The Inspector General says that the EPA could improve the air toxin monitoring system. (Photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health)
The Inspector General for the Environmental Protection Agency says the agency needs to improve its air toxin monitoring system. A new report says there are no monitors in 45 out of 50 areas where cancer risks are highest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:
Transcript
The Inspector General for the Environmental Protection Agency
says the agency needs to improve its air toxin monitoring system.
A new report says there are no monitors in 45 out of 50 areas where
cancer risks are highest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:
The greater Chicago area is at the highest risk for cancer from air toxins in the Great Lakes region, though residents of big cities in all of the Great Lakes states are at an elevated risk.
The Clean Air Act lists nearly 190 hazardous air pollutants the EPA must regulate. The EPA Inspector General’s report says many high-risk areas have monitors but not within the specific area where people are most vulnerable.
Jim Pew is an attorney with the activist group, Earth Justice. He says it’s important to construct more monitors, but it’s more important to act on the data the EPA already has.
“It’s not a lack of information that’s stopping EPA from acting to get these risks down, and it’s not an impossibility, there are known ways that these problems can be addressed, it’s a lack of will. The agency just doesn’t want to do it.”
Officials with the EPA say they generally agree with the inspector general’s findings.
For the GLRC, I’m Celeste Headlee.