped across the mainland.
Moreover, most of the facilities on the mainland are used primarily for medical purposes and are therefore less efficient at treating fruit. This further drives up costs, Wong says. (The proposed Honolulu irradiator would be designed and used for fruits and flowers only.) The combination of poor location and poor facilities, concludes Wong, makes it impossible for Hawai’i to ’sustain treating our fruits on the U.S. mainland.’

Henkin has also reserved his right to push for a comprehensive environmental impact statement. ‘Given the poor quality of the [environmental assessment] and the evidence of potential harm to the public and environment we have received from various experts looking into the situation, [that] is what we intend to do,’ wrote Henkin in an e-mail.

Henkin says that aside from his concerns surrounding irradiation’s inherent safety, he takes issue with Pa’ina’s decision to locate the facility in the center of an airport. ‘I’m not aware of any other location in the worldÖwhere you’ve got an irradiator at an airport in the middle of an urban area,’ he says. Even if the threat of terrorism is miniscule, he adds, you’ve still ‘created a radioactive risk.’

For Fred Benco, the attorney for Pa’ina, the irradiator’s location is tantamount because it all but eliminates transportation costs to and from the airport. And that, he says, makes sound economic sense.

The Pa’ina attorney bristles at the suggestion that the irradiator could pose a terrorism threat. It’s simply not a reasonable possibility, he says. ‘If you’re going to crash a plane in Hawai’i, wouldn’t you crash into one of the 17 nuclear-powered submarines that use Hawai’i for its ports?’ he asks. ‘Why would you come out and look for some peanuts at the bottom of 20 feet of water?’

He adds, ‘Mr. Henkin misses the fact deliberately that this is a private business trying to do business.’

The draft environmental assessment

The position of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the irradiator is clear. In a report on the proposed facility, the commission says the irradiator will cause ‘no significant environmental impacts.’ The NRC also concludes that a 9/11-style terrorist attack on the irradiator is unlikely. Based on commission calculations, the threat of a plane crash in a given year is one in 5,000. According to the NRC, ‘The applicant is requesting a license for 10 years; over such a short period of time, it is unlikely that the facility will be involved in an aircraft crash.’ The group also states that the facility will be strong enough to withstand an airport crash.

Henkin thinks the findings are absurd. ‘I’ve never seen a flimsier environmental review than this one,’ he says.

He disputes the methodology the NRC used to calculate some of its statistics. For example, referring to the likelihood of an airplane crash, Henkin says the NRC used a standard of robustness that requires the object under consideration–in this case an irradiator–to withstand the impact of an object that is 2.5 centimeters long and weighs 2 kilograms dropped from the height of a meter. That’s equivalent, he says, to a hole puncher falling off a desk or an iron falling off an ironing board. ‘If it can withstand 2 kilograms falling off of a tabletop, it can withstand an airplane crash,’ he says. ‘I don’t buy it. I’m not reassured.’

The alternatives

What irks Henkin perhaps more than anything is how little emphasis both the state and Pa’ina have placed on researching alternatives to gamma ray, or Cobalt-60, irradiation.

There are alternatives. And one need look only as far as the Big Island to see that they do exist.

About a decade ago, developers were also looking to build a Cobalt-60 irradiator on the island of Hawai’i, but had to consider alternatives when faced with heavy public criticism. As a result, the Big Island now houses an electron beam irradiator, which uses electricity as opposed to radiation, during the irradiation process.

While Henkin is wary of endorsing the expansion of any type of irradiation, he believes the electron beam irradiator is still a better option than one that uses Cobalt-60.

Wong disagrees. For him, Cobalt-60 irradiation is the only viable method in Hawai’i, given various economic and scientific restraints. Electron beam irradiation, he says, is considerably more expensive than Cobalt-60, while other technologies are just not as effective or safe as irradiation.

In its report, the NRC outlines some alternatives to irradiation, including the use of hot-water submersion processes or methyl bromide gas. Neither, says the NRC, can be used for all fruits and vegetables, and methyl bromide gas is being phased out of production worldwide because it depletes the ozone layer.

‘Irradiation is generic to the pest,’ Wong says. ‘It’s the most convenient quarantine treatment there is on the widest range of tropical fruit and cut flowers.’

How great is the need?

Wong considers himself to be a pragmatic man. ‘For agriculture to survive and be productive in Hawai’i, you have to have a lot of options,’ he says.

Currently–at least when it comes to shipping produce outside the islands–Hawai’i only has two: have produce irradiated on the mainland or on the Big Island. Both options, Wong says, are cost prohibitive.

Nor, he says, are there any real alternatives to irradiation. Blocking this project is tantamount to paralyzing the state’s agriculture industry. Because he cannot lift the federal government’s quarantine on raw Hawai’i-grown fruit, Wong realized long ago that he needed to come up with some sort of plan. ‘It’s clear to everybody that we have to treat the fruit in Hawai’i prior to shipment to the U.S. mainland.’ For him that means building an irradiator in Honolulu.

But Wong is nervous. In what has become as much a battle of personalities as fact, the state ag official says he’s worried about being vilified. ‘Have I done everything right myself? I don’t think so. I’m not that smart,’ he says, but adds that in his position, ‘I can’t afford to be wrong because I’ll never be forgiven for it.’

But that’s a risk Wong is willing to take: ‘Was I in favor of having the first [irradiator on the Big Island]? Yes. Am I in favor of having the second? Yes.’

But Henkin doesn’t buy the economic argument.

And in fact, the NRC’s own report backs him up. In its look at alternatives, the NRC evaluated what would happen if it rejected Pa’ina’s proposal. The commission determined that the economic impact of building an irradiator in Honolulu would be small. Specifically, in its report the NRC states, ‘The primary impact of [the irradiator] is the small economic impacts from limiting the expansion of the sale and distribution of certain fruits and vegetables from Hawai’i along with the associated benefits of helping control invasive species.’

That word ’small’ grates at Henkin. While the economic benefits of an irradiator are negligible, he says, it could profoundly impact Hawai’i’s global reputation. Consumers worldwide, the environmental attorney adds, have not widely endorsed the use of irradiation. And in a state where image is paramount and tourism rules, Henkin asks, ‘What kind of an image do we want to project of Hawai’i? Do we want to project an image of a healthy state or an irradiated state?’

After the public meeting

Michael Kohn didn’t think he’d be very popular last week. President of Pa’ina Hawai’i LLC, the company that has proposed building an irradiator next to Honolulu International Airport, Kohn says he went into a Feb. 1 public meeting to discuss the project with some reservation. He needn’t have. ‘I was pleasantly surprised by how many supporters we had,’ he says.

Some prominent advocates of the project included papaya growers from the Big Island, state officials and researchers affiliated with the University of Hawai’i. Equal numbers of researchers and environmentalists, however, spoke out against the project.

The meeting, which drew about 100 people and 40 speakers, was held by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that recently issued a draft environmental assessment of the project. The NRC will likely issue a final report within the next 30 days. Kohn says he hopes that the close of public comment period will finally enable him to break ground on the project, which has been stalled in litigation for over a year. It is unlikely, adds Kohn, that last week’s meeting will significantly alter the NRC’s final report.

Environmentalists, however, say that they will push forward with their lawsuit. David Henkin, an attorney with Earthjustice, the organization that has been litigating against Pa’ina on behalf of the Concerned Citizens of Honolulu, says several aspects of the meeting bothered him. For example, the NRC cut off public comment time before all the speakers were finished. ‘At least one of my clients was not allowed to speak,’ Henkin says. ‘It’s contrary to the purpose of a public hearing.’

But more importantly, the NRC has continually failed to address Henkin’s primary concern regarding the irradiator’s location next to an airport. ‘We really felt the analysis was inefficient,’ he says, noting that Earthjustice statisticians determined that the probability of an airplane crash in a given year was significantly higher than the NRC’s calculations. ‘You could eliminate the concern about airplane crashesÖby moving the facility 10 miles,’ he says. Moving forward, Henkin would like to push for a comprehensive environmental impact statement.

Peter Follett, a researcher and entomologist with the United States Department of Agriculture, says he spoke at the meeting at Kohn’s request. Although he supports the irradiator, Follett believes the public hasn’t been presented with quality information on which to base their decisions. Because the NRC–versus an informational organization –conducts these meetings, he says, ‘Some very basic things are left out.’ For example, after the first NRC public meeting, few realized that the irradiator was being built to kill insects. ‘Many people believe we’re treating our fruit and causing a reduction in pathogens in our fruit,’ Follett says. ‘There is a big part of food irradiation that is devoted toward killing salmonella and E. coli Ö[but] that’s a whole other area of food irradiation.’

‘The public needs to be informed aboutÖirradiation as a technology,’ Follett says.

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