Pollution reporting requirements may change shortly

EPA would ease pollution reporting

Poor put at risk by pollution

Still dusted: Clinton, Nadler call for investigation of EPA response to 9-11

Environmental Protection Agency: Superfund

State of the Air 2005: Best and Worst Cities

Urban air pollution and health inequities: a workshop report

Pollution and the environment have recently been on the minds of both the public and policymakers alike, particularly given the recent talks regarding the Kyoto Protocol and a number of other international policy measures. Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it wanted to ease some of the Clean Air Act regulations that require factories and other industrial polluters to report small releases of toxic pollutants. The program that first made industry responsible for reporting such releases was initiated in 1986, and a number of persons have begun to criticize the EPA for considering such an action. The EPA has countered by stating that communities affected by such releases will be able to know what types of materials are released, but that the details about how each chemical was released will not be made public. All of these announcements come on the heels of a recently released analysis of industrial air pollution in the United States, conducted by the Associated Press, which shows that African-Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger. Overall, the results of this analysis also suggest that poor people are much more likely to live in areas with much higher levels of industrial pollution.

The first link will take users to a recent news piece that appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune that addresses the potential action that the EPA may take. The second link will whisk users away to an interesting piece from the Seattle Times that discusses the results of the Associated Press’s analysis of the patterns of industrial pollution across the country. The third link will take visitors to an article in this week’s Village Voice, which addresses concerns with the way the EPA responded to the toxic cleanup in the area around the World Trade Center disaster site. The fourth link leads to the EPA’s homepage for information about Superfund sites and cleanup efforts over the past twenty-five years. The fifth site leads to the American Lung Association’s list of the “best and worst” cities in terms of a number of metrics, including ozone pollution and year-round particle pollution. The final link leads to a compelling workshop report created by the American Lung Association on the nature of urban air pollution and health inequities.

Source: The Scout Report (December 16, 2005)