THE US agency charged with cleaning up America鈥檚 air is failing to do so. Plans made 15 years ago to rid the country鈥檚 air of toxic pollutants that cause cancer and a range of other health problems are hopelessly behind schedule, says a damning report released last week by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The report was requested by members of Congress, after recent figures from the Environmental Protection Agency indicated that 鈥�95 per cent of all Americans face an increased likelihood of developing cancer as a result of breathing air toxics鈥�. The members wanted an audit of what the EPA had achieved since 1990, when an amendment to the US Clean Air Act required the EPA to bring in new laws to drastically reduce emissions of 190 airborne pollutants. These include known carcinogens such as asbestos, and compounds such as benzene from automobile exhausts and garages. Benzene alone is reckoned to account for a quarter of all US cancers caused by air toxics.
鈥淣inety-five per cent of Americans face an increased likelihood of developing cancer as a result of air toxics鈥�
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Progress has been dismal, with only 30 per cent of the EPA鈥檚 programme completed, says the report. Of the four main tasks, only one has been accomplished: the establishment of emission standards for 84,000 major stationary sources of pollution. Even this was four years late, delaying the second task of evaluating the risks still posed by toxics from these sources.
Slow progress has also been made on the third task: to regulate toxic emissions from small stationary sources such as dry-cleaners, which emit the carcinogen percholorethylene (PCE). These sources discharged a third of all airborne toxics in 2002, but the EPA had only set 16 of 70 emission standards when the report went to press. Since then, it has finalised its standards for dry-cleaners to phase out PCE in residential areas, according to an EPA official.
As for the final task, setting standards for mobile sources of toxics such as cars, the EPA has only just begun.
The EPA accepts that there are challenges, but it claims it is achieving more in terms of public health by tackling other categories of airborne pollutants, including smog, ozone, nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide, lead and particulate matter. 鈥淭he agency has always had competing priorities,鈥� says the official.
John Stephenson, author of the GAO report, isn鈥檛 impressed. 鈥淚 sympathise with EPA, but it鈥檚 the law, and they are meant to do this.They need to get on with it.鈥�
Any attempt to prioritise the work, however, may be hindered by EPA鈥檚 failure at another task: a cost-benefit analysis to determine how the most disease could be prevented for the least cost. 鈥淭his means no one can fully assess the benefits of reductions in concentrations or risks of current exposure,鈥� says Amy Kyle, a toxics researcher at the University of California at Berkeley.
The GAO report also blames the government. 鈥淭he Bush administration鈥檚 chronic underfunding of environmental priorities means that progress will continue to be limited,鈥� said Democratic congressman John Dingell.
