What’s Your Poison?
“As Americans, we know you have a wide variety of poisons, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, toxic chemicals, and people who talk like Glen Beck to choose from when it comes to selecting your neighborhood, and we appreciate you choosing our noxious area to raise your young.”
Wouldn’t that be a swell label to see on the disclosure forms for your new home before you buy it? Not only does it list that your basement is unfinished, with part of the floor made up of just dirt (yeah, we actually saw a house like that when we were looking)—you also live in an area full of arsenic and old lace!
Well, the nicest thing would be to be able to move anywhere and feel safe about your choice—but that’s not going to happen this year. What has happened this year, however, is the creation of a searchable toxin database, courtesy of the EPA.
The database, an updated version of the EPA’s current Envirofacts system, lists information on thousands of different harmful chemicals as well as where the facilities they are used at are located. People can search the chemicals and locations to see if they are being released into the atmosphere where they live.
I’m sure my friends who recently had their yard dug up due to the presence of lead would’ve loved to have been able to check out such information before they purchased their house. Sure, the EPA covered it, but they lost a lot of landscaping in the process—not to mention the fact that their dog and family played in that dirt for years.
Arsenic transfer sites, oil refinery chemical releases, and many more activities are covered on the site. Urban, suburban, and rural areas are all included; the EPA notes that most toxic chemicals listed are found in rural areas (so much for “living off the grid” at Green Acres).
And lists of chemicals aren’t where the database stops, either. You can read about what the chemicals actually are (complete descriptions), updates on when and where they are released into the environment, who they’re released by (as well as how often), and even get aerial pictures of the companies where they are released from! There are also inspection reports and demographic information about each area reported.
One of the things activists will love is that the database also lists whether or not facilities are complying with EPA regulations—or simply breaking the rules. Let’s all get together and write to every company that’s dumping crap illegally into our atmosphere we run across, shall we?
