Did you tune into CNN's special series "Toxic Towns USA" last night? I sure did. I wanted to root on our friends and allies in the town of Mossville, LA who were featured in the special one-hour program hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Among the local heroes profiled in the piece was Dorothy Felix, who has spent much of the past decade fighting to protect her community from the cancer-causing chemicals raining down upon her hometown of Mossville, a historically African-American community in southwestern Louisiana ringed by chemical plants.

This is a community where University of Texas researchers found that 99 percent of residents suffered from at least one disease or illness related to toxic chemical exposure. Further studies found blood levels of dioxin in Mossville residents rivaling those seen in workers involved in industrial accidents. The toxicologists studying these results called them some of the highest levels ever reported in the United States from an environmental exposure.

Dispersant sprayed in Gulf of Mexico

Today, the maker of a controversial dispersant used in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill declared, "We have nothing to hide." In fact, that's the headline of a New York Times story on the dispersant.

If that were true, we at Earthjustice and our clients wouldn't have to take formal action to find out what's in the dispersant. British Petroleum, which has used more than 800,000 gallons of "Corexit" to combat its oil spill, won't reveal what is in the compound. Thus, we have been forced to send a formal Freedom of Information Act request to the Environmental Protection Agency, asking for the information.

<Update: Earthjustice Vice President of Litigation Patti Goldman notes that "Nalco put out a release trying to allay concerns about the ingredients in its dispersants, but its statement raises more concerns than it answers. First, it asserts that all of the ingredients "have been determined safe and effective by the EPA." While the Food and Drug Administration makes such determinations for drugs, the Toxics Substances Control Act is so weak that it does not require that EPA make such safety findings before chemicals are allowed on the market. That is why a diverse health, environmental, and labor coalition (including Earthjustice) are calling for an overhaul of that law. Given that EPA is not in the business of declaring chemicals safe and effective, I doubt EPA would back up Nalco's claim. Second, Nalco tries to prove that Corexit ingredients are safe by pointing to their presence in cosmetics, lotions, and stain blockers. That gives me little comfort. Cosmetics and lotions often contain phthalates, which have been associated with reproductive impacts and endocrine disruption. And some stain blockers contain ingredients classified as cancer-causing or neurotoxins."> 

Last week, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) released a long-awaited discussion draft of their climate and energy bill, the American Power Act. Among the bill's big giveaways to polluters was a surprise invitation to exempt dirty old power plants from clean-up requirements for soot, smog, and toxics such as mercury.

To be clear, this attack on the Clean Air Act goes well beyond controversial waivers of EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases. It undercuts safeguards that are slated to save tens of thousands of lives every year. This sweetener for coal plants is poisonous for Americans.

Every year, soot from coal plants kills an estimated 24,000 people and causes hundreds of thousands of cases of asthma and other serious illnesses, especially in children. The vast majority of this suffering, including 90 percent of premature deaths, is preventable with the installation of available, cost-effective pollution controls. However, power companies have managed, often illegally, to keep running dirty coal plants for maximum profit.

Finally, after years of court battles to enforce the Clean Air Act, we are on the verge of a solution. The Environmental Protection Agency is poised to set protective standards that would force long overdue clean-ups. By 2020, EPA estimates that emission reductions from effective implementation of the Clean Air Act will save us $1.2 trillion per year in mortality costs alone.

Cleaning up after the TVA coal ash spill in Tennessee, December 2008. Photo: http://www.tva.gov

It's been a long time coming, but they're finally here: the EPA announced today plans to set the first ever federal safeguards for coal ash, one of America's most dangerous wastes. But what they really did was announce two plans: one good and one bad. The agency will accept public comment on both plans and then decide which to pursue.

The good plan classifies coal ash as hazardous waste, a move we've been pushing the EPA to make for some time. The agency also proposed, however, to classify coal ash as non-hazardous (the bad plan), a move that will not yield strong protections for communities and won't get at the problems associated with coal ash ponds and landfills.