{"id":1184,"date":"2011-11-07T09:41:13","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T14:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=1184"},"modified":"2011-11-14T08:51:57","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T14:51:57","slug":"stateimpact-npr-poisoned-places-a-special-investigative-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/11\/07\/stateimpact-npr-poisoned-places-a-special-investigative-report\/","title":{"rendered":"StateImpact and NPR&#8217;s Poisoned Places: A Special Investigative Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1191\"  class=\"wp-caption module image center\" style=\"max-width: 594px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/1310743.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1191\" title=\"Tosco Refinery\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/1310743.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"594\" height=\"390\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/1310743.jpg 594w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/1310743-300x196.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/1310743-220x144.jpg 220w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">David McNew \/ Getty Images<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"> Toxic Air From an Oil Refinery Fire in Long Beach, California<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Today NPR, the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and StateImpact launch a special series examining how air pollution is affecting communities across the nation called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/series\/142000896\/poisoned-places-toxic-air-neglected-communities\">Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities<\/a>. It has been twenty-one years since Congress amended the Clean Air Act to deal with toxic air, directing the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce regulations and protect the general public from toxic emissions. But as the investigative series discovered, companies are still producing toxic\u00a0air, and regulators are having a difficult time stopping them. The team found:<\/p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>State and federal regulators take months and sometimes years to\u00a0enforce anti-pollution rules. About 400 facilities are on an internal\u00a0EPA watch list that includes serious or chronic Clean Air Act\u00a0violators that have not been subject to timely enforcement. The list\u00a0was obtained by the Center and NPR and is being made public for the\u00a0first time.<\/li>\n<li>More than 1,600 facilities around the country are classified by\u00a0the EPA as &#8220;high priority violators&#8221; of the Clear Air Act sites in need of urgent action by enforcers.<\/li>\n<li>Regulators largely rely on an honor system easily manipulated\u00a0by polluters, which report their own emissions. Even judging by the\u00a0self-reported numbers, the scale of pollution is enormous: At least\u00a0600 million pounds of toxic chemicals &#8211; including arsenic, benzene,\u00a0formaldehyde and lead &#8211; were released into the air in 2009,\u00a0according to EPA data.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--more-->This morning&#8217;s NPR story looks in-depth at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/11\/07\/142035420\/secret-watch-list-reveals-failure-to-curb-toxic-air\">startling numbers<\/a>. Of the more than 1,600 facilities the Agency has classified as &#8220;high priority violators,&#8221; there are many repeat offenders:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Yet nearly 300 of those facilities have been considered &#8220;high priority violators&#8221; of the Clean Air Act by the Environmental Protection Agency for at least a decade.\u00a0About a quarter of those 1,600 violators are on an internal EPA &#8220;watch list,&#8221; which the agency has kept secret until now.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And the Center for Public\u00a0Integrity\u00a0reports on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iwatchnews.org\/2011\/11\/07\/7267\/many-americans-left-behind-quest-cleaner-air\">individuals and communities affected<\/a> by these toxic\u00a0emissions across the country, including the primarily Latino neighborhood of Manchester in Houston:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Manchester lies in the bull\u2019s eye of benzene emissions from the nation\u2019s biggest petrochemical complex. Doctors diagnosed Valentin Marroquin with acute lymphocytic leukemia eight years ago, at age 6. While linking illness to toxic exposure can be difficult, Valentin\u2019s mother, Rosario, doubts he got sick by chance. The ailment has been associated with benzene, and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC2592281\/?tool=pubmed\">researchers<\/a>\u00a0have found elevated rates of childhood leukemia in Houston neighborhoods \u2013 including Manchester \u2013 with high levels of the chemical in the air. Refineries near Manchester have reported emitting hundreds of thousands of pounds of benzene over the last decade.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>NPR and CPI took data from the EPA and created an interactive map of facilities that reported chemical emissions into the air. You can see where they are located in Texas, and learn about how this issue affects your community, by clicking on the map below:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wp.me\/p1ODOS-iL\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-1214\" title=\"Map Screenshot\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/Map-Screenshot-620x403.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"403\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/Map-Screenshot-620x403.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/Map-Screenshot-300x195.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/Map-Screenshot-220x143.jpg 220w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/Map-Screenshot.jpg 963w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This week we&#8217;ll be reporting on some of the toxic air emitters in Texas, the state of regulation here, and how these companies practices affect the health and well-being of communities in the state.<\/p>\n<p><em>Note: A previous version of this post\u00a0inaccurately\u00a0described the map, which shows facilities reporting chemical emissions into the air \u2014 not those on the federal watch list or those identified as violating regulations.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today NPR, the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and StateImpact launch a special series examining how air pollution is affecting communities across the nation called Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities. It has been twenty-one years since Congress amended the Clean Air Act to deal with toxic air, directing the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":1191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[84,67,21,83,62,39,33],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1184"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1606,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions\/1606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}