EPA Proposes Adding More Chemicals to Toxics Release Inventory List (First in more than a decade)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/e77fdd4f5afd88a3852576b3005a604f/f6a45e8e44dbef13852576fd005f7555!OpenDocument

EPA Proposes Adding More Chemicals to Toxics Release Inventory List First program chemical expansion in more than a decade

Release date: 04/06/2010

Contact Information: Latisha Petteway, [e-mail], 202-564-3191, 202-564-4355

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to add 16 chemicals to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) list of reportable chemicals, the first expansion of the program in more than a decade. Established as part of the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA), TRI is a publicly available EPA database that contains information on toxic chemical releases and waste management activities reported annually by certain industries as well as federal facilities. The proposal is part of Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s ongoing efforts to provide communities with more complete information on chemicals.

EPA has concluded, based on a review of available studies, that these chemicals could cause cancer in people. The purpose of the proposed addition to TRI reporting requirements is to inform the public about chemical releases in their communities and to provide the government with information for research and potential development of regulations.

Four of the chemicals are being proposed for addition to TRI under the polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) category. The PACs category includes chemicals that are persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic (PBT) and are likely to remain in the environment for a very long time. These chemicals are not readily destroyed and may build up or accumulate in body tissue.

The TRI, established as part of the EPCRA of 1986, contains information on nearly 650 chemicals and chemical groups from about 22,000 industrial facilities in the U.S. Congress enacted EPCRA to provide the public with additional information on toxic chemicals in their communities.

EPA will accept public comments on the proposal for 60 days after it appears in the Federal Register.

For a list of the 16 chemicals: http://www.epa.gov/tri/lawsandregs/ntp_chemicals/index.html

[NNadir]

1. Do you know what the largest source of polycyclic aromatic compounds is?

It's precisely the one that our anti-nukes couldn't care less about, dangerous coal burning.

I note that the first major anti-nuke coal apologist was Amory Lovins, who in his stupid and oblivious high school term paper quality line of horseshit published in Foreign Affairs wrote the following bit of PAH oblivious crap:

It is above all the sophisticated use of coal, chiefly at modest scale, that needs development. Technical measures to permit the highly efficient use of this widely available fuel would be the most valuable transitional technologies. Neglected for so many years, coal technology is now experiencing a virtual revolution. We are developing supercritical gas extraction...

...Coal can fill the real gaps in our fuel economy with only a temporary and modest (less than twofold at peak) expansion of mining, not requiring the enormous infrastructure and social impacts
implied hy the scale of coal use in Figure i.

Lovins, Amory, "The Road Not Taken." Insufferably stupid pages 65-96 Foreign Affairs, October, 1976.

Thirty-four years have passed since Stupid Amory first started greenwashing dangerous fossil fuels and opposing the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy, the only form of exajoule scale energy that can contain it's fuel by products forever.

He still doesn't give a fuck about polyaromatic compounds (usually referred to in technical literature as PAH's, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, a superior and more descriptive name.)

He is still paid by dangerous fossil fuel companies to put lipstick on their pig.

Until the Obama administration announces a phase out of coal - something it has not announced - any program to control PAH's is just happy talk.