West Berkeley Alliance is Honing in on Pacific Steel’s “Toxic Fingerprint”
Read the West Berkeley Alliance’s press release here, or more specifics on their test results here.
Read the West Berkeley Alliance’s press release here, or more specifics on their test results here.
This is great…and not so great. There are a few inherent problems with both the testing and the press release: first, the testing does not discriminate between which metals are released by the plant, which are from the highway and which exist in a normal urban environment. Second, it doesn’t list the acceptable levels of the metals in the environment according to the EPA, with the exception of lead. Toxins exist in all urban environments. The question is how elevated is the level of toxins around PSC compared with other “normal” urban environments, and which metals can be directly and specifically attributed to PSC and not blamed on the highway. Next, of those that are directly attributable, what are their health effects on all ages within the immediate area. Then someone needs to create a health effects map of ailments suffred within the community that can be directly tied to PSC and not blamed on any other factor like genetics, diet, stress level, etc. It’s tough, but it needs to happen.
In any case, congrats to the slack hippies from WBA for finally getting some real teeth in the game.