Health

The Trouble With MTBE

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 18, 1998 / 6:12 PM EDT / CBS

At first, it was just a strange odor in Mark Feldman's Long Island basement, reports CBS News Correspondent John Roberts, but then Feldman smelled something funny on the first floor.

"I couldn't understand where the odor was coming from.," he says, but when a neighbor complained about a similar problem, Feldman called in the health department to test the air.

What they found out was that the groundwater contained a contaminant called MBTE, a chemical commonly mixed into unleaded gasoline. It came from a nearby Mobil station, and leaked into the water table from an underground tank.

Residents only became aware of the problem after they were exposed to hazardous fumes.

Two years ago, the same kind of contamination shut down more than half of Santa Monica, California's groundwater supply.

MBTE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, is a potentially harmful oxygenate that has been added to gasoline since the middle 1980s to reduce auto emissions. Its value in lowering air pollution is debatable, but there is no argument as to how dangerous it is to the groundwater environment.

"We have roughly 2500 spills each year that are reported to us," says Ray Cowan, Long Island Director of Environmental Conservation. It's Cowan's job to try to insure that MTBE, benzene or other harmful chemicals don t reach the local drinking water.

His agency goes after polluters, but if they don t take responsibility, the spill may never get cleaned up. Its costly, and the state has limited funds.

"The problem is not MTBE," says MTBE producer Don Olsen. "The problem is the leaking of underground storage tanks."

The oil industry says water contamination could be reduced if the people who own the underground tanks comply with a year end deadline to upgrade with safer models. The industry defends MTBE as critical to lowering air pollution.

Because MTBE's suspected cancer-causing properties have not been conclusively proven, the industry opposes any sort of ban.

Production of MTBE remains at record levels.

California is now lobbying the federal government to waive regulations requiring fuel sold in the state to contain MTBE. Maine followed suit this past week.

But eliminating MTBE will not undo the damage already done.

"It could be ten years, 15 years before the aquifer is cleaned up," says Santa Monica utlities manager Gil Barboa.