SearchUser loginOffice of CitizenRest in Peace,
Who's new
|
EPA's 2005 National Air Toxins Assessment looks at human health impacts from estimated, chronic air toxin exposureSubmitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 03/14/2011 - 06:14.
On March 11, 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent a press release (below) and held conference calls supporting release of the fourth update of the National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) - a computer tool that helps federal, state, local governments and other stakeholders better understand the potential health risks from exposure to air toxics. The EPA states: "the National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) contains 2005 emissions data submitted primarily from the states for 178 pollutants. Models are used to make broad estimates of health risks for areas of the country. The tool is not designed to determine actual health risks to individuals living in these areas." "Because the data submitted varies from state to state, it is also not possible to use the data to compare risks between different areas of the country." As someone who lives in Cleveland, Ohio, which the Federal EPA and their NATA prove is highly polluted and unhealthy, I truly appreciate access to all environmental data management and mapping services the EPA may provide, as real-time as possible. These federal government tools offer citizens access to information that allows us to make better life-decisions - like where to live - and empowers us to be better environmental stewards - like shutting down coal pollution in our own backyards.
If we so choose to accept environmental reality, the EPA wants to make it easy for citizens to be informed and proactive about protecting their world, neighborhoods, and families. Under the Obama administration, with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, great effort is clearly placed on implementing good environmental science, and making it useful worldwide. And, believe it or not, the only way we humanity shall save humanity from worse harm from pollution is by individual citizens being informed and proactive about protecting their world, neighborhoods, and families, as we make all the difference in the world.
Considerable effort has gone into collecting, maintaining, and presenting this NATA data to provide government and citizens access to life-saving understanding of the toxins in the environment around us... to make the environment healthier for humans and the planet. I recommend all citizens spend time exploring the links from the National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) website - I've included some of the charts here for overview. The maps above show that Cuyahoga County - especially around downtown Cleveland - has among the highest pollution-related cancer risks in America - the darkest blue - but that the risk is highly concentrated at our urban cores. Clearly, there are large areas of Ohio, north of Columbus and Southwest of Cleveland, where the air pollution risks are considerable lower... the air and life are healthier. Ohio is not a toxic state - but Ohio has many cancers... especially at the urban cores... and those cancers must be reduced if not eliminated, one by one. As each cancer is reduced or eliminated, the health of the surrounding residents, communities, the state and the world shall improve, in measurable ways. The next step with data systems like NATA is to make the data more real-time and connect data on public health, education and economics to data on environment, to show how broad and absolute are the benefits of reductions in pollution on environmentally-disadvantaged places like Cleveland. And, Cleveland is the perfect place to study and demonstrate this direct correlation, as we are in the process of making major improvements to our regional air quality, by eliminating many major point source polluters that currently burn coal at our urban core. The same pattern of excessive pollution harm in our urban cores is seen for the NATA Respiratory Hazard Index - above and below - where large areas surrounding Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati are each relatively high-hazard, but much of the state is much lower risk. The most significant sources of the pollution increasing respiratory hazards in these communities include primary pollution from coal-fired power generation (increasing in Ohio and the Midwest) and industry (decreasing in Ohio and the Midwest), pollution from transportation (increasing, especially where sprawl has had significant impact) and even deforestation (natural carbon capture is decreasing in Ohio). Long range transport of pollutants from distant industry and mobile sources, and secondary formation of new pollutants in the atmosphere, among those pollutants already accumulating in the atmosphere, altogether account for over half of the harm-causing toxins in the air we breathe. Providing government, industry and residents of communities access to actual data on the toxins in the air we breathe, and the harm that causes citizens in the community, is the best first step to making a modern community - civilization - civilized. It is not civilized to have some people in a nation suffer from excessive environmental hazards and related ill health effects when we as a civilization have the science and knowledge to avoid that. By looking at the maps provided by the EPA above, through NATA and other environmental monitoring and mapping services and capabilities, and drilling down into the data represented by these presentations - and NATA and other EPA data systems allow you to drill down to the public-record level - it is possible for a community to understand specifically what facilities cause what harm to citizens, and reduce the worst hazards. In a community like Cleveland, with seemingly-overwhelming point source and mobile pollution and severe environmental injustice concerns, managing our specific hazards by responding to issues with granular environmental risk data, and mapping the benefits at the societal level, will insure better community health and safety practices, which shall benefit 1,000,000s of lives in very few years. For example, there are two recent cases of industry and citizens using EPA environmental data to identify and eliminate major pollution point sources in Cleveland, which will improve the respiratory, cancer and other health outcomes for all residents in the region...
And, a second major victory for the health of the people of Northeast Ohio, and the planet:
On realNEO is further reported, about pollution from MCCO:
If you live near one of these facilities, you have an increased risk of heart attack and stroke.
What is also certain is that eliminating the pollution from burning coal at LakeShore and MCCO will measurably reduce the toxins in the air we breathe, making us healthier, allowing us to live longer, more productive, better lives. Raising the question, what should citizens of Northeast Ohio do next to save our own lives, the lives of those we love in the community, our community, and the world?
For the past year or so, the realNEO community and Sierra Club have been fighting renewal of licensing for the MCCO coal burning facility and it is safe to say that awareness and pressure we created have forced MCCO into a position where they will stop burning coal many years sooner than they had planned... and we derailed MCCO plans to expand burning of coal in their surrounding neighborhood. Cleveland Thermal is a private coal-fired steam generation polluter, with several plants in downtown Cleveland, serving only commercial customers. They are remotely owned by Ancora Management LLC, an investment management company "that makes and manages investments for a private equity company in operating businesses such as Cleveland Thermal. Ancora is located in Greenwich, CT". Their 1999 Pollution Emissions Scorecard here in Cleveland was one of the 10 worst in Cuyahoga County: If you think the battle to shut down coal-burning at MCCO has been interesting, wait until we start the battle against coal burning at Cleveland Thermal. Citizens of real NEO, we have an historic fight ahead, and we have just begun to fight. I think we should take down Cleveland Thermal. Thoughts?
Dear Sierra Club President: Please Add Cleveland State University to your "Campuses Beyond Coal" Campaign and Begin Organizing!<!-- start main content --> Submitted by Norm Roulet on February 24, 2011 - 10:47am.
Dear Sierra Club President and Nachy Kanfer - Campuses Beyond Coal: Please Add Cleveland State University to your "Campuses Beyond Coal" Campaign and begin organizing against their primary energy provider, the astoundingly deadly, coal-polluting, private-investor-owned Cleveland Thermal coal furnace in the Cleveland Flats! Cleveland State University (CSU) is the largest customer of Cleveland Thermal, and so must take a lead in moving this community beyond coal.
Dear President Obama, Thank you for coming to Cleveland to bring attention to environmental injustice in Northeast Ohio.<!-- start main content --> Submitted by Norm Roulet on February 22, 2011 - 11:30am.
Dear President Obama, Thank you for coming to Cleveland to bring attention to environmental injustice in Northeast Ohio. I assume EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has briefed you that, in addition to being the most lead poisoned big city in America, we are one of the most polluted, unhealthy, and so undereducated places on Earth. As you ride into Downtown Cleveland - the most lead poisoned big city in America (the world?) - you pass one of the most environmentally unjust industrial facilities in America - Arcelor Mittal's Cleveland Works steel production and processing superfund site (AKA the Cuyahoga River Valley) - and, as you meet with Ohio taxpayer-funded business development agents here, you sit in the shadows of the privately-polluting Cleveland Thermal district coal plant (owned by some shadow out-of-state investors, it appears) immediately downtown... providing excessively polluting heat to the very Wolstein Center where you shall hold your small business conference today... "Cleveland Thermal’s largest customer is Cleveland State University (CSU)" (and they don't care).
Independence of the day: May the people of NEO find freedom from "Cleveland Works"<!-- start main content -->Submitted by Norm Roulet on July 4, 2006 - 10:28am.
December 7, 2001, was the greatest independence day in the history of Cleveland, when a hopefully new real NEO economy received the greatest gift imaginable with the closing of the toxin-spewing 1,200 acre LTV brownfields in the flats. This gave NEO's 1,000,000s of citizens independence from asthma and cancer and the freedom to breath clean air, redevelop a new city worth of prime real estate where the sprawling LTV-cyst finally sat idle, and the opportunity to resuscitate entire communities in the former LTV pollution fall-out zones spanning from Central and Slavic Village east to Brooklyn and Valley View south to Tremont and Ohio City west, literally saving the lives of 100,000s of our citizens and making Northeast Ohio more attractive to all who seek a good home and place to raise children. The freedom to breath was felt immediately, and for six months Northeast Ohio was a far better region. But the politicians and industrialists would have none of that clean air and good health for their people - they marched across bridges, held town halls and plotted, and venture capitalists swooped into Richfield with promise of foreigner-charity, and $ billions changed hands at huge profit to a few, and in a few wretched years we went from enjoying the gift of breathing the cleanest air in our modern times to suffering from the worst imaginable health conditions, with steel literally raining on our communities, and unimaginably worse toxic blight expectations ahead. The promise to the citizens in all of this was that it would "save" 3,200 good jobs, which it certainly did not... it seems there are now around 1,200 Clevelanders working for the now-Indian-billionaire-owned hell-furnace and they are far from treated well, and have far from good jobs. What was preserved in all of this was great wealth for those in shipping, and port operation, and trucking, and railroads, and perhaps fast food and some service sector businesses in the periphery of the toxic site. But at what cost to the neighboring businesses, the plant workers, and the rest of the region? Consider, from Ohio Citizen Action, the state's largest environmental organization, with 100,000 dues-paying members:
So here was the cost to real NEO in 2003 for the 1,200 "good" jobs that came from all the politicing, and town halling, and backroom dealing, and foreign venture capitaling, per job, in 2003 - and for 2004 we know "the asthma and cancer-causing pollution has risen over 30% from 2003 to 2004" so it is imaginable the results are much worse today, in 2006:
So that was just the raw pollution emissions cost to real NEO citizens in 2003 for the 1,200 "good" jobs that came from all the politicking, and town halling, and backroom dealing, and foreign venture capitalizing, per job, in 2003. But Ohio Citizen Action data finds that "the asthma and cancer-causing pollution has risen over 30% from 2003 to 2004" so it is imaginable the results are much worse today, in 2006. But, just looking at 2004, consider the cost in health harming pollutions per Mittal employee:
( categories:
|
Recent commentsPopular contentToday's:All time:Last viewed:
|
I'm going to request an analysis of our positive pollution
I'm going to request an analysis of our positive pollution and health impacts with the toxic coal emissions from FirstEnergy Lakeshore + MCCO + Cleveland Thermal + Mittal each eliminated - I believe the picture that will show citizens will be very educational for real NEO and the world, with potential pollution reductions - and impacts on the short term economy - expressed in life-years saved over decades - soon $ billions in positive economic benefits per year...
Disrupt IT