The Environmental Protection Agency reported to the public inaccurate information about toxic substances released from industrial facilities between 2013 and 2017, according to a rare "management alert" issued Monday by the Office of Inspector General, the agency's top watchdog. The data are often used by journalists to do stories about local environmental issues.
"The emergency letter from the EPA’s acting IG to the head of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention warned that certain information the EPA released publicly about its toxic chemical releases did not match internal EPA data," Miranda Green reports for The Hill. "Specifically, the alert referred to missing data pertaining to releases of hazardous substances from publicly owned treatment works. The government watchdog discovered that there were substantial differences between the publicly listed data on the total number of pounds of toxic chemicals released into the environment and internal data sets the EPA handed over separately to the IG."
"The emergency letter from the EPA’s acting IG to the head of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention warned that certain information the EPA released publicly about its toxic chemical releases did not match internal EPA data," Miranda Green reports for The Hill. "Specifically, the alert referred to missing data pertaining to releases of hazardous substances from publicly owned treatment works. The government watchdog discovered that there were substantial differences between the publicly listed data on the total number of pounds of toxic chemicals released into the environment and internal data sets the EPA handed over separately to the IG."
The IG discovered the issue during an audit of the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory, an annual collection of government and industry reports about carcinogenic chemical releases, and considered it concerning enough to report immediately, Green reports. The letter instructed the EPA to announce corrective action within 15 days; the EPA "developed and deployed corrections" within three business days, according to an agency spokesperson. The spokesperson also said that the "glitches" did not impact the recently released 2017 TRI National Analysis.
The EPA must take the warning seriously, since the TRI is "the most important tool guaranteeing Americans the right to know about toxic chemical pollution in their own backyards," said Ken Cook, president of nonpartisan, nonprofit research outfit the Environmental Working Group.
The EPA must take the warning seriously, since the TRI is "the most important tool guaranteeing Americans the right to know about toxic chemical pollution in their own backyards," said Ken Cook, president of nonpartisan, nonprofit research outfit the Environmental Working Group.
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