Posts By: Mary

Ways and Means Committee has yet to put DEQ air monitoring grant application on agenda

Posted by & filed under air toxics, citizen engagement, Citizen's Right-to-know, DEQ, environmental justice.

Concern growing that DEQ will not meet EPA May 23rd deadline for applying EPA has announced up to $700,000 available to state regulators for Community-Scale Air Monitoring to assess the risk in the toxic hot spots like those identified in the USA Today Smokestack Report.  See the list of schools that rank the worst in… Read more »

To test or not to test

Posted by & filed under air toxics, Citizen's Right-to-know, DEQ, environmental justice, Health Benchmarks, lead, manganese, Multnomah County, Oregon, PATS, PATSAC, Portland, right to know, Toxic Hot Spots, transparency, USA Today.

We know that Oregon has high levels of naturally occurring arsenic. We also know that it is emitted by polluters: metal processing specifically contributes over 60% of the human-caused arsenic emissions according to DEQ source material for the Portland Air Toxics Solutions; it also comes from agricultural pesticides and soil dust, as well as combusted fuel from vehicles. We know it is classified as a KNOWN (Class A) human carcinogen. We know that arsenic is one of 15 air toxicants that the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality identified as being up to 10x over health-based benchmarks in the Portland Metro air shed. What we don’t know: How is this affecting my child? Are our children safe?

Revisiting The Smokestack Effect

Posted by & filed under air toxics, Citizen's Right-to-know, environmental justice, EPA NATA, ESCO, Health Benchmarks, hotspots, industrial sanctuary, manganese, Toxic Hot Spots, TRI, USA Today.

In March 2009, I stumbled across a report on the internet published by USA Today called the Smokestack Effect.  It was a ground breaking study that cross-referenced the federal Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data with school sitings, ranking the schools at greatest risk of cancer and non-cancer health effects due to air toxic exposures.  The… Read more »

What is in our air?

Posted by & filed under air toxics, Citizen's Right-to-know, DEQ, Health Benchmarks, hotspots, industrial sanctuary, manganese, Title V air permit, Toxic Hot Spots, transparency, TRI, urban growth boundry.

Every day driving my daughters to school I pass eastbound over the Fremont Bridge. During many of these days as we are just about to exit onto Kerby, we have to pass through a dense dark gray “fog” created by the air emissions of a regulated polluter just below the bridge.  Some days the fog… Read more »

Short Term Air Toxics Benchmarks

Posted by & filed under air toxics, DEQ, environmental justice, Environmental Quality Commission, Greenlick, Health Benchmarks, hotspots, Kitzhaber, manganese.

On June 30th 2010, when the public comment period closed for the state’s decision on new air toxics benchmarks for mercury, manganese and lead, Neighbors for Clean Air delivered over 500 signatures demanding DEQ address short term spikes in toxic air emissions from regulated polluters. Air Quality administrator, Andy Ginsburg met Neighbors for Clean Air… Read more »