[Date Prev][Date Next][Date Index]
Re: E-M:/ Right to know about lead pollution under attack
Folks,
Thanks for this update. On the heels of the excellent
Moyer's report on the toxics industry, its no wonder the Bush League will be
gutting right-to-know provisions on toxic pollutants. Today's New York
Times has an article on exactly that effort today":
What is so interesting about this issue, and the whole Bush
thing as well, is that the bald faced hypocrisy of the chemical industry is so,
well, bald faced. Last night, highly paid mouthpieces said the chemical
industry was a good corporate citizen, etc. etc.. Then, with the
very next day comes the latest industry supported effort to keep information on
environmental toxins from the public. Hmmmmm.
Regards,
Dave Zaber
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 5:14
PM
Subject: E-M:/ Right to know about lead
pollution under attack
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enviro-Mich
message from Tracey Easthope <tracey@ecocenter.org>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recent
reports of lead contamination in Michigan could be exacerbated
by the
latest attempt by industry to roll back important protections.
The alert
below by U.S. PIRG suggests that right to know provisions
that give the
public critical information about lead released to the
environment are now
under assault. Please help take action
to prevent the latest
assault.
>From US PIRG:
In yet another and even more heinous
assault on our right to know, the
American Chemistry Council joined 66
other trade associations (yes,
sixty-six) in demanding that new EPA
Administrator Christine Todd Whitman
delay or overturn new right-to-know
rules for lead pollution. Environmental
releases of lead, one of the most
well studied (and notorious) environmental
threats to children's health, is
significantly under-reported in the Toxics
Release Inventory (TRI) because
industrial facilities only report their
pollution if they are using 10,000
pounds or more -- that's five tons of
lead. Because of many groups'
hard work, EPA in January issued rules
requiring any facility using as
little as 100 pounds to report their
pollution, which would mean 10,000
more facilities reporting and 10,000 more
communities no longer kept in the
dark.
Now the chemical industry and their friends are flooding EPA with
demands to
keep us in the dark by delaying or overturning this important
new rule. I'm
pasting more information below (attaching it as well)
that you can use in
events if you'd like to. The most relevant action
would be to contact EPA
(202-564-4700) and urge Administrator Whitman to
immediately enact the new
right-to-know rules for
lead.
RIGHT-TO-KNOW UNDER ATTACK:
Lead Pollution Reporting Rules
May Be Subject of Next Bush Administration
Environmental
Rollback
More than sixty industry trade associations have written to
U.S. EPA
Administrator Christine Todd Whitman demanding that new rules
requiring
polluters to report their lead pollution be overturned.
Withdrawal of the
rule would keep thousands of communities in the dark
about environmental
releases of lead, a metal notorious for its toxic
impacts on children's
development.
The New Right-to-Know
Requirements for Lead
Releases of substances that are hazardous in small
amounts - because of high
toxicity, persistence in the environment, or
ability to accumulate in our
bodies - are significantly under-reported in
the Toxics Release Inventory
(TRI). This occurs because facilities are not
required to report pollution
unless they use tens of thousands of pounds of
a chemical. In 1999, EPA
moved to fill this gap in our right to know,
requiring thousands more
industrial facilities to start reporting releases
for a list of chemicals
including dioxins, PCBs, and mercury. Health and
environmental groups urged
EPA to fill the right-to-know gap for lead as
well and in January of 2001, a
rule was finalized requiring facilities that
use more than 100 pounds of
lead to report their pollution.
Now the
industries that pollute our environment with lead are working to
convince
Administrator Whitman to suspend the rule and block our right to
know about
their pollution, attacking the right-to-know rule with
misleading
arguments:
¨ Industry says the right-to-know rule is
based on bad science.
Lead has long been linked to neurological and
developmental deficits,
including impaired learning and behavior disorders
among children. The only
changing science is that health impacts are being
discovered at lower and
lower levels of exposure - recent studies have
found effects at levels
several times lower than currently accepted
exposure levels. Industry argues
that lead does not accumulate at high
levels in animal tissues or that the
science is unclear, but it's been
known since the 1970s that lead can remain
in human bones for
decades.
¨ Industry says that EPA didn't fairly consider small business
impacts.
Any facility releasing more than 100 pounds of lead to the
environment has
an obligation to inform the public of its pollution that
outweighs the
burden of filling out paperwork. EPA already delayed the rule
more than a
year, extending the comment period and holding public hearings
- at
industry's request - specifically so that small businesses could have
more
input.
Please contact EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman
immediately and urge
her to move forward to implement the new lead
reporting rules and to
vigorously support our right to know.
For
more information, contact Jeremiah Baumann, U.S. PIRG,
jbaumann@pirg.org.
ENVIRO-MICH:
Internet List and Forum for Michigan Environmental
and Conservation Issues
and Michigan-based Citizen Action. Archives at
http://www.great-lakes.net/lists/enviro-mich/
Postings
to: enviro-mich@great-lakes.net
For info, send email to
majordomo@great-lakes.net
with a one-line message body of "info
enviro-mich"