Thursday, December 27, 2012

EPA is a Broken Agency, Asleep on the Job


The Arizona Republic published this AP article Dec 24, 2012 by K. Zezima and K. Begos. "Few tests done at toxic dumpsites. p. A3

"For more than a month, the EPA has said that Superstorm Sandy didn't cuase significant problems at any of the 247 Superfund toxic waste sites it's monitoring in New York and New Jersey. But in many cases, no actual tests of soil or water are being conducted, just visual inspection. The EPA conducted a handful of tests right after the storm but couldn't provide details or any recent testing when asked last week...."

Majia here: The article states that the Sierra Club of New Jersey claims that the EPA hasn't done enough to check for spreading contamination resulting from the storm.

At issue are lead, arsenic, antimony, and copper.

The EPA is a broken agency, in my opinion. It's failings are symptomatic of corruption within our health and welfare agencies because of censorship, revolving doors, and underfunding.

I'm sure that there are committed and well-intentioned individuals who work for the EPA, but they are clearly not the ones who are in charge of the agency.

The EPA failed to stop the use of corexit during the BP gulf oil spill. Now research finds that corexit increased the toxicity of the oil by 52 times:

Dec 16, 2012
[Excerpted] If the 4.9 million barrels of oil that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico during the 2010 Deep Water Horizon spill was a ecological disaster, the two million gallons of dispersant used to clean it up apparently made it even ...
 
Furthermore, the EPA's (outsourced) radnet system was a complete failure in the wake of Fukushima radiation.The Office of the Inspector General issued a report in 2012 that noted twenty percent of the EPA’s stationary radiation monitors were not functioning at the time of the Fukushima accident.[i] Additionally, other monitors had not had their filters changed and were therefore not able to provide accurate readings. The Inspector General report concluded that the EPA Radnet system had “relaxed quality controls.” 
 
We need to demand that the EPA FULFILL ITS MISSION TO PROTECT HUMAN HEALTH!


[i]           Jeff McMahon “Inspector General Faults EPA Radiation Monitoring,” Forbes (2012, April 27): http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/04/27/inspector-general-faults-epa-radiation-monitoring/.

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