Posted by Noesis (anonymous) on August 1, 2009 at 11:07 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Why I totally agree that we really need to clean up our air, the B.S. from you guys is getting pretty deep. Our air has been cleaner than anytime since the early to mid 1900's.

Poor Rosie the Riveter... toiling away during world war 2 in toxic atmospheres inside factories... to bad somebody didn't tell her that she never enjoyed Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I think she would laugh at your excessive hyperbole.

Posted by Noesis (anonymous) on August 2, 2009 at 11:02 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Hey, if they were talking about air quality in relationship to black lung disease, I'd agree with them completely... the guys working in the mines pretty much all suffered from it. The contaminants in the air however give rise in the chance, not certainty to get cancer possibily somewhere down the road.

hey Neo, I see you are feeling unusually snarky... did somebody get lucky or are you grouchy because its been such a long time?

Posted by AlisonMiller (anonymous) on August 3, 2009 at 8:03 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Now, Trib, you're forgetting the inalienable rights to happiness on the part of the folks who save money (make profits) by letting dirty air slide by and ignoring the Government's commie EPA machine.

These good Americans deserve the opportunity to belch crap into the air so they can turn a profit.

It's okay, really, because according to the folks on this board most of the folks in Law Co are on welfare anyway, so Medicaid can pick up the tab when they get sick.

In an area with money (power), this sort of thing wouldn't fly, but this IS just Ironton and the surrounding area.

Posted by keta (anonymous) on August 3, 2009 at 4:21 p.m. (Suggest removal)

In an area with money (power) this sort of thing wouldn't fly

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I guess being poor and powerless makes people apathetic, because apathy seems to be the problem. Told that our air quality is among the top ten most dangerous in the country, Irontonians just seemed to say, Wow, that's terrible, what's on TV? The editorial was correct, we have the right to breathe air that won't kill us, but apparently we're too timid to insist on it.

Posted by Noesis (anonymous) on August 3, 2009 at 9:43 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Good thing Keta wasn't writing this article, I could see it now..... Millions die in Ironton every year because of poor air quality!!!

The reality is that bad air slightly increases your chances of cancer.... say for example that your chances of getting cancer are 1 in 500 through your lifetime. Exposure to these types of chemicals increase that risk... to say.... 1.00003 in 500 so.... in a population the size of Irontom, 2 or 3 people MAY get cancer later in their life. I don't know the exact numbers but I'm sure that it's probably way under 0.0001% of the population.

And Alison.... how do you know that these companies are making profits? What if they are getting by the skin of their teeth and the installation of scrubbers that costs tens of millions of dollars each won't cause these high paying jobs to shut down?

Posted by Noesis (anonymous) on August 3, 2009 at 9:51 p.m. (Suggest removal)

This is just about coal plants where they can sell their electricity:

Owners of coal-burning power plants in Pennsylvania and 27 other states are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to install emissions-scrubbing equipment that could raise consumer rates 7 percent to 10 percent and affect power availability, some experts believe. ...

Allegheny Energy Inc. is spending as much as $1.2 billion to bring its Fort Martin plant in West Virginia and Hatfield's Ferry station in Greene County up to new EPA mandated cleanliness. While $338 million and possibly all of Fort Martin's $500 million to $550 million price tag will be borne by the company's in-state customers, Hatfield's is deregulated, so Greensburg-based Allegheny Energy is betting it can recoup what could be $650 million primarily on the open market.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsbur...

Posted by keta (anonymous) on August 4, 2009 at 4:54 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I keep meaning to tell Noesis that I'm not the person who said millions die because they don't have health insurance, but I keep forgetting about it.

Posted by Noesis (anonymous) on August 4, 2009 at 9:19 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Sorry Neo forgot to paste that link... and in regards to "risks" and getting cancer, I've always been suspicious of those numbers ever since I read about how a shampoo was not allowed on the market because researchers who fed rats the equivalent of a human drinking 2 gallons of shampoo a day caused cancer after 6 months...

And here is the government risk study for PCB's... You can find most of the risk reports on the government website.... But basically what they do is find the lowest level of a chemical that will cause cancer in rats and then set the limit to something like 1,000 or 10,000 times lower than that value.

http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/CFM/recordispl...

Posted by Noesis (anonymous) on August 5, 2009 at 1:17 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Here's some more info:

What is a cancer slope factor and unit risk?
Cancer slope factors and unit risks are used to estimate the risk of cancer associated with exposure to a carcinogenic or potentially carcinogenic substance. A slope factor is an upper bound, approximating a 95% confidence limit, on the increased cancer risk from a lifetime exposure to an agent by ingestion. This estimate, usually expressed in units of proportion (of a population) affected per mg of substance/kg body weight-day, is generally reserved for use in the low-dose region of the dose-response relationship, that is, for exposures corresponding to risks less than 1 in 100. A unit risk is an upper-bound excess lifetime cancer risk estimated to result from continuous exposure to an agent at a concentration of 1 µg/L in water or 1 µg/m3 in air. The interpretation of unit risk for a substance in drinking water would be as follows: if unit risk = 2 x 10-6 per µg/L, 2 excess cancer cases (upper bound estimate) are expected to develop per 1,000,000 people if exposed daily for a lifetime to 1 µg of the substance in 1 liter of drinking water.
http://www.epa.gov/iris/help_ques.htm#wh...

Now I'm not sure the exact values but I do know that say with the example above if a certain chemical caused cancer at 1 ppb in 2 out of a million people, they would lower the allowable limit far below that... just to be on the safe side... The same goes for Chromium of the other chemicals... the federal limit may be 10 ppb in the air but it may not cause cancer (two in a million) until it hits 500 ppb.

Posted by Noesis (anonymous) on August 5, 2009 at 1:43 a.m. (Suggest removal)

OK, now that you have that background... on how the EPA sets goals way below their cancer/toxic causing levels we can discuss Bush and the outcry he caused by "lowering" standards.

Say that mercury emitted from coal plants is 400 micrograms per meter cubed (mg/m3) (I'm using these numbers as examples don't quote me on them). Say that you will have problems from mercury if you inhale anything over 200. OK, scrubbers need to be installed... 95% effecient scrubbers are $10 million each, 99% scrubbers are $50 million and 99.9% effecient scrubbers are $300 million.

Now the EPA says, to be on the safe side even though the toxic limit for 2 cancers in 1 million is 200 mg/m3, we want coal plants to emit no more than 0.2 mg/m3.

The coal companies said, wait, this isn't cost efficient, if we use the 99% effecient scrubbers, that will lower the mercury to 4 mg/m3 which is way below the threshold limit. We have already lowered it 196 mg/m3 below the limit for $50 million now you want us to spend an extra $250 million for just 4 mg/m3?

It comes down to cost effectiveness. Did it really make people safer?