Posted on 10/31/2010 2:43:14 PM PDT by reaganaut1
MIDLAND, Mich. – The government has spent many millions of dollars in recent decades cleaning up sites contaminated with dioxin and, in extreme cases, relocating residents of entire neighborhoods tainted by the toxin.
But tough new pollution standards proposed by the Obama administration could require additional dioxin cleanups at scores of abandoned factories, military bases, landfills and other locations declared safe years ago, officials say.
If the guidelines receive final approval, federal and state officials will examine sites with known dioxin contamination to identify those needing work and what the work will cost. Among those expected to be reviewed are notorious places such as the former village of Times Beach, Mo., where about 2,000 people were relocated in the 1980s after dioxin-laced waste oil was sprayed on roads to control dust.
The Environmental Protection Agency plan has escalated a decades-long debate over the danger of dioxin, a family of chemical byproducts from industries such as pesticide and herbicide production, waste incineration and smelting. One form of dioxin was in Agent Orange, the defoliant used by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. The EPA is expected to make a final decision this fall on the new standards. But congressional critics and chemical companies say the agency is acting hastily and should wait until it completes a reassessment of dioxin's health effects in the coming months.
"They're proposing these sweeping changes to regulations without giving us an idea of how many sites will be affected, how many homes will be affected, what the economic impact would be," said Rep. Dave Camp, a Republican whose Michigan district includes a 50-mile-long watershed polluted with dioxin from a Dow Chemical Co. plant.
EPA officials say they want to move ahead because they are convinced dioxin is hazardous at lower concentrations than previously thought.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
stimulus!
You could drink the stuff and it wouldn’t hurt you, I tested it for years, it is another program to create useless jobs for the EPA NAZI’s.
The federal EPA should be dissolved
and all of its duties should be relegated to the states.
LOL! Thanks!
Drink what, exactly, and it wouldn’t hurt you?
I did my PhD research and dissertation on the biological effects of 2,3,7,8-tetrachloro-p-dioxin. That is what is most often meant when “dioxin” is mentioned. I would NEVER drink the stuff!
Dioxin poisoning was responsible for the disfigurement of Victor Yushchenko back in 2004 during the Ukrainian presidential election.
Dioxin isn’t the overwhelming threat that the EPA claims, but it isn’t benign, either.
No complaining this is the Hussain Job Bill
More regulation and YOU PAY and PAY and PAY!
That is a problem of a different sort. Chemical analyzers are so sensitive these days that they can detect a trace of whatever chemical they’re looking for in almost any sample. And bureaucrats often don’t have the background to understand that just because hazardous chemical X was found at 5 ppb in sample Y does not mean sample Y is hazardous.
EPA scientists, in my experience, are fine—EPA bureaucrats are the problem.
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