March 31st, 2009 · No Comments

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

With the Environmental Protection Agency back in full action again after years of humming in neutral, things are happening, and some important beneficiaries could be America’s school children.

USA TODAY reports today that the EPA is expected to run tests of the air quality outside some 62 schools in 22 states to see whether the sites are polluted beyond healthy thresholds. (See the list of schools.)

The EPA’s sampling comes in response to a USA TODAY investigation that found many schools were located in “toxic hot spots.” The newspaper’s investigating reporters used government records to determine that some 435 schools across the nation were surrounded by air more polluted than that found at a school in Ohio which had been shut down because of its poor air quality.

“Your stories raised important questions that merit investigation and that’s what we’re doing,” EPA administrator Lisa Jackson told the paper on Monday. “We want parents to know that the places their children live, play and learn are safe.”

The testing will take place at schools in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas and several smaller cities and will cost an estimated $2.25 million.

Many of the schools identified in the USA TODAY package as being in high air pollution zones sit near busy freeways or freeway junctions, or near industrial polluters like steel foundries and cement plants. In some cases, the schools have been located in industrial zones for years; in others, they were recently sited there because no better land could be found or because the land was less expensive. Needless to say, the series pointed out that air laden with smog, heavy metals and other pollutants can be especially harmful to kids whose lungs are still developing.

And that school that was closed? It was Meredith Hitchens Elementary, in Addyston, Ohio — shut down in 2005 after the Ohio EPA found levels of carcinogens 50 times above what the state considered acceptable.

Sure there will be people who say the EPA will just be spending money for naught. Actually, there are already people saying exactly that in comments on the USA TODAY website. We Americans love to trash our federal government.

And after all, what can be done? It’s not like the U.S. could fine air polluters, say under the Clean Air Act. Or cause them to pay for dumping into the atmosphere, through a cap-and-trade or carbon tax program. Or build more public transportation, or cleaner cars, or buses with reduced diesel emissions.

Seems this one issue does raise “important questions” — dozens, or even 435, of them.

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