Letter: Bush allowing toxic chemicals to harm us

Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2006 | 7:08 a.m.

With respect to the Las Vegas Sun's editorial concerning President Bush's blatant effort to negate the Clean Air Act ("EPA asleep at the wheel," Dec. 4), the public may not be aware that there is more of this type of activity going on in the Environmental Protection Agency.

In addition to skirting around the Clean Air Act and allowing U.S. companies to pump more and more carbon dioxide in the air and increase global warming, a nonprofit government watchdog group in Washington, D.C., called the OMB Watch, states that "Bush and his administration are silently spending their time dismantling the EPA flagship environmental tool, the Toxic Release Inventory or TRI. The TRI tracks the amount and types of toxic chemical released into the environment, stored in facilities or transferred between facilities. The purpose is to allow citizens to gain information on chemical hazards in their communities. This empowers citizens to make choices to protect their family's health and safety."

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, this EPA dismantling includes "closing its nationwide network of scientific libraries, effectively preventing EPA scientists and the public from accessing vast amounts of data and information on issues from toxicology to pollution. Several libraries have already been dismantled, with their contents either destroyed or shipped to repositories where they are uncataloged and inaccessible."

So why would Bush do this? Well, it is not because he is so concerned about communities and individuals, but rather to protect the big companies and corporations that produce these toxic chemicals. Plain and simple.

How does this affect us here in Nevada? Well, according to OMB Watch, "six of the top 10 counties in the nation that release dangerous mercury into the environment are found in Nevada."

If Bush and his administration are allowed to continue sacking the EPA, this country's health and welfare will be in dire straits before Bush, hopefully, is booted out of office.

Foster Eubank, Henderson