IG To Study EPA's Response To Historical Lead Smelter Contamination

摘要

EPA's Inspector General (IG) is launching a study of the agency's response to contamination from historical lead smelters, an effort spurred by news reports last year that EPA had failed to assess many of the more than 460 sites identified in a 2001 research paper as contributing to potentially unsafe lead levels. Following the news reports and a letter from six Democratic senators urging immediate reviews of unassessed sites, the agency crafted an August 2012 strategy for dealing with the sites. The strategy calls for identifying locations that potentially pose "an imminent and substantial threat to human health," performing screenings of every site and explaining EPA's decisions about how to address the sites to nearby residents. According to a June 6 memo from the IG office to EPA waste chief Mathy Stanislaus, the forthcoming study will look at what EPA has done to address the sites since the strategy was written and also whether the agency informed communities about potential lead contamination. The study is included in the IG's fiscal year 2013 annual plan.