OT: USA Today Toxic Schools reporting

[Guest guest]

USA Today not known as as investigative paper- did a nice job on the

series on toxic schools particularly the ability to reserach your

local school

Health risks stack up for students near industrial plants

By Blake on and Brad Heath, USA TODAY

http://content.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/smokestack/index

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/school-air1.htm?

csp=DailyBriefing

ADDYSTON, Ohio — The growl of air-monitoring equipment has replaced

the chatter of children at Meredith Hitchens Elementary School in

this Cincinnati suburb along the Ohio River.

School district officials pulled all students from Hitchens three

years ago, after air samples outside the building showed high levels

of chemicals coming from the plastics plant across the street. The

levels were so dangerous that the Ohio EPA concluded the risk of

getting cancer there was 50 times higher than what the state

considers acceptable.

'WEIRD' SMELL: Odor sets off investigation at Ohio school

BEST OR WORST: Where does your school's air quality rank?

The air outside 435 other schools — from Maine to California —

appears to be even worse, and the threats to the health of students

at those locations may be even greater.

Using the government's most up-to-date model for tracking toxic

chemicals, USA TODAY spent eight months examining the impact of

industrial pollution on the air outside schools across the nation.

The model is a computer simulation that predicts the path of toxic

chemicals released by thousands of companies.

USA TODAY used it to identify schools in toxic hot spots — a task the

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had never undertaken.

The result: a ranking of 127,800 public, private and parochial

schools based on the concentrations and health hazards of chemicals

likely to be in the air outside. The model's most recent version used

emissions reports filed by 20,000 industrial sites in 2005, the year

Hitchens closed.

The potential problems that emerged were widespread, insidious and

largely unaddressed:

• At Abraham Lincoln Elementary School in East Chicago, Ind., the

model indicated levels of manganese more than a dozen times higher

than what the government considers safe. The metal can cause mental

and emotional problems after long exposures. Three factories within

blocks of the school — located in one of the most impoverished areas

of the state — combined to release more than 6 tons of it in a single

year.

" When you start talking about manganese, it doesn't register with

people in poverty, " says Anaya, superintendent of the School

City of East Chicago district. " They have bigger issues to deal with. "

• The middle school in Follansbee, W.Va., sits close to a cluster of

plants that churn out tens of thousands of pounds of toxic gases and

metals a year.

• In Huntington, W.Va., data showed the air outside Highlawn

Elementary School had high levels of nickel, which can harm lungs and

cause cancer.

• At San Jacinto Elementary School in Deer Park, Texas, data

indicated carcinogens at levels even higher than the readings that

prompted the shutdown of Hitchens. A recent University of Texas study

showed an " association " between an increased risk of childhood cancer

and proximity to the Houston Ship Channel, about 2 miles from the

school.

The 435 schools that ranked worst weren't confined to industrial

centers. Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania had the highest numbers, but

the worst schools extended from the East Coast to the West, in 170

cities across 34 states, USA TODAY found.

IN DANGER? Toxics can affect kids, adults differently

In some school districts, emissions from the smokestacks of

refineries or chemical plants threatened students of every age,

preschool through prom. Outside those schools, reports from polluters

themselves often indicated a dozen different chemicals in the air.

All are considered toxic by the government, though few have been

tested for their specific effects on children.

Scientists have long known that kids are particularly susceptible to

the dangers. They breathe more air in proportion to their weight than

adults do, and their bodies are still developing. Based on the time

they spend at school, their exposures could last for years but the

impact might not become clear for decades.

That was the case in Port Neches, Texas, where more than two dozen

former students of Port Neches-Groves High School have been diagnosed

with cancer several years after they graduated, according to court

records. So far, 17 have reached legal settlements with petrochemical

plants located less than a mile from the school. In court filings,

the plants' operators had denied they were to blame for the illnesses.

The U.S. EPA, which has a special office charged with protecting

children's health, has invested millions of taxpayer dollars in

pollution models that could help identify schools where toxic

chemicals saturate the air. Even so, USA TODAY found, the agency has

all but ignored examining whether the air is unsafe at the very

locations where kids are required to gather.

If regulators had used their own pollution models to look for schools

in toxic hot spots, they would have discovered what USA TODAY found:

locations — in small towns such as Lucedale, Miss., and Oro Grande,

Calif., as well as in large cities such as Houston — where the

government's own data indicated the air outside schools was more

toxic than the air outside the shuttered Hitchens.

" Wow, " says Philip Landrigan, a physician who heads a unit at Mount

Sinai School of Medicine in New York focused on children's health and

the environment. " The mere fact that kids are being exposed ought to

be enough to force people to pay attention. The problem here is, by

and large, there's no cop on the beat. Nobody's paying attention. "

Continue to next page...

USA TODAY's special report on the smokestack effect:

NEXT PAGE: Problems are widespread

PAGE 3: 'What if we're next?'

PAGE 4: Cancer at Port Neches schools

PAGE 5: Who's responsible?