Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)
This posting by Dante Picciano on his Web page -- www.dante7.com -- appears elsewhere on cancercapital.com. It has been slightly edited to prove an excellent understanding of what's going on right in front of your noses.)
Schuylkill County residents, especially those living in the northern portion, may be astonished to learn that 3,299.869 pounds of toxic chemicals had been released into the environment in 2006.
This is the official report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which released the results of its Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) on Feb. 21, 2008.
The TRI is a database containing detailed information on nearly 650 chemicals that are released from facilities by industry and government nationwide. Complete information about the 2006 reporting year is available at: http://epa.gov
Once again, the TRI showed alarming amounts of pollutants being spewed into the environment in Schuylkill County. Residents of Schuylkill and nearby counties, therefore, are forced to breathe the toxins released into the air and to drink those finding their way into their water.
For 2006, the TRI's statistics showed that six facilities -- five of them cogeneration plants -- were responsible for 90.5 percent of the chemical releases within the county. They were:
| Gilberton Power Company, Frackville | 328,055 pounds |
| ITT Gould Pumps, Ashland | 481,181 pounds |
| Northeastern Power Company, McAdoo | 573,003 pounds |
| St. Nicholas Cogeneration Project, Shenandoah | 791,164 pounds |
| Wheelabrator Frackville Energy Company, Frackville | 350,653 pounds |
| WPS Westwood Generation LLC, Tremont | 461,489 pounds |
The five cogeneration plants had accounted for 75.9% of the toxic releases in Schuylkill County. All but ITT Gould Pumps are waste-coal burning cogeneration plants.
In neighboring Carbon County, the lone cogeneration plant, Panther Creek Partners in Nesquehoning, released 480,503 pounds of toxic chemicals. This facility accounted for 81.3% of the toxic releases in the county.
These toxic releases may cause cancer or linger in human tissues or the environment. The released chemicals that we are being forced to breath and drink include the following:
• Antimony compounds
• Arsenic compounds
• Barium compounds
• Chromium compounds
• Dioxin and dioxin-like compounds
• Hydrogen Fluoride
• Lead compounds
• Manganese compounds
• Mercury compounds
• Nickel compounds
• Selenium compounds
• Vanadium compounds
• Zinc compounds
How do these toxic releases compare to those in other states? An analysis of the TRI data for lead by another scientist showed that the five waste-coal burning cogeneration plants in Schuylkill County released nearly as much lead as all the facilities in New Mexico or Maryland!
That's right. The five facilities in Schuylkill County released nearly as much toxic lead into the environment as all of the facilities released in the entire state of New Mexico or the entire state of Maryland.
It's time to wake up and smell the pollution. Our legislators have passed the laws that legalized the dumping of these toxic chemicals into our environment. In return, our legislators received generous contributions for their re-election campaigns from the industries spewing these toxic chemicals upon us.
The next time that you hear about cancer, birth defects, multiple sclerosis, asthma and other environmentally related conditions in your family or friends, please remember that most of these problems were preventable. We have to change the laws so that the innocent people are protected from the greed of the corporations.
You can do something to start to correct these injustices by voting out all incumbent legislators. They either voted for the laws legalizing the pollution or refused to speak out against them.
