WASHINGTON, DC, March 2, 2009 (ENS) – Lisa Jackson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said today that the agency will begin a new initiative to measure levels of air contamination near many schools across the country, particularly those located near large industries and in urban areas.

The $2.25 million initiative will be the first to focus on air pollution near schools. Directed by the EPA, the monitoring will be conducted by state and local governments. Some states have already begun monitoring.

“I’m a mother first, and like all parents, I want to be sure my children are breathing healthy air at school,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. “Questions have been raised about air quality around some U.S. schools, and those questions merit investigation.”

The questions Jackson refers to were raised in December 2008, by the newspaper “USA Today,” which published a ranking of the air quality around 127,800 public, private and parochial schools based on the concentrations and health hazards of chemicals likely to be in the air outside.

Using the EPA’s computer model that predicts the path of toxic chemicals released by thousands of companies, reporters spent eight months examining the impact of industrial pollution on the air outside schools. They fed into the model emissions reports filed by 20,000 industrial sites in 2005.

San Jacinto Elementary School in Deer Park, Texas, near Houston. Students at schools in this town face high levels of butadiene, a carcinogen, and other gases from petrochemical plants on the Houston Ship Channel. (Photo courtesy Deer Park Independent School District)

The analysis showed that many schools are in toxic hot spots near factories that emit hazardous amounts of toxic gases and metals.

During her confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on January 14, Jackson promised committee chair Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, that she would prepare a plan to address high pollution levels near schools as one of her top priorities after taking office.

Senator Boxer said today, “I am so pleased that EPA Administrator Jackson has announced a plan to test schools for toxic air pollution. I vowed that schools at risk would be tested when this threat to our children’s health was exposed in a recent investigation, and I asked Administrator Jackson to promise to take immediate action in her recent confirmation hearing. That promise has been kept.”

“Children are our future,” said Boxer, “and we need to ensure they have a safe and healthy one.”

Jackson said the EPA will work with states, tribes, and local communities to ensure that monitors are rapidly deployed to get high-quality data and to share the results with American families.

“EPA will work quickly to make assessments and take swift action where necessary,” Jackson said today. “Our job is to protect the American public where they live, work and play – and that certainly includes protecting schoolchildren where they learn.”

This partnership will help EPA maximize its monitoring and analytical capabilities to develop a clearer picture of any potential risks to children from toxic air pollution, Jackson said, adding, “This action is particularly critical in some low-income areas, which are sometimes disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation.”

From 1990 to 2005, emissions of air toxics in the United States declined 41 percent, according to EPA data.

But levels of air toxics can vary widely from place to place depending upon a number of factors including the amount and types of industry nearby, proximity to heavily traveled or congested roadways, and weather patterns.

The monitors will focus on chemicals that are known to cause cancer, respiratory and neurological problems in children, who are more vulnerable than adults because they are still developing. Exposures to toxic chemicals at critical periods of development can cause damage to the nervous system, reproductive organs and behavioral problems.

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HOUSTON, Texas, January 9, 2008 (ENS) – Sierra Club and Environment Texas filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal district court against Shell Oil Company and several affiliates. The groups claim that Shell has repeatedly violated the Clean Air Act at its Deer Park, Texas, oil refinery and chemical plant, resulting in the release of millions of pounds of air pollutants over the past five years, including toxic chemicals such as benzene and 1,3-butadiene.

The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring Shell to end its Clean Air Act violations. In addition, Shell faces civil penalties of up to $32,500 per day for each violation of the Clean Air Act. Shell Oil Company is an affiliate of Royal Dutch Shell, ranked by “Fortune” magazine as the third largest company in the world.

Shell’s Deer Park facility is a 1,500 acre complex located on the Houston Ship Channel in Harris County, about 20 miles east of downtown Houston. It is the nation’s eighth largest oil refinery and one of the world’s largest producers of petrochemicals.

Shell’s Deer Park refinery
(Photo credit unknown)

The facility is also the second largest source of air pollution in Harris County, which ranks among the worst in the nation in several measures of air quality.

“I live and work downwind from Shell, in Channelview. My family and my employees simply can’t afford to breathe in any more air pollution,” said Sierra Club member and small business owner Karla Land. “We have laws to protect air quality for a reason. Shell is breaking those laws and they need to be made to stop.”

The Clean Air Act contains a “citizen suit” provision that allows private citizens affected by violations of the law to bring an enforcement suit in federal court if state and federal regulators do not.

“On average of more than once a week for at least the past five years, Shell has reported that it violated its own permit limits by spewing a wide range of harmful pollutants into the air around the Deer Park plant,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas. “Because the state of Texas and the U.S. EPA have both failed to put a stop to these blatant violations, ordinary citizens are stepping up to enforce the law themselves.”

Shell’s permits contain both hourly and yearly limits on the amounts of pollutants it can emit into the atmosphere. The lawsuit alleges that equipment breakdowns, malfunctions, and other non-routine incidents at the Deer Park complex result in the release of millions of pounds of pollutants into the surrounding air, frequently in violation of legal limits.

A single such “upset” or “emission event” can result in the release of thousands of pounds of air pollutants in a matter of minutes or hours. Some emission events at Shell Deer Park have involved pollutant releases in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.

It is the first case in Texas in which citizen groups are suing to stop air emissions arising from so-called “upset” events.

According to the groups’ analysis of Shell’s own reports to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, air pollutants released during upsets at Deer Park since 2003 include:

* Over two million pounds of sulfur dioxide

* Over one million pounds of volatile organic compounds, VOCs

* Over 600,000 pounds of carbon monoxide

* Over 250,000 pounds of nitrogen oxides

* Over 90,000 pounds of benzene and 60,000 pounds of 1,3-butadiene

Nitrogen oxides and VOCs contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone, or smog, which, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, can trigger a variety of health problems including chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and congestion.

The company said Tuesday, “Shell Deer Park refining and chemical share the goal of the Sierra Club and Environment Texas to improve air quality.”

“We have a record of continuous improvement in environmental performance achieved through significant investment in emission reduction projects and heightened employee focus on preventing operational incidents,” the company said in a statement.

Shell gave examples including “a 14 percent reduction in reported benzene air emissions in 2006 compared with 2005, and a 67 percent reduction in flaring incidents from our Olefins operations between 2005 and 2007.”

“In December, we met with the law firm representing the environmental groups,” Shell said. “We are committed to an ongoing dialogue with them to discuss their concerns, our operations and the steps we are taking to further reduce emissions.”

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