Is the air toxic near hundreds of schools across the nation?

WASHINGTON — Government regulators have found high levels of manganese, a dangerous metal that can affect the brain, in the air outside a school in eastern Ohio.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials cautioned Monday that the results outside LaCroft Elementary in East Liverpool, Ohio, were still preliminary. Even so, the samples — taken this summer and fall — averaged well above the level that the government considers safe for long-term exposure.
The monitoring is part of a $2.25 million EPA effort to examine the air outside 63 schools in 22 states. The program was launched in response to a USA TODAY investigation that identified hundreds of schools across the nation where the air outside appeared to be rife with toxic industrial chemicals.


Links: http://content.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/smokestack/index
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