Or give you an autoimmune disorder like Lupus. Certainly a story that will sicken you, one way or another (from RAW STORY):
During the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina, local officials and the Environmental Protection Agency depended on one source to find hotspots of toxic chemicals: a database known as the Toxic Release Inventory.
“This was the only information they had to identify toxic chemicals of any kind in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” says Clayton Northouse, an information policy analyst at OMB Watch, a nonprofit government accountability group.
Until a few weeks ago, the inventory was to be slashed to comply with the Federal Paperwork Reduction Act. […]
Under the plan, companies would report biannually instead of annually and would only have to report toxic releases of more than 5,000 pounds. Currently, the EPA requires reporting of any releases greater than 500 pounds.
All that pesky paperwork. Who really needs to know what being dumped in our lakes, rivers, streams and ground water? Not you or me, if the Bush administration has its way.
“The TRI is one of the premiere pollution-prevention tools in the United States,” says Kristan Markey, a research analyst for Environmental Working Group. “Businesses don’t like TRI because it says who is polluting in local communities.”
The EPA, he added, decided to change the database “out of the blue” in 2005.
I can tell you one thing. The change didn’t come “out of the blue.” Nothing (except war planning) is that haphazard with this gang of thieves. This was a measure that was bought and paid for with campaign contributions to the Republican Party. This is the consequence of that Republican culture of corruption we’re always talking about. It isn’t just bribes, fancy homes, hookers, poker nights and defrauded Native American tribes. It’s also the eradication of our public health through cuts in NIH, CDC and EPA funding, and the loss of regulations that would limit the amount of toxic chemicals utility companies could send as smoke into the air, or other companies could dump into the sources of our drinking water. Chemicals known to be carcinogenic, and also chemicals connected to other serious diseases such as asthma, multiple schlerosis, neurological diseases, ad nauseam. Chemicals like mercury and lead.
The cut would also change, for the first time ever, the way the most toxic chemicals, known as Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxins, are reported. These toxins — including lead, mercury and dioxin — can’t naturally be disposed of by the body.
Lead and dioxins have historically faced detailed reporting rules. Under the cut, a short-form report only saying that the company has the chemical would suffice. […]
The environmental cost of the cuts could be substantial. Public health researchers, doctors, community planners and emergency responders all depend on the Toxic Release Inventory to locate toxins and identify disease and cancer patterns in the community.
This is why it matters which party is in power, in Congress and in the White House. Weren’t the Dems sell outs to the corporations too, though? Not to this extent. Most of these regulations and budget items were put in place when Clinton was in office. He wasn’t the most progressive President in our history, but he wasn’t allowing crap like this to happen either.
Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxins
