In the following episode of “Intercepted” podcast, two investigative reporters discuss how the EPA is not set up to protect people from air pollution–and eventual death from breathing these poisons. They lament the fact that regulatory agencies are up against impossible odds as corporations can outspend and outmaneuver them.
Agreed, this is lamentable, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
As people band together and demand respect and protection for living, breathing people by writing local ordinances and strip corporate fictions of human rights, we will start to see the shameful greed and avarice shunned to oblivion.
The following podcast was published by The Intercept on March 31, 2021.
Trump’s EPA Helped Erase Records of Almost 270,000 Pounds of Carcinogenic Pollution.
Investigative reporter Sharon Lerner explains how 270,000 pounds of the chemical ethylene oxide vanished from the public record.
The Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump administration invited companies to retroactively amend emissions records of a deadly carcinogenic chemical. This week on Intercepted: Investigative reporter Sharon Lerner explains how 270,000 pounds of the chemical ethylene oxide vanished from the public record right after the EPA determined that it was more toxic than previously known. Ethylene oxide is a colorless and odorless gas used to produce many consumer goods and used extensively as an agent in the sterilization of medical equipment.
Despite the EPA’s transition to new leadership under the Biden administration, regulatory capture is a persistent obstacle in the agency’s ability to protect public health and the environment. And as Lerner reports, a disproportionate number of poor communities and communities of color have yet to be alerted to the fact that elevated levels of cancer-causing ethylene oxide permeate the air they breathe. We also hear from a group of Texas women that believes their breast cancer diagnoses are linked to exposure to the chemical.
Jeremy Scahill: This is Intercepted.
Roger Hodge: I’m Roger Hodge, the deputy editor of The Intercept, and longtime editor of Sharon Lerner, one of our investigative reporters who covers the environment, and toxics, and pollution.
We’ve been chasing the story for years now. That really gets started in 2018, when the EPA issued a National Air Toxics Assessment. Suddenly, when that new assessment comes out, hundreds of communities around the country have a serious air pollution problem.
This latest story is called “Tracking the Invisible Killer.” One of the things that Sharon found as she was reporting was that the public data in the EPA’s databases — that are buried in its website — was that the data was changing.
Sharon starts digging, talking to experts, asking the EPA: “What’s going on?” The companies are saying, “Well, we went back, and checked, and we discovered that we had over-reported.” Well, why is this? Well, in 2018, suddenly, they had a big problem because they were way over the safety limit.
Well, why did that happen? Well, we suspected that maybe the Trump EPA had something to do with that. The EPA asked them — invited them — to go back and revise their emissions. And that is a much more pernicious story.
What Sharon’s reporting in this story, and many others, demonstrates is that you can’t trust the EPA. You have to put pressure on the EPA and put pressure on the government because the regulatory agencies are confronted with multibillion-dollar propaganda — misinformation budgets from industry. They’re outgunned, even when the EPA is not actively corrupt as it was under Trump. Ethylene oxide is just one example. The Trump administration gutted — gutted — air pollution protections in all kinds of ways, and the damage they did will take a long time to undo.
But what does all this translate to? It translates to: How many people are we going to sacrifice for these conveniences that these chemicals provide for people? How many thousands of people, per million, are you willing to kill? But, ultimately, all they care about is the bottom line.
And one way or another, the only thing that’s going to prevent this pollution is political action and active citizenry who are going to fight. And it’s never going to end. Be careful, read the fine print, and keep the pressure on the regulators and on the politicians who are actively undermining.
Intercepted lead producer Jack D’isidoro spoke with Sharon about her story…
Read the full transcript or listen to the podcast HERE.
Photo Credit: “Veterans Memorial & Rainbow Bridges over the Neches River, Port Arthur, Texas 0912091407BW” by Patrick Feller is licensed under CC BY 2.0