From: | CPEO Moderator <cpeo@cpeo.org> |
Date: | 18 Mar 2002 19:44:32 -0000 |
Reply: | cpeo-military |
Subject: | [CPEO-MEF] EPA model based on one test |
EPA model based on one test National toxic-gas cleanup depends on faulty analysis of Denver apartment By Mark Obmascik Denver Post Staff Writer Monday, March 18, 2002 - Beyond the yellow brick wall, down three carpeted steps and inside a dingy hallway stands the dark wood door of Summit Place Apartment No. 3-101. The U.S. government knocked here five years ago and concluded - somehow - that thousands of Americans were safe. This two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in southeast Denver is the only place where the Environmental Protection Agency has tried to verify the accuracy of a key government tool - the computer model that estimates whether homeowners and tenants are breathing dangerous levels of toxic gas. Regulators have used the computer model to exempt polluters from cleaning up hundreds of neighborhoods across America. In a few cases, the model did work and helped launch home decontaminations. State regulators say the model is so unreliable they won't use it. Scientists in Seattle and England found the model repeatedly underestimated the health risks of indoor air pollution. And another EPA review found model-based contamination standards in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Michigan were so lenient that they failed to protect public health up to 86 percent of the time. Despite all those doubts, EPA officials said they've field-tested their computer model just once - with a $2,400 study of Apartment 3-101. EPA administrators said the model worked there. To make it work, however, national EPA consultants assumed the Denver apartment was built atop sand. But that's not so, a top local EPA Superfund official now says. The switch made it easier for the model to appear accurate. The national EPA consultant also changed nine variables in the model that EPA typically won't let regulators alter. Does the EPA model protect public health? "I think we're doing a pretty good job," said Matt Hale, deputy director of EPA's Office of Solid Waste in Washington, D.C. "I'm not saying there's nowhere we've missed. It's an issue we need to pay more attention to." At toxic-waste sites across the country, EPA's computer model is the main way state and federal regulators decide whether industrial solvent vapors are seeping into homes and businesses at levels that make people sick. The complete article can be viewed at: http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,53%257E469362,00.html [THIS ARTICLE IS BEST VIEWED IN INTERNET EXPLORER] | |
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