Trump often touted his environmental record referring to the AQI this year when he asserted that America has the world’s cleanest air. A leading Yale University study, produced annually, ranks the nation 16th for air quality globally. Biden has said he would step up prosecutions for illegal polluting; push for a worldwide ban on government subsidies for fossil fuels; tighten fuel economy standards for vehicles; and put limits on methane pollution from oil and gas facilities. Over the past five years, the number of government monitors nationally has declined by 4% as state and local environmental agencies cut spending, according to EPA figures. Federal grants to state and local air-quality agencies have not increased in 15 years
Explosions ripped through a Philadelphia oil refinery last year. Then came the black smoke. Several dozen people sought hospital treatment after the blast for breathing difficulties. One of the explosions was so large that a National Weather Service satellite captured images of the fireball from space. Refinery owner Philadelphia Energy Solutions later told regulators that the blasts released nearly 700,000 pounds of hazardous chemicals, including butane, and about 3,200 pounds of hydrofluoric acid, which can cause fatal lung injury in high concentrations.
Yet the federal air quality index (AQI) score for south Philadelphia showed that day as one of the year’s cleanest, according to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). None of the federal network of air quality monitoring devices recorded any significant pollution. The closest monitor for hazardous chemicals was programmed to operate only one of every six days - and therefore missed the incident entirely. Certain types of monitors are designed to operate only occasionally to reduce costs and labor. Other Philadelphia monitors were either upwind or too far away to detect the explosion’s pollution.
According to a Reuters investigation the government network of 3,900 monitoring devices nationwide has routinely missed major toxic releases and day-to-day pollution dangers, the data show. The network, for example, identified no risks from 10 of the biggest refinery explosions over the past decade, the Reuters review of EPA data shows, even as thousands of people were hospitalized and the refineries reported toxic emissions to regulators.
About 120 million Americans live in counties that have no EPA pollution monitors at all for small particle pollution, according to agency data. That was the case when an oil refinery in Superior, Wisconsin exploded in 2018, causing a leak of 17,000 barrels of asphalt and blanketing Superior and neighboring Duluth, Minnesota in clouds of black smoke. Though Superior has Wisconsin’s only refinery, the city of 27,000 people isn’t big enough to require permanent government air-pollution monitors nearby.
Fine particles - measuring less than 2.5 microns - are far smaller than a grain of sand and are considered the most dangerous form of pollution because they penetrate the bloodstream and cause lung and heart disease. Major sources include power plant and industrial smoke stack emissions, as well as vehicle exhaust. The system’s failures pose a public health risk.
Academics, along with current and former regulators, say the network’s problems are many and varied: Monitors are sparsely and poorly placed; the program is underfunded; and the network is not equipped to meet current pollution threats. The monitoring program emerged piecemeal after the 1970 Clean Air Act, mainly to track acid rain, smog and ozone pollution. Those hazards have largely subsided, replaced by more localized threats including toxic compounds and particulate matter from a wide range of industry and natural hazards, such as wildfires. Individual monitors have also proven inaccurate, often recording pollution levels that can vary wildly from audit monitors placed beside them, according to government quality-assurance audits. Nearly half of the country’s monitors meant to capture fine particulate matter did not meet federal accuracy standards, an EPA audit released in 2015 found.
When Chevron Corp’s refinery in Richmond, California, caught fire in 2012, clouds of particulate matter forced 15,000 people to seek treatment, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. But the closest government monitor of hazardous chemicals recorded no problems because it was turned off. It had been programmed to work one of every 12 days. Researchers from the University of California San Francisco did a post-mortem on the Chevron refinery fire as part of a community health study. They concluded many of the people who suffered initial health problems continued to have worsening health in the years after, including chronic respiratory issues such as asthma.
A government monitor in Imperial County, California, operated by local and state regulators, recorded much lower readings of day-to-day air pollution in 2017 than were actually occurring because it had been programmed to max out at a lower level. The EPA acknowledged the monitors’ default setting was capped. It said the manufacturer warned that using higher settings can impair readings of lower pollution levels. Overall, between October 2016 and February 2017, the community monitors detected 1,426 episodes of elevated levels of particulate matter, or 12 times what government monitors recorded. The EPA ruled in October that Imperial County meets clean air standards. The agency excluded nearly 100 days of excessive pollution between 2014 and 2018, saying sand and dust storms in the desert area were “exceptional events.”
A 2013 study detailed a number of problems with the U.S. air monitoring network. The report proposed improvements including boosting monitoring near major polluting infrastructure, sampling for more pollutants, and doing more urban field studies to better understand block-to-block variability in air quality. But the weaknesses largely remain today because neither the Obama nor the Trump administration invested more in the monitoring network.
According to the agency’s 2015 audit report which covered about 1,000 government fine particulate matter monitoring sites, operated by nearly 100 environmental agencies, it found that 46% of the agencies had monitors that failed to meet the EPA’s standard for precision and 44% of agencies had devices that failed the bias standard.
Wisconsin researchers found that state regulators in counties that are close to exceeding pollution standards often place monitors in cleaner areas when they have the option, a conclusion based on a study of years of EPA monitor data and pollution estimates from satellites.
“We found that, on average, newly sited monitors are placed in relatively clean areas,” said Grainger, the Wisconsin environmental economist. The positioning, he said, suggests that local regulators strategically avoid pollution hot spots.
In 2015 and 2016, Missouri regulators allowed St. Louis-based utility Ameren Corp to select sites to install four sulfur dioxide (SO2) monitors around its Labadie coal plant. The plant is ranked by the EPA as the second largest SO2 polluter in the country. The EPA and state regulators signed off on the monitoring sites as accurately capturing the plant’s pollution - over the objections of environmental groups that argued the locations would prevent monitors from picking up the coal plant’s peak SO2 concentrations. But pollution from the plant travels far beyond the surrounding area. Based on a computer simulation Labadie’s SO2 output converts to fine particulate matter because of the heat and humidity during summer in St. Louis. The result is particulate pollution that extends across the entire eastern half of the United States. The worst impacts, he said in a phone interview, can be seen “hundreds of miles beyond Missouri.”
Special Report: U.S. air monitors routinely miss pollution - even refinery explosions | Reuters
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