National Academy tells EPA that a widespread pollutant is a human carcinogen. EPA says it will see for itself, pronto.
The most commonly found industrial pollutant in drinking water, trichloroethylene or TCE, is a potential cause of cancer in people, a 379-page report from the National Research Council declares. The solvent was once widely used for dry cleaning and also by the aerospace industry and military for degreasing, with little control over its disposal. It has been under suspicion at the EPA for a while. The Los Angeles Times’s Ralph Vartabedian reports “vast tracts” of groundwater in the Los Angeles basin contain measurable traces of TCE. He quotes a former Marine who blames his daughter’s death from cancer on exposure to TCE at a military base.
The NRC review was at the request of the Bush administration. It came after federal agencies that have large numbers of contaminated sites, such as the Pentagon and NASA, blocked an effort by the EPA in 2001 to increase its estimate of the chemical’s hazards. If the EPA now goes ahead, that may force more aggressive and costly decontamination of polluted government and industrial facilities. The material commonly was allowed to seep directly into the ground. The pic shows an investigation of a contaminated site at Edwards Air Force Base.
Smaller outlets who did the story tended to localize it. The Arizona Daily Star’s Dan Sorenson reports on outcomes by local lawsuits over illnesses possibly associated with TCE, and that Arizona’s environmental agency already was planning to tighten standards on its own.
Stories:
Los Angeles Times Ralph Vartabedian; AP John Heilprin; Arizona Daily Star Dan Sorenson; Jacksonville Daily News Joe Miller; Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Upland CA) Andrea Bennett;
Grist for the Mill: National Academies of Science Press Release;
July 28th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
As The Tracker notes, Vartabedian quotes a parent who believes his daughter’s fatal cancer was caused by drinking TCE. Most parents, of course, are poor at cancer etiology, especially when it’s their child who is stricken.
So why does he quote the parent? It adds nothing useful to the story.
Is this an example of that quaint demand of editors that victims be seen and heard in stories, even if the only evidence that they are victims is in their own heads?