“From the urban sprawl
of Houston to the riverways of Virginia, air pollution from industrial plants
is elevating the cancer risk of an estimated quarter of a million Americans to
a level the federal government considers unacceptable. Some of these hot spots
of toxic air are infamous. An 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River in
Louisiana that’s thronged with oil refineries and chemical plants has earned
the nickname Cancer Alley. Many other such areas remain unknown, even to
residents breathing in the contaminated air.
“Until now. ProPublica
undertook an analysis that has never been done before. Using advanced data
processing software and a modeling tool developed by the Environmental
Protection Agency, we mapped the spread of cancer-causing chemicals from
thousands of sources of hazardous air pollution across the country between 2014
and 2018. The result is an unparalleled view of how toxic air blooms around
industrial facilities and spreads into nearby neighborhoods.
Click Here: The Most Detailed Map of Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution in the U.S.
“At the map’s intimate scale, it’s possible to
see up close how a massive chemical plant near a high school in Port Neches,
Texas, laces the air with benzene, an aromatic gas that can cause leukemia.
Or how a manufacturing facility in New Castle, Delaware, for years blanketed a
day care playground with ethylene oxide, a highly toxic chemical that can lead to lymphoma and breast cancer.
“Our analysis found that ethylene oxide is the
biggest contributor to excess industrial cancer risk from air pollutants
nationwide. Corporations across the United States, but especially in Texas and
Louisiana, manufacture the colorless, odorless gas, which lingers in the air
for months and is highly mutagenic, meaning it can alter DNA.
“In all, ProPublica identified more than a
thousand hot spots of cancer-causing air. They are not equally distributed
across the country. A quarter of the 20 hot spots with the highest levels of
excess risk are in Texas, and almost all of them are in Southern states known
for having weaker environmental regulations.
“Census tracts where the majority of residents
are people of color experience about 40% more cancer-causing industrial air
pollution on average than tracts where the residents are mostly white. In
predominantly Black census tracts, the estimated cancer risk from toxic air
pollution is more than double that of majority-white tracts.
“After reviewing
ProPublica’s map, Wayne Davis, an environmental scientist formerly with the
EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said, ‘The public is
going to learn that EPA allows a hell of a lot of pollution to occur that the
public does not think is occurring.’
“Our analysis comes at a
critical juncture for the fate of America’s air. After decades of improvement,
air quality has, by some metrics, begun to decline. In the last four years, the Trump
administration rolled back more than a hundred environmental protections, including two
dozen air pollution and emissions policies.
“The EPA says it ‘strives
to protect the greatest number of people possible’ from an
excess cancer risk worse than 1 in a million. That risk level means that if a
million people in an area are continuously exposed to toxic air pollutants over
a presumed lifetime of 70 years, there would likely be at least one case of
cancer on top of those from other risks people already face. According to
ProPublica’s analysis, 74 million Americans — more than a fifth of the
population — are being exposed to estimated levels of risk higher than this.
“EPA policy sets the upper
limit of acceptable excess cancer risk at 1 in 10,000 — 100 times more than the
EPA’s more aspirational goal and a level of exposure that numerous experts told
ProPublica is too high. ProPublica found that an estimated 256,000 people are
being exposed to risks beyond this threshold and that an estimated 43,000
people are being subjected to at least triple this level of risk.
“Still, the EPA sees
crossing its risk threshold as more of a warning sign than a mandate for
action: The law doesn’t require the agency to penalize polluters that, alone or
in combination, raise the cancer risk in an area above the acceptable level.
“In response to
ProPublica’s findings, Joe Goffman, acting assistant administrator for the
EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said in an emailed statement, ‘Toxic air
emissions from industrial facilities are a problem that must be addressed.’
Under President Joe Biden’s administration, ‘the EPA has reinvigorated its
commitment to protect public health from toxic air emissions from industrial
facilities — especially in communities that have already suffered
disproportionately from air pollution and other environmental burdens.’
“ProPublica’s reporting
exposes flaws with EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Act, a landmark law
that dramatically reduced air pollution across America but provided less
protection to those who live closest to industrial polluters.
“The 1970 law resulted in
outdoor air quality standards for a handful of widespread ‘criteria’
pollutants, including sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, which could be
traced to exhaust pipes and smokestacks all over the country and were proven to
aggravate asthma and lead to early deaths.
“But 187 other dangerous
chemicals, now known as hazardous air pollutants or air toxics, never got this
level of attention. At the time, the science demonstrating the harms of these
compounds, which primarily impact people in neighborhoods that border
industrial facilities — so-called fence-line communities — was still in its early
stages. The EPA did not receive enough funding to set the same strict limits,
and industry lobbying weakened the agency’s emerging regulations.
“In 1990, Congress settled
on a different approach to regulating air toxics. Since then, the EPA has made
companies install equipment to reduce their pollution and
studied the remaining emissions to see if they pose an unacceptable health
risk.
“The way the agency
assesses this risk vastly underestimates residents’ exposure, according to our
analysis. Instead of looking at how cancer risk adds up when polluters are
clustered together in a neighborhood, the EPA examines certain types of
facilities and equipment in isolation. When the agency studies refineries, for
example, it ignores a community’s exposure to pollution from nearby metal
foundries or shipyards.
“Matthew Tejada, director
of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, told ProPublica that tackling hot
spots of toxic air will require ‘working back through 50 years of environmental
regulation in the United States, and unpacking and untying a whole series of
knots.’
Top Polluters
“The cancer-causing air
emissions from these five corporations cover more populated square miles than
the emissions from any other companies, according to our analysis.
· The
Dow Chemical Company
· Huntsman
Corp.
· Eastman
Chemical Co.
· BASF
· LyondellBasell
Industries
“Most of these companies did
not comment; Eastman said, ‘Not all risk is due to industrial activity,
however, we continue to do our part to reduce risk and emissions to ensure the
safety of our local community.’
“‘The environmental
regulatory system wasn’t set up to deal with these things,’ he said. ‘All of
the parts of the system have to be re-thought to address hot spots or places
where we know there’s a disproportionate burden.’
“The Clean Air Act rarely
requires industry or the EPA to monitor for air toxics, leaving residents near
these plants chronically uninformed about what they’re breathing in. And when
companies report their emissions to the EPA, they’re allowed to estimate them
using flawed formulas and monitoring methods.
“‘These fence line
communities are sacrifice zones,’ said Jane Williams, executive director of
California Communities Against Toxics. ‘Before there was climate denial, there
was cancer denial. We release millions of pounds of carcinogens into our air,
water and food and act mystified when people start getting sick’…”
Poison in the Air — ProPublica
This story was originally
published by ProPublica.
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