EPA unlikely to meet deadline for dioxin report

A federal study of a potent toxin that has contaminated Michigan’s largest watershed may not be done by the end of the year as promised.

The director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Center for Environmental Assessment, Peter Preuss, has reportedly warned that EPA is “really unlikely” to meet the December 2010 deadline set by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson for completing the agency’s assessment of dioxin.

Last year as EPA assumed responsibility for overseeing the cleanup of dioxin contamination that stretches 52 miles downstream from Dow Chemical’s Midland facility, Jackson promised that the agency would redouble its efforts to protect the public from dioxin by finishing its long-delayed official assessment of the chemical.

Dioxin is a byproduct of combustion and of the chemical manufacturing process that accumulates in the fat of people who are exposed to it. A draft version of EPA’s dioxin assessment indicates that that most Americans are already being exposed to health-damaging levels of the toxin through their diets.

If the report is finalized it could be used by EPA to set more restrictive regulations for the chemical, but the chemical industry has successfully fought the completion of the report by continually arguing for further study. According to EPA protocols the agency’s Science Advisory Board must finish a review of the dioxin assessment before it can be released and this review involves evaluation of voluminous concerns brought by industry groups.

Michelle Hurd Riddick of the Lone Tree Council said that dioxin cleanup efforts in Saginaw, Bay City and Midland have been hampered by lack of clear and current dioxin information from EPA.

In an online environmental issues forum she wrote:

Last year EPA took over the lead from the DEQ after more than a decade. Many were skeptical and remain so for many reasons—the one bit of consolation was the new administration’s commitment to science and the release of the Dioxin Reassessment. At a minimum there was hope that science and not politics would finally guide public health protection and an eventual cleanup of Dow’s huge dioxin contamination.

That appears less certain. Dow Chemical, [General Electric], [American Chemistry Council] along with dozens of other industry lobbyists is working over time to stop the release of the dioxin reassessment. Challenging the science, insisting on absolutes and throwing every extraneous issue on the table, industry could easily prevail.