Toxics

Cities are facing the challenge of addressing toxic legacies of an industrial past and current toxic emissions. Toxic chemicals have been linked to birth defects, brain damage, and cancer. Lead exposure represents another danger, particularly in the older housing stock where lower income families are most able to find affordable housing. Right to know laws require that companies report their releases of toxic chemicals, but over the past five years many companies have used the 9/11 terrorist attacks and attendant security concerns to weaken reporting requirements.

Waste

High resource consumption patterns – side effects of a rising quality of life -- have had an unintended and negative impact on the urban environment: the generation of waste far beyond the handling capacities of urban governments and agencies. The problem of waste and the management of waste are marked by high social costs. The poorer strata of the American populace often live in areas where the pollution levels are worst in part because of the tendency for polluting industries, waste dumps and waste management facilities to concentrate in low-income neighborhoods. One in four Americans lives within four miles of a toxic waste site. In recent years, federal funding for cleaning up toxic waste sites (known as Superfund sites) has dropped dramatically, and the rate of cleanup has slowed as well.

Resources

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA)
     http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/osw/hazwaste.htm
     http://www.epa.gov/superfund/

Toxic Release Inventory
     http://www.epa.gov/tri/

Zero Waste America
     http://www.zerowasteamerica.org/WhatIsWaste.htm

The Environmental Defense Scorecard
     http://www.scorecard.org

U.S. Public Interest Research Group
     http://www.uspirg.org

OMB Watch
     http://www.ombwatch.org