What's Polluting Colorado's Air? If You Plan To Move Here You Owe It To Yourself To Know

Top: Main air pollution locations in the state of Colorado. Bottom the top 10 greenhouse gas emitters projected through 2030.

As my respiratory problems have grown increasingly worse over the past five years, I found this information from a Denver Post expose (January 19, p. 1A), e.g.   
 

What's polluting Colorado's air? 125 million tons a year of heat ...

Excerpt:

"Effects of fossil fuels Fossil fuels producers in Colorado — the expanding oil and gas industry that runs more than 53,000 wells around the state along with processing facilities, storage and pipelines — have emerged collectively as a major polluter, emitting about 15.6 million tons a year, state records show"

to be especially informative.   And we learn further:

"More than 125 million metric tons of hazardous and heat-trapping gases pollute Colorado’s air every year, hurting public health and accelerating warming of the planet at a time when world leaders are trying to clean up the atmosphere and fight climate change."

Watching me cough one night in a particularly spasmodic way, almost like a flu cough, Janice asked what was wrong. I mentioned a constant 'tickle' in the chest which triggered a similar cough that was most productive each morning. By that I meant coughing up thick plugs of phlegm and mucus.  Five years ago I experienced nothing like what I am dealing with currently.  What changed? Well, fracking and its incessant injection of pollutants into Colorado's air. 

As The Post article notes, the state's expanding oil and gas industry operates more than 53,000 wells across the state along with processing and storage facilities. Collectively these emit more than 15.6 million tons of pollutants per year.  These include hazardous chemicals such as: thousands of tons of sulfur dioxide, benzene, hydrogen cyanide, nitric oxide, perchloroethylene,  - as well as thousands of tons or particulates which cause heart and lung problems.   Add in 130, 670 tons a year of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and you indeed have a toxic brew.  One which now adversely affects nearly 17 percent of state residents, including me. (One reason I often kid Janice about moving back to Barbados.)

The Post expose shows:  "the top VOC polluters emit 5,376 tons a year and the top nitrogen oxide polluters emit 12, 145 tons."   Adding: "This pollution causes respiratory problems, headaches and nausea, as well as irritating the eyes, nose and throat.  VOCs also damage the liver, kidneys and central nervous system."

And to think that 19 years ago when we first moved here from Maryland, the state had pristine skies and atmosphere. Visitors like my sister-in-law Krimhilde marveled at how beautiful the setting was and how they didn't have to breathe the diesel fumes like in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.  Alas, had Krimhilde lived and visited us now she'd be appalled.    

The Post piece notes that EPA data show that Colorado joined 14 other states (North Dakota, Montana, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, South Dakota, Wyoming, Arkansas, Texas, Minnesota, Utah, Idaho and Oklahoma) where "increased overall emissions increased from 2005 through 2014."   Colorado officials also have disclosed the latest inventory shows overall air pollution peaking at around 132 million tons before closure of coal-fired power generators led to a leveling and slight decline of overall pollution.  Well, we must be thankful for small mercies as it declined to 125.7 million tons per year.   

The top twenty polluters' sites are shown in the map at top, from The Post article.  The top 20 greenhouse gas polluters include: Xcel Energy's Comanche, Craig, Pawnee, Hayden, Cherokee and Ft. St. Vrain power plants - along with a mix of other industrial sources. The latter include the Swiss-owned Holcim cement factory near Florence, and the Canadian-owned Suncor energy oil refinery north of Denver.  

 Meanwhile, the biggest VOC polluters include the crude oil pipeline company Plains Marketing (with a base in Denver) and the Suncor oil refinery. THe biggest nitrogen oxide polluters include power plants run by the Tri-State facility in Craig and Colorado Springs' Martin Drake coal plant along with multiple other oil and gas industry polluters.   

Yes, folks, the oil and gas industry is terrific for the state economy and some of the best paying jobs, as the Colorado Oil and Gas Association never ceases to tell us.  But the $64 question is whether this great fossil fuel economy will be sufficient to provide the funds to take care of all the health issues that erupt in the state's residents in the years to come.  

Think about that the next time you consider uprooting and moving to our once quality air state.

Guarding Against Cancers In the Pruitt- Wheeler Deregulated (I.e. 'Swamp critter') EPA Era

Panel from recent EDF 'Solutions' issue on avoiding chemical contaminants

The recent news (July 12) in The Denver Post that drinking water in north metro Denver - serving 50,000 residents- has been contaminated by perflourinated chemicals (PFCs) is not inspiring news - especially in the era of the swamp rats (like Scott Pruitt, and now Andrew Wheeler) controlling the EPA.  As we know the regulations on water pollution have now been massively loosened, spreading potential carcinogens far and wide. In north metro Denver, for example, the citizens - if they're not drinking bottled water- face increased risk of kidney and testicular cancer, as well as developmental damage to fetuses and liver tissue damage, this according to the Post.

An EPA warning map of high density PFC locations - before the swamp rats took over the agency - is shown below:


Meanwhile, in Fayetteville, West Virginia, the water in the area's schools still runs orange, but kids are expected to drink it. And Flint, Michigan is still trying to recover from the lead in its own water supply,    In southern Colorado we are dealing with high levels of perchlorates, the chemical in rocket fuel - and known to cause cancers of the liver, kidneys, breast and prostate.

Since the ascension of Pruitt, and now his underling Andrew Wheeler, contamination of water is going on at a frenetic clip. Especially since the Trump administration, after heavy lobbying by the chemical industry, is scaling back the way the federal government determines health and safety risks associated with the most dangerous chemicals on the market, documents from the Environmental Protection Agency show.

To get a perspective here, under a law passed by Congress during the final year of the Obama administration, the E.P.A. was required for the first time to evaluate hundreds of potentially toxic chemicals and determine if they should face new restrictions, or even be removed from the market. The chemicals include many in everyday use, such as dry-cleaning solvents, paint strippers and substances used in health and beauty products like shampoos and cosmetics.

But under pressure from Pruitt, and as it moves forward reviewing the first batch of 10 chemicals, the E.P.A. has been ordered to exclude from its calculations any potential exposure caused by the substances’ present  in the air, the ground or water, according to more than 1,500 pages of documents released last week by the agency.

Instead - in a "softball" approach,  the agency will focus on possible harm caused by direct contact with a chemical in the workplace or elsewhere.  In other words you will actually have to make direct contact with the carbon tetrachloride or 2, 4 dinitrophenylhydrazine to ascertain that it actually killed or poisoned you. 

The approach means that the improper disposal of chemicals — leading to the contamination of drinking water, for instance — will often not be a factor in deciding whether to restrict or ban them. Fracking companies,  like many here in Colorado, . can then toss out as many drums of hydrogen cyanide as they want with impunity, and no one will be the wiser.  Until people get sick - and maybe not even then.

Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, who retired last year after nearly four decades at the E.P.A., where she ran the toxic chemical unit during her last year. said flatly (ibid.):

“It is ridiculous! You can’t determine if there is an unreasonable risk without doing a comprehensive risk evaluation.”

The latest EDF (Environmental Defense Fund) Bulletin ('Solutions', Spring, 2018) , as if the preceding isn't enough, now also reports a further loosening of rules for disposal of 1,4 - dioxane, a solvent linked to liver cancer.   

The news is that while Pruitt, and now Wheeler, have been getting a lot of press attention, less has been paid to their top henchmen and a industry hired gun - Dr. Michael Dourson. He's now nominated to oversee the EPA's chemical safety office, which will mean lowering the safety rules to the minimum. According to Dr, Sarah Vogel, EDF VP for Health (op. cit., p. 9):

"He's not a person you want as EPA's top regulator of chemicals He is well known in the business as the go to guy to get your chemical blessed."

  For example, in terms of the liver cancer -causing 1,4- dioxane, Dourson has proposed (ibid.) "setting a safety level in drinking water that's 1,000 times higher than the original EPA level."  This means paint companies will be able to literally dump tons of the stuff into rivers, lakes etc.

And  if you are unlucky enough to reside near a  prime paint solvent dumping site, you will have to possibly contend with the same liver cancer that took down my youngest brother, Mike, barely 6 weeks ago.

Faced with this prospect, readers may wish to consult the table of precautions at the top, compliments of the same EDF Solutions issue.

Another highly toxic chemical for which Dourson wants the safety margins lowered is methylene chloride.  In one research paper, published  in n obscure industry journal, Dourson "lowballed the risks and called for EPA's safety standard on the chemical to be significantly loosened." (ibid.)

While many hailed the passage of the new chemical reform bill passage in 2016 a huge victory for better health and wellness in this country, we're now faced with rollbacks on multiple fronts - poisoning our water air, as well as soil.  (The bill amended a 1976 law so deeply flawed that regulators could not even ban asbestos a "notorious and deadly carcinogen."

When I related the content of my blog post to Janice, she asked: "Don't these Trumpie swamp rats realize lowering of regulations for chemicals allowed in water will just make more people sick. Send more people to hospitals for cancer and other treatments, especially those in Trump won states?"

I replied: "That is why these degenerates are racing to try to gut the ACA and also limit Medicaid access - unless those that need it are prepared to work almost an extra job!"

She screamed: "Bastards!"

But that's what things have devolved to:   more illness, more hospital treatments, more debt, more  grief and for those citizens who can least afford it. Which elicits the question: How much pain will it take before the Trump backers, voters turn against their mutant, orange ape leader and traitor? Foreclosures on family farms, businesses from his nutso tariffs?  Or  contracting stage IV  liver cancer- such as took down my brother Mike-  from exposure to chemicals in water like 1,4- dioxane, causing them to medically spend themselves into poverty.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/christopher-brauchli/80148/scott-pruitt-the-wall-street-journal-and-trumps-swamp