Tell the truth the whole truth however.....?

Question

I went onto my web page and there was an article about flood-watch which i went to EA website to see if it was near us then i got distracted and saw the air quality link...opened the link and a map came up to what industries produce and where and gives you all the garble of what is spewing out of these companies,however to see what the gas or substance does to land-air-water and man"sorry no info available"...surely us residents have the right to know whats going on in our "back garden" and does this privacy data act include this, i think i might have opened a can of worms here.

Answer 1

I am not sure of exactly what site you are talking about but if I follow you correctly, you want to know why the site doesn't tell you what these chemicals do. The simple, and frightening, answer could be that nobody knows. It is one thing to test the effects of a single chemical in a laboratory but when there is a cocktail of varying gases in the environment over a long period the more subtle chronic effects are unpredictable.

Answer 2

If you're in the US, then yes, you have a right to know what every company anywhere puts out at any time. EPCRA (Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act) is the law you're interested in.

I'm not sure where you were looking, but try researching the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) on EPA's website. It's a section of EPCRA that requires the industry to report what has been released. EPA's website should have an updated list provided by the company detailing amounts released and where it was released.

If for some reason it's not listed, try calling your local health department or environmental protection department to find out why. It could be an oversight, or maybe the company you're researching in particular doesn't release anything that needs to be regulated by law.

Answer 3

It is hard to understand your paragraph.  Could you include some relevant links?

Answer 4

You hit the nail on the head, we are very limited in what we monitor and the companies that are polluting spend a lot of money to keep it that way. Cities don't want the information out there either, think about it, if there was a wonderful data base that showed what was being spewed into our environment, people would check it our before moving to a city or taking a vacation. Cities want there pollution kept a secret for financial reasons.

Technically you can probably hunt down the information, but it would likely be inaccutate or out or date. People prefer to live in denial.