REGULATING AND REDUCING POLLUTION - Marine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Know - page 216

land, many coastal areas have been polluted by industries that
discharged their toxic wastes into tidal marshes or estuaries.
A number of estuarine Superfund sites in New York and New
Jersey discussed in this topic have been cleaned up (e.g., the
cadmium-contaminated Foundry Cove in the Hudson River),
are in the process of being cleaned up (polychlorinated biphe-
nyls (PCBs) in the Upper Hudson River; dioxin in the Passaic
River), or are still awaiting cleanup (mercury-contaminated
Berry's Creek in the Hackensack Meadowlands).
The Clean Air Act has also provided incidental benefits to
coastal water quality. For example, air pollution controls have
greatly reduced the amount of nitrogen that enters bodies of
water. It had been estimated in the 1980s that about one-third
of the nitrogen coming into Chesapeake Bay came from atmo-
spheric sources. These sources were greatly reduced in the
1990s due to tailpipe emission standards for vehicles, changes
in gasoline formulations, cleaner engines, and less pollution
from ships and other entities that burn oil, gas, or coal. The
1990 Clean Air Act amendments aimed at curbing acid rain
forced reductions in emissions of nitrogen oxides by utilities.
While these were enacted to protect human health, they have
had positive effects on water quality.
The presence of toxic chemicals in our waters is determined
in part by laws that regulate and control which chemicals
are in use. For chemicals used as pesticides, the law is FIFRA
(the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act). As
discussed earlier, new pesticides must undergo some toxic-
ity tests and toxicity is balanced against the benefits they
provide. While some of the most notorious pesticides have
been banned under FIFRA, others that are banned in Europe
remain in use in the United States. In the case of tributyltin
(TBT), Congress had so little faith in FIFRA's process that it
passed a separate law restricting its use in antifouling paints
on boats. For chemicals that are not pesticides, the federal law
is TSCA, (the Toxic Substances Control Act). When this law was
passed in the 1970s it “grandfathered” in tens of thousands