Conscious Choice: Save Your Right to Know What’s Toxic Right Next Door

January 2006 | Editor’s Note

Save Your Right to Know What’s Toxic Right Next Door

The people of Pilsen can be proud. Folks there got together to figure out how to clean up pollution from a smelter down the street. The EPA is now more closely monitoring the plant, and the company has agreed to a voluntary cleanup program. The feat is all the more remarkable when you consider the extraordinary means these ordinary people had to take to clear the air in their neighborhood. Check out our story in this issue.

Such grassroots victories may be short-lived, thanks to a federal proposal that would increase the amount of pollution industries could put into our communities, while at the same time decreasing the amount of information they give about it to community residents. This would happen if EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson is successful in implementing his proposed changes to the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). The TRI was developed in the late 1980s in response to the deadly chemical accident in Bhopal, India. Basically it’s a handy-dandy guide for people like you and me. We can look up what kind of emissions are being released into our communities simply by typing our ZIP codes into the EPA’s website. Pretty cool, huh?

Under the program, approximately 26,000 industrial facilities report information concerning about 650 chemicals in the program. But if the changes take effect, Illinois alone stands to lose pollution data from 207 chemical facilities, according to Illinois Public Interest Research Group, (PIRG).

Minority and low-income communities are among those that would be most severely affected. This makes sense when you consider that you would be hard-pressed to find a tire incinerator in north suburban Glencoe, but apparently our state thinks it’s OK to restart one in Ford Heights, a predominately black south suburb that also happens to be one of the poorest communities in the nation. Shame on the Illinois EPA and Gov. Rod Blagojevich for even considering allowing this air pollution travesty to fire up again come Jan. 1. Recycle those tires into a playground or sports surface, instead.

Now, lest you get Not-In-My-Backyard NIMBY-smug, consider that these TRI changes would mean communities in 27 Illinois ZIP codes would lose all the pollution information about chemical releases in their neighborhoods. Nine of them are in Cook County, three in McHenry, two in Lake and one in DuPage.

Statewide, according to PIRG, we will lose 100 percent information on certain chemicals such as cadmium, which has been linked to cancer and is a known developmental and reproductive toxin. The proposed rule changes also would raise the levels at which other toxins can be released before they are required to be reported.

The good news here is that the changes have not happened yet, as the comment period has been extended until Jan. 13, 2006, and if enough of us act now, we might be able to save this valuable program.

So, if you think it’s important to preserve your right to know what’s being released right next door to where you live or work, contact your Congressional representatives and tell them to strengthen, not weaken the TRI, and/or write the EPA directly.

To look up toxins in your area by ZIP code, go to epa.gov/triexplorer. For more information: illinoispirg.org or pilsenperro.org.

Submit your comments by one of the following methods. Make sure to include the docket number TRI-2005-0073 on your correspondence.

• Agency website
Write Docket ID No. TRI-2005-0073 in the message subject line and follow the on-line instructions.

• E-mail; Fax: 202-566-0741;

Mail: Office of Environmental Information Docket Environmental Protection Agency
Mail Code: 28221T
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW,
Washington, DC 20460.
Attn: Docket ID No. TRI-2005-0073.

— Marla Donato

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: