is
A raw materials storage pond lies in front of the USMagnesium production facility Tuesday, April 22, 2003 in Tooele, Utah. Magnesium is brewed from mineral-rich water baked for years in solar ponds. The smelter on the remote Great Salt Lake western shore ranked No. 1 on a government list of industrial air polluters for five years, a branding its executives disputed but found hard to counter. The company lost a pollution-rule appeal on Monday. (AP file Photo/Steve C. Wilson)
US Magnesium loses pollution rule appeal : The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver sided with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which had threatened to take over part of Utah’s air-quality program unless the state updated its so-called "unavoidable breakdown rule."
First Published Aug 06 2012 12:21 pm • Last Updated Aug 06 2012 11:34 pm
Denver court upholds Utah’s “unavoidable breakdown rule.”
By JUDY FAHYS
| The Salt Lake Tribune
A court ruling Monday might finally end a years-long battle over air pollution mishaps at Utah industrial plants.The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver sided with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which had threatened to take over part of Utah’s air-quality program unless the state updated its so-called "unavoidable breakdown rule."
US Magnesium had asked the court to nix the new regulation for reporting unexpected pollution episodes at around 1,200 plants. The company said EPA hadn’t followed proper procedure, but the court disagreed.
"We deny the petition for review," the three-member panel said.
But an environmental group that called Utah’s breakdown rule a "loophole" and forced the issue into court, welcomed Monday’s decision. Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director at WildEarth Guardians, said the issue goes really boils down to public health and not regulatory technicalities, as the magnesium company argued.
"The [Utah] rule was flawed, and EPA was right to tell Utah to get rid of it or fix it," he said.
"It’s best to keep the poisons out of the air in the first place," he said. And that EPA principle "is consistent with what we deserve and what we expect in our society."
Utah has pushed forward with a new breakdown rule for more than a year, even while the court was considering the case this spring.
Under the old standard, originally approved in 1980, Utah regulation basically assumed a company was innocent until proven guilty of an unauthorized pollution release when an accident or breakdown occurred. EPA policy changed in 1999, and it could not reach an agreement with the state on an improved rule.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/54641166-90/appeal-appeals-breakdown-court.html.csp
Salt Lake City Makes the ALA's Top 25 Most Polluted Cities List
Kennecott causes one-third of air pollution :The same must be said about its economic impact. Although RTK pays substantial taxes and wages, its contribution to disease, health care costs and the suppression of "cleaner" economic development all take money out of your wallet, Studies of mining operations in other parts of the country, looking at both sides of the equation, suggest that RTK, overall, is actually an economic liability.The Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club joined Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, Utah Moms for Clean Air and WildEarth Guardians as plaintiffs in suing RTK for violating the federal Clean Air Act.
Published February 29, 2012 1:01 am
In a Feb. 17 op-ed for The Tribune, "Kennecott and inversions," Kennecott senior environmental engineer Cassady Kristensen wrote that her job is to "implement solutions that help our community breathe cleaner air." Apparently those "solutions" involve spinning the facts rather than actually cleaning the air.
Kristensen depicts clean air advocates as making false claims that Rio Tinto/Kennecott is the primary source of inversion pollution. We've never made that claim. She created a straw man to advance an argument that RTK isn't really much of a contributor to our pollution problem.
It's about the huge levels of pollutants the mining concern puts into our air throughout the year, not just during inversions. It's also about the widespread heavy metal contamination of our air, water, and soil from Kennecott's past and present operations.
According to data from the Utah Division of Air Quality, RTK is by far the largest single source of air pollution along the Wasatch Front, emitting 10 times more pollution overall than the next largest industrial source, the Chevron refinery. Inversions or no inversions, the raw data simply show that RTK is responsible for nearly one-third of the overall pollution released into the air over Salt Lake County.
The company is now permitted to expand the mine an additional 32 percent, an expansion of 73 percent since 1994, which equates to an increase in annual mining from 150 million to 260 million tons. We challenge Kristensen to provide details backing her claim that mining an additional 110 million tons of rock per year will not result in increased air pollution.
RTK is one of 1,600 "high priority" pollution violators in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The company self-reports 6,235 pounds of lead emissions a year from its smelter smokestack alone. The federal Centers for Disease Control reports that no amount of lead is safe, and every bit of exposure permanently harms the brains of infants and children. A potpourri of toxic and deadly heavy metals — lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury — from RTK's operations constantly descends upon Salt Lake County. Heavy metals do not degrade, so our exposure to them becomes cumulatively worse every year.
RTK's enormous environmental and public health footprint must be viewed in its totality, not piecemeal, as the company would prefer. The same must be said about its economic impact. Although RTK pays substantial taxes and wages, its contribution to disease, health care costs and the suppression of "cleaner" economic development all take money out of your wallet.
Studies of mining operations in other parts of the country, looking at both sides of the equation, suggest that RTK, overall, is actually an economic liability.
The Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club joined Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, Utah Moms for Clean Air and WildEarth Guardians as plaintiffs in suing RTK for violating the federal Clean Air Act. The reason is very simple. The increased mining activity that was green-lighted by the Division of Air Quality would increase RTK's overall emissions of nitrogen oxides by 54 percent and its particulate emissions by 66 percent. That's according to the company's own documents.
This violates the Clean Air Act, a critical firewall in protecting the health of Utah citizens from air pollution and corporate abuse. Our intent going forward is to hold RTK accountable to the law.
Marion Klaus is chair of the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club and lives in Park City; Dan Mayhew is vice-chair of the Utah chapter and its conservation chair. He lives in Salt Lake City.
http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=19788465&itype=storyID
Utah Doctors Take On Giant Mining Operation:
The Utah Physicians for Healthy Environment estimate that the mortality, health and environmental costs to the community from RTK pollution is between $2 billion and $4 billion, more than the value of the wages and taxes that they pay.Frederick Douglass, the19th-century civil rights leader, said, "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them." Let it be known that the people in Utah will no longer "quietly submit" to more pollution, more deaths, shortened life spans and poorer health to fatten the wallets in the London boardroom of Rio Tinto. We are going to "take back" the air we breathe.
Late December a group of doctors and environmental groups in Salt Lake City, Utah, announced a lawsuit against the third-largest mining corporation in the world, Rio Tinto, for violating the Clean Air Act in Utah. This is likely the first time ever that physicians have sued industry for harming public health.
Air pollution causes between 1,000 and 2,000 premature deaths every year in Utah.
(1) Moreover, medical research in the last ten years has firmly established that air pollution causes the same broad array of diseases well known to result from first- and secondhand cigarette smoke - strokes, heart attacks, high blood pressure, virtually every kind of lung disease, neurologic diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, loss of intelligence, chromosomal damage, higher rates of diabetes, obesity, adverse birth outcomes, and various cancers such as lung cancer, breast cancer and leukemia. (2-12)
Most of Utah's cities are in violation of many of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) national air quality standards, and for several days during a typical winter, Utah is plagued by the worst air pollution in the country. The American Lung Association routinely gives Utah's largest cities an "F" for our air quality. Last February, Forbes Magazine, hardly a cheerleader for excessive environmental protection, rated Salt Lake City as the ninth most toxic city in the country, and the biggest contributor to that ranking was the mining and smelting operations at the Bingham Canyon mine, run by London-based mining conglomerate Rio Tinto/Kennecott (RTK). (13)
This is the world's largest open-pit mine and has created the largest mining-related water pollution problem in the world. The mine is located on the western doorstep of Salt Lake City, home to 1.8 million people. There is no comparable juxtaposition of an enormous mining operation this close to such a large urban center. RTK's mine and smelter operations account for 30 percent of the particulate matter emitted into the atmosphere over Salt Lake County (14), making it by far the largest source of industrial pollution in the urban areas of Utah.
The smelting operations and fugitive dust from the 1,100-foot-high waste rock piles and tailings ponds are a constant source of highly toxic heavy metal contamination - lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium - to the air, water and soil of Utah's largest city. The mining industry watchdog Earthworks states that before the most recently approved expansion, RTK was releasing 695 million pounds of toxic material into the Salt Lake City environment every year. (15)
Because heavy metals do not degrade, are not combustible and cannot be destroyed, that heavy metal toxicity steadily increases year after year, as it has for the over 100 years of the mine's operation. Despite this extreme burden on public health, predictably, the Utah Division of Air Quality recently issued a permit for RTK to expand their operations by 32 percent, which will make their pollution emissions even worse.
RTK is making record profits - $15 billion last year. In August, Chairman of the Board Jan du Plessis bragged, "Rio Tinto has produced another set of record-breaking results." Du Plessis apparently specializes in delivering pollution: he is also chairman of the board of British American Tobacco. Tom Albanese, Rio Tinto's CEO, who made almost $8.5 million in compensation last year, recently lamented, "[Rio Tinto must do] a better job at managing the curse of resource nationalism ... and the activism of stakeholder engagement." (16) Let me translate that for you: local people throughout the world are tired of being exploited for profit, they're starting to stand up for themselves and Rio Tinto doesn't like it. Utah citizens tired of RTK's pollution would be considered part of that "curse" to Rio Tinto executives.
This issue is simple: RTK can well afford to clean up, but they won't, and no one is making them. Their contribution to our pollution is hurting all the residents of Salt Lake City and adding to the premature death total mentioned above. For environmental and public health advocates, RTK pursuing and receiving an approval to expand was the last straw.
If the core tenet of the Occupy movement is that corporations and the 1 percent manipulate every level of government to serve their profit-driven agendas and simultaneously disregard - if not openly undermine - the interests of the 99 percent, then there is no better example than RTK's operation of Utah's Bingham Canyon mine.
The Utah Physicians for Healthy Environment estimate that the mortality, health and environmental costs to the community from RTK pollution is between $2 billion and $4 billion, more than the value of the wages and taxes that they pay. Nonetheless, a massive public relations budget allows RTK to heavily advertise themselves as "job providers" and take virtually no responsibility for the various environmental and health consequences of their operations.
Frederick Douglass, the19th-century civil rights leader, said, "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."
Let it be known that the people in Utah will no longer "quietly submit" to more pollution, more deaths, shortened life spans and poorer health to fatten the wallets in the London boardroom of Rio Tinto.
We are going to "take back" the air we breathe.
References
1. Calculation by the Utah Physicians for Healthy Environment using the formula published by the American Heart Association.
Brook R, Rajagopalan S, Pope CA, Brook J, Bhatnagar A, et al. AHA Scientific Statement: Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease; An Update to the Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association. Circulation. 2010;121:2331-2378.
2. Peters, A. Air Quality and Cardiovascular Health: Smoke and Pollution Matter. Circulation. 2009: 120:924-927
3. Eugenia E. Calle and Michael J. Thun C. Arden Pope, III, Richard T. Burnett, Daniel Krewski, Michael Jerrett, Yuanli Shi. Circulation. 2009;120:941-948. Cardiovascular Mortality and Exposure to Airbourne Fine Particulate Matter and Cigarette Smoke.
4. Bocskay K, Tang D, Orjuela M, et al. Chromosomal Aberrations in Cord Blood Are Associated with Prenatal Exposure to Carcinogenic Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. Cancer Epidem Biomarkers and Prev. Vol. 14, 506-511, Feb 2005
5. Perera F, Tang D, Tu Y, Biomarkers in Maternal and Newborn Blood Indicate Heightened Fetal Susceptibility to Procarcinogenic DNA Damage. Environ Health Persp Vol 112 Number 10 July 2004
6. Gauderman WJ, Gilliland GF, Vora H, et al. Association between Air Pollution and Lung Function Growth in Southern California Children: results from a second cohort. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2002;166:76-84.
7. Gauderman WJ, Gilliland GF, Vora H, et al. The effect of air pollution on lung development from 10 to 18 years of age. NEJM 2004;351:1057-67.
8. van den Hooven EH, de Kluizenaar Y, Pierik FH, Hofman A, van Ratingen SW, Zandveld PY, Mackenbach JP, Steegers EA, Miedema HM, Jaddoe VW. Air Pollution, Blood Pressure, and the Risk of Hypertensive Complications During Pregnancy: The Generation R Study. Hypertension. 2011 Jan 10. [Epub ahead of print]
9. Raaschou-Nielsen O, Andersen Z, Hvidberg M, Jensen SS, Ketzel M, Sørensen M, Loft S, Overvad K, Tjønneland A. Lung Cancer Incidence and Long-Term Exposure to Air Pollution from Traffic. Environ Health Perspect. 2011 Jan 12. [Epub ahead of print]
10. Pearson J, Bachireddy C, Shyamprasad S, Goldfine A, Brownstein J. Association Between Fine Particulate Matter and Diabetes Prevalence in the U.S.Diabetes Care October 2010 33:2196-2201; published ahead of print July 13, 2010, doi:10.2337/dc10-0698
11. Crouse DL, Goldberg MS, Ross NA, Chen H, Labrèche F 2010. Postmenopausal Breast Cancer Is Associated with Exposure to Traffic-Related Air Pollution in Montreal, Canada: A Case–Control Study. Environ Health Perspect 118:1578-1583. doi:10.1289/ehp.1002221
12. Pearson RL, Wachtel H, Ebi KL. Distance-weighted traffic density in proximity to a home is a risk factor for leukemia and other childhood cancers. J Air Waste Manag Assoc 50(2):175-180.
13. http://www.forbes.com/2011/02/28/most-toxic-cities-personal-finance.html
14. Calculations by the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment based on inventory
data at the Utah Division of Air Quality.
15. http://www.earthworksaction.org/issues/detail/toxics_release_inventory_what_is_it
16. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23934614-rio-tinto-boss-attacks-governments-for-interfering-in-mining.do
Support right to breathe clean air :
As the NAACP state conference president for Idaho, Nevada and Utah states, Jeanetta Williams "The American way of life is based on equal opportunity and there is nothing more basic than having the opportunity to breathe clean air. Clean air means a fair shot at a healthy upbringing
By Jeanetta Williams
As the NAACP state conference president for Idaho, Nevada and Utah, I am responsible for hearing and addressing all types of concerns. In these states far too many of the complaints I hear relate to deprivation of what should be a basic human right for all, the right to breathe clean air.
When opponents denounce safeguards against pollution, such as the Clean Air Act and associated regulations with labels such as "job killing," they disregard the high monetary cost of inaction and who is paying those costs. Consumers are already paying for the less-publicized costs of toxic air quality: mounting health expenses, lost days of school to care of sick kids, poor performance for lead exposed kids who have learning challenges, lost days of work due to illness and trips to take children to the doctor, etc.
Currently, regulations under the Clean Air Act, which aim to reduce pollution in our air, are under attack by polluters. Certain legislative initiatives in Congress are aimed at blocking the functionality of the Clean Air Act. These rules are essential for sensible reductions in air pollution. Supporting these rules would save thousands of lives and prevent heart attacks, hospitalizations, and emergency room visits in the three-state area every year.
A constituent at an NAACP town hall meeting stated that, "The American way of life is based on equal opportunity and there is nothing more basic than having the opportunity to breathe clean air. Clean air means a fair shot at a healthy upbringing. Healthy families have better school attendance, better job performance and a greater quality of life. If basic American values of equal opportunity are to persist, the EPA must take aggressive action to reduce mercury and air toxics in African American and Latino communities across the country. "
Opposing the implementation of the Clean Air Act and its associated regulations would limit the EPA's ability to enforce clean air standards that protect us from significant amounts of harmful air pollution. Our focus must be on retaining and strengthening safeguards which protect the health and well-being of the people living in communities affected by air pollution — more than 50 percent of the U.S. public, and disproportionately communities of color and low income.
Enough is enough. Stronger safeguards are overdue, and now is the time to implement and strengthen standards that protect our communities.
Jeanetta Williams is a former member of the NAACP national board of directors.
http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=18687074&itype=storyID
Salt Lake City Makes the ALA's Top 25 Most Polluted Cities List
Kennecott causes one-third of air pollution :The same must be said about its economic impact. Although RTK pays substantial taxes and wages, its contribution to disease, health care costs and the suppression of "cleaner" economic development all take money out of your wallet, Studies of mining operations in other parts of the country, looking at both sides of the equation, suggest that RTK, overall, is actually an economic liability.The Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club joined Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, Utah Moms for Clean Air and WildEarth Guardians as plaintiffs in suing RTK for violating the federal Clean Air Act.
Published February 29, 2012 1:01 am
In a Feb. 17 op-ed for The Tribune, "Kennecott and inversions," Kennecott senior environmental engineer Cassady Kristensen wrote that her job is to "implement solutions that help our community breathe cleaner air." Apparently those "solutions" involve spinning the facts rather than actually cleaning the air.
Kristensen depicts clean air advocates as making false claims that Rio Tinto/Kennecott is the primary source of inversion pollution. We've never made that claim. She created a straw man to advance an argument that RTK isn't really much of a contributor to our pollution problem.
It's about the huge levels of pollutants the mining concern puts into our air throughout the year, not just during inversions. It's also about the widespread heavy metal contamination of our air, water, and soil from Kennecott's past and present operations.
According to data from the Utah Division of Air Quality, RTK is by far the largest single source of air pollution along the Wasatch Front, emitting 10 times more pollution overall than the next largest industrial source, the Chevron refinery. Inversions or no inversions, the raw data simply show that RTK is responsible for nearly one-third of the overall pollution released into the air over Salt Lake County.
The company is now permitted to expand the mine an additional 32 percent, an expansion of 73 percent since 1994, which equates to an increase in annual mining from 150 million to 260 million tons. We challenge Kristensen to provide details backing her claim that mining an additional 110 million tons of rock per year will not result in increased air pollution.
RTK is one of 1,600 "high priority" pollution violators in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The company self-reports 6,235 pounds of lead emissions a year from its smelter smokestack alone. The federal Centers for Disease Control reports that no amount of lead is safe, and every bit of exposure permanently harms the brains of infants and children. A potpourri of toxic and deadly heavy metals — lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury — from RTK's operations constantly descends upon Salt Lake County. Heavy metals do not degrade, so our exposure to them becomes cumulatively worse every year.
RTK's enormous environmental and public health footprint must be viewed in its totality, not piecemeal, as the company would prefer. The same must be said about its economic impact. Although RTK pays substantial taxes and wages, its contribution to disease, health care costs and the suppression of "cleaner" economic development all take money out of your wallet.
Studies of mining operations in other parts of the country, looking at both sides of the equation, suggest that RTK, overall, is actually an economic liability.
The Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club joined Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, Utah Moms for Clean Air and WildEarth Guardians as plaintiffs in suing RTK for violating the federal Clean Air Act. The reason is very simple. The increased mining activity that was green-lighted by the Division of Air Quality would increase RTK's overall emissions of nitrogen oxides by 54 percent and its particulate emissions by 66 percent. That's according to the company's own documents.
This violates the Clean Air Act, a critical firewall in protecting the health of Utah citizens from air pollution and corporate abuse. Our intent going forward is to hold RTK accountable to the law.
Marion Klaus is chair of the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club and lives in Park City; Dan Mayhew is vice-chair of the Utah chapter and its conservation chair. He lives in Salt Lake City.
http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=19788465&itype=storyID
Utah Doctors Take On Giant Mining Operation:
The Utah Physicians for Healthy Environment estimate that the mortality, health and environmental costs to the community from RTK pollution is between $2 billion and $4 billion, more than the value of the wages and taxes that they pay.Frederick Douglass, the19th-century civil rights leader, said, "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them." Let it be known that the people in Utah will no longer "quietly submit" to more pollution, more deaths, shortened life spans and poorer health to fatten the wallets in the London boardroom of Rio Tinto. We are going to "take back" the air we breathe.
Late December a group of doctors and environmental groups in Salt Lake City, Utah, announced a lawsuit against the third-largest mining corporation in the world, Rio Tinto, for violating the Clean Air Act in Utah. This is likely the first time ever that physicians have sued industry for harming public health.
Air pollution causes between 1,000 and 2,000 premature deaths every year in Utah.
(1) Moreover, medical research in the last ten years has firmly established that air pollution causes the same broad array of diseases well known to result from first- and secondhand cigarette smoke - strokes, heart attacks, high blood pressure, virtually every kind of lung disease, neurologic diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, loss of intelligence, chromosomal damage, higher rates of diabetes, obesity, adverse birth outcomes, and various cancers such as lung cancer, breast cancer and leukemia. (2-12)
Most of Utah's cities are in violation of many of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) national air quality standards, and for several days during a typical winter, Utah is plagued by the worst air pollution in the country. The American Lung Association routinely gives Utah's largest cities an "F" for our air quality. Last February, Forbes Magazine, hardly a cheerleader for excessive environmental protection, rated Salt Lake City as the ninth most toxic city in the country, and the biggest contributor to that ranking was the mining and smelting operations at the Bingham Canyon mine, run by London-based mining conglomerate Rio Tinto/Kennecott (RTK). (13)
This is the world's largest open-pit mine and has created the largest mining-related water pollution problem in the world. The mine is located on the western doorstep of Salt Lake City, home to 1.8 million people. There is no comparable juxtaposition of an enormous mining operation this close to such a large urban center. RTK's mine and smelter operations account for 30 percent of the particulate matter emitted into the atmosphere over Salt Lake County (14), making it by far the largest source of industrial pollution in the urban areas of Utah.
The smelting operations and fugitive dust from the 1,100-foot-high waste rock piles and tailings ponds are a constant source of highly toxic heavy metal contamination - lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium - to the air, water and soil of Utah's largest city. The mining industry watchdog Earthworks states that before the most recently approved expansion, RTK was releasing 695 million pounds of toxic material into the Salt Lake City environment every year. (15)
Because heavy metals do not degrade, are not combustible and cannot be destroyed, that heavy metal toxicity steadily increases year after year, as it has for the over 100 years of the mine's operation. Despite this extreme burden on public health, predictably, the Utah Division of Air Quality recently issued a permit for RTK to expand their operations by 32 percent, which will make their pollution emissions even worse.
RTK is making record profits - $15 billion last year. In August, Chairman of the Board Jan du Plessis bragged, "Rio Tinto has produced another set of record-breaking results." Du Plessis apparently specializes in delivering pollution: he is also chairman of the board of British American Tobacco. Tom Albanese, Rio Tinto's CEO, who made almost $8.5 million in compensation last year, recently lamented, "[Rio Tinto must do] a better job at managing the curse of resource nationalism ... and the activism of stakeholder engagement." (16) Let me translate that for you: local people throughout the world are tired of being exploited for profit, they're starting to stand up for themselves and Rio Tinto doesn't like it. Utah citizens tired of RTK's pollution would be considered part of that "curse" to Rio Tinto executives.
This issue is simple: RTK can well afford to clean up, but they won't, and no one is making them. Their contribution to our pollution is hurting all the residents of Salt Lake City and adding to the premature death total mentioned above. For environmental and public health advocates, RTK pursuing and receiving an approval to expand was the last straw.
If the core tenet of the Occupy movement is that corporations and the 1 percent manipulate every level of government to serve their profit-driven agendas and simultaneously disregard - if not openly undermine - the interests of the 99 percent, then there is no better example than RTK's operation of Utah's Bingham Canyon mine.
The Utah Physicians for Healthy Environment estimate that the mortality, health and environmental costs to the community from RTK pollution is between $2 billion and $4 billion, more than the value of the wages and taxes that they pay. Nonetheless, a massive public relations budget allows RTK to heavily advertise themselves as "job providers" and take virtually no responsibility for the various environmental and health consequences of their operations.
Frederick Douglass, the19th-century civil rights leader, said, "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."
Let it be known that the people in Utah will no longer "quietly submit" to more pollution, more deaths, shortened life spans and poorer health to fatten the wallets in the London boardroom of Rio Tinto.
We are going to "take back" the air we breathe.
References
1. Calculation by the Utah Physicians for Healthy Environment using the formula published by the American Heart Association.
Brook R, Rajagopalan S, Pope CA, Brook J, Bhatnagar A, et al. AHA Scientific Statement: Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease; An Update to the Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association. Circulation. 2010;121:2331-2378.
2. Peters, A. Air Quality and Cardiovascular Health: Smoke and Pollution Matter. Circulation. 2009: 120:924-927
3. Eugenia E. Calle and Michael J. Thun C. Arden Pope, III, Richard T. Burnett, Daniel Krewski, Michael Jerrett, Yuanli Shi. Circulation. 2009;120:941-948. Cardiovascular Mortality and Exposure to Airbourne Fine Particulate Matter and Cigarette Smoke.
4. Bocskay K, Tang D, Orjuela M, et al. Chromosomal Aberrations in Cord Blood Are Associated with Prenatal Exposure to Carcinogenic Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. Cancer Epidem Biomarkers and Prev. Vol. 14, 506-511, Feb 2005
5. Perera F, Tang D, Tu Y, Biomarkers in Maternal and Newborn Blood Indicate Heightened Fetal Susceptibility to Procarcinogenic DNA Damage. Environ Health Persp Vol 112 Number 10 July 2004
6. Gauderman WJ, Gilliland GF, Vora H, et al. Association between Air Pollution and Lung Function Growth in Southern California Children: results from a second cohort. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2002;166:76-84.
7. Gauderman WJ, Gilliland GF, Vora H, et al. The effect of air pollution on lung development from 10 to 18 years of age. NEJM 2004;351:1057-67.
8. van den Hooven EH, de Kluizenaar Y, Pierik FH, Hofman A, van Ratingen SW, Zandveld PY, Mackenbach JP, Steegers EA, Miedema HM, Jaddoe VW. Air Pollution, Blood Pressure, and the Risk of Hypertensive Complications During Pregnancy: The Generation R Study. Hypertension. 2011 Jan 10. [Epub ahead of print]
9. Raaschou-Nielsen O, Andersen Z, Hvidberg M, Jensen SS, Ketzel M, Sørensen M, Loft S, Overvad K, Tjønneland A. Lung Cancer Incidence and Long-Term Exposure to Air Pollution from Traffic. Environ Health Perspect. 2011 Jan 12. [Epub ahead of print]
10. Pearson J, Bachireddy C, Shyamprasad S, Goldfine A, Brownstein J. Association Between Fine Particulate Matter and Diabetes Prevalence in the U.S.Diabetes Care October 2010 33:2196-2201; published ahead of print July 13, 2010, doi:10.2337/dc10-0698
11. Crouse DL, Goldberg MS, Ross NA, Chen H, Labrèche F 2010. Postmenopausal Breast Cancer Is Associated with Exposure to Traffic-Related Air Pollution in Montreal, Canada: A Case–Control Study. Environ Health Perspect 118:1578-1583. doi:10.1289/ehp.1002221
12. Pearson RL, Wachtel H, Ebi KL. Distance-weighted traffic density in proximity to a home is a risk factor for leukemia and other childhood cancers. J Air Waste Manag Assoc 50(2):175-180.
13. http://www.forbes.com/2011/02/28/most-toxic-cities-personal-finance.html
14. Calculations by the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment based on inventory
data at the Utah Division of Air Quality.
15. http://www.earthworksaction.org/issues/detail/toxics_release_inventory_what_is_it
16. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23934614-rio-tinto-boss-attacks-governments-for-interfering-in-mining.do
Air Board Protesters: 'We breathe the pollution you permit' : members believe state environmental officials are too cozy with industry and they won't do more to clean up the air.
Published December 8, 2011 10:24 am
Peaceful Uprising briefly took over the Utah Air Quality Board meeting Wednesday.
"Division of Air Quality Board, we breathe the pollution you permit," they chanted as surprised board members looked on.
"We envision a cleaner community, but you actively prevent it. "We demand that this board set stricter standards for pollution permit approvals."
Fruhwirth said the groups mounted Wednesday's action in part because members believe state environmental officials are too cozy with industry and they won't do more to clean up the air.
Leaders of both groups also said their members are steamed that the board agreed to lift a federal pollution cap to allow Kennecott Utah Copper to expand its operations in western Salt Lake County — and, in their view — pump more pollution into the valley's sometimes foul wintertime air.
http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=18409226&itype=storyID
Published December 8, 2011 10:24 am
Peaceful Uprising briefly took over the Utah Air Quality Board meeting Wednesday.
"Division of Air Quality Board, we breathe the pollution you permit," they chanted as surprised board members looked on.
"We envision a cleaner community, but you actively prevent it. "We demand that this board set stricter standards for pollution permit approvals."
Fruhwirth said the groups mounted Wednesday's action in part because members believe state environmental officials are too cozy with industry and they won't do more to clean up the air.
Leaders of both groups also said their members are steamed that the board agreed to lift a federal pollution cap to allow Kennecott Utah Copper to expand its operations in western Salt Lake County — and, in their view — pump more pollution into the valley's sometimes foul wintertime air.
http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=18409226&itype=storyID
Sinclair Oil Corp. will pay a $3.8 million fine for two of its Wyoming refineries exceeding air pollution limits that had been established three years earlier. The company also agreed to spend about $10.5 million on additional pollution control equipment at its refineries in Casper and Sinclair, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Photo by Scott Kane / Wyoming Outdoor Council
Support right to breathe clean air :
As the NAACP state conference president for Idaho, Nevada and Utah states, Jeanetta Williams "The American way of life is based on equal opportunity and there is nothing more basic than having the opportunity to breathe clean air. Clean air means a fair shot at a healthy upbringing
By Jeanetta Williams
As the NAACP state conference president for Idaho, Nevada and Utah, I am responsible for hearing and addressing all types of concerns. In these states far too many of the complaints I hear relate to deprivation of what should be a basic human right for all, the right to breathe clean air.
When opponents denounce safeguards against pollution, such as the Clean Air Act and associated regulations with labels such as "job killing," they disregard the high monetary cost of inaction and who is paying those costs. Consumers are already paying for the less-publicized costs of toxic air quality: mounting health expenses, lost days of school to care of sick kids, poor performance for lead exposed kids who have learning challenges, lost days of work due to illness and trips to take children to the doctor, etc.
Currently, regulations under the Clean Air Act, which aim to reduce pollution in our air, are under attack by polluters. Certain legislative initiatives in Congress are aimed at blocking the functionality of the Clean Air Act. These rules are essential for sensible reductions in air pollution. Supporting these rules would save thousands of lives and prevent heart attacks, hospitalizations, and emergency room visits in the three-state area every year.
A constituent at an NAACP town hall meeting stated that, "The American way of life is based on equal opportunity and there is nothing more basic than having the opportunity to breathe clean air. Clean air means a fair shot at a healthy upbringing. Healthy families have better school attendance, better job performance and a greater quality of life. If basic American values of equal opportunity are to persist, the EPA must take aggressive action to reduce mercury and air toxics in African American and Latino communities across the country. "
Opposing the implementation of the Clean Air Act and its associated regulations would limit the EPA's ability to enforce clean air standards that protect us from significant amounts of harmful air pollution. Our focus must be on retaining and strengthening safeguards which protect the health and well-being of the people living in communities affected by air pollution — more than 50 percent of the U.S. public, and disproportionately communities of color and low income.
Enough is enough. Stronger safeguards are overdue, and now is the time to implement and strengthen standards that protect our communities.
Jeanetta Williams is a former member of the NAACP national board of directors.
http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=18687074&itype=storyID
In rural Wyoming, residents
adjust to air : ."Last year we had some bad spells and my eyes hurt, like I had a sunburn," said Vivian Watts, a waitress at Stockman's Restaurant, a wood- and antler-lined place on Pinedale's main drag. "This time, I've stayed inside."
PINEDALE, Wyo. — Strong sun, not too much wind, a good thick snow pack: Sounds like a perfect late winter's day in a remote rural Western valley rimmed by snaggle-topped mountains.But that has also been the stage for the worst ozone pollution event here in three years — in one of the places people might least expect. The nearest metropolis, Salt Lake City, is 180 miles away, and the usual smog suspects — cars, trucks, factories, people in general — are few and far between in a county of only 8,800 residents.State environmental officials declared another ozone alert here Wednesday, the second in less than a week, anticipating that air pollution would settle in starting Thursday."It's like a pot, with all the mountain ranges around it, and the inversion is like a lid," said Keith Guille, a spokesman for the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, describing the conditions for cooking pollutants and creating the atmospheric inversion that locks them in place.The upper Green River basin in southwest Wyoming has polluted-air days for a combination of reasons: its geography, in a valley at 7,000 feet; its typical winter weather that produces sun on highly reflective snow; and its economy, heavily based on natural gas drilling, which scientists say produces smog's underlying chemical base."
."Last year we had some bad spells and my eyes hurt, like I had a sunburn," said Vivian Watts, a waitress at Stockman's Restaurant, a wood- and antler-lined place on Pinedale's main drag. "This time, I've stayed inside."
http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=14014042&itype=storyID
PINEDALE, Wyo. — Strong sun, not too much wind, a good thick snow pack: Sounds like a perfect late winter's day in a remote rural Western valley rimmed by snaggle-topped mountains.But that has also been the stage for the worst ozone pollution event here in three years — in one of the places people might least expect. The nearest metropolis, Salt Lake City, is 180 miles away, and the usual smog suspects — cars, trucks, factories, people in general — are few and far between in a county of only 8,800 residents.State environmental officials declared another ozone alert here Wednesday, the second in less than a week, anticipating that air pollution would settle in starting Thursday."It's like a pot, with all the mountain ranges around it, and the inversion is like a lid," said Keith Guille, a spokesman for the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, describing the conditions for cooking pollutants and creating the atmospheric inversion that locks them in place.The upper Green River basin in southwest Wyoming has polluted-air days for a combination of reasons: its geography, in a valley at 7,000 feet; its typical winter weather that produces sun on highly reflective snow; and its economy, heavily based on natural gas drilling, which scientists say produces smog's underlying chemical base."
."Last year we had some bad spells and my eyes hurt, like I had a sunburn," said Vivian Watts, a waitress at Stockman's Restaurant, a wood- and antler-lined place on Pinedale's main drag. "This time, I've stayed inside."
http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=14014042&itype=storyID
