EPA conducts secret air pollution testing in Beaumont-Port Arthur
The EPA? Involved in a covert operation? Jack-booted storm troopers? Black helicopters? No, not really....
Call it drive-by science.
Six researchers in an unmarked Bluebird school bus have been circling the streets around Beaumont-Port Arthur industrial plants, secretly recording their pollution.
The research is part of a covert scientific operation under way since Monday night to better understand the extent of air pollution in the heavily industrialized region and how it may be affecting nearby communities.
"Our focus is outside the fence line of these facilities, where people don't have a choice," said Mark Hansen, chief of the Toxics Enforcement Section for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Dallas....
In Jefferson County, the bus is searching for the invisible pollutants that seep from the area's major refineries and petrochemical plants. Each night the scientists slowly steer down streets flanked with clouds of white smoke, past industrial stacks illuminated by thousands of tiny yellow lights, in the hope they will come across a plume.
The dozen or so chemicals known as volatile organic compounds contribute to smog. But alone, they can cause illnesses ranging from cancer to kidney disease. Air pollution data collected by environmental groups suggest that the amounts released are greatly underestimated by local industry.
Many of us who live in southeast Texas will be very interested to find out the result of this study- if the EPA is even allowed to release it. If they will be potentially embarrassing to the plants and refineries, the results may never see the light of day. Health effects be damned- there's money to be made....
