States testing for air toxicity, questions arise over conflict of interest

State environmental officials in Louisiana and Pennsylvania have released results of short-term air monitoring for toxic chemicals near schools, and in both states officials say the tests showed no health threats.
In Pennsylvania, regulators took 12 days of air samples while a steel mill in the borough of Midland sat idle and another factory in Erie operated at 50% capacity. The tests showed "no unsafe levels of air pollutants or metals" outside schools in either city, the state Department of Environmental Protection reported.
In Baton Rouge, regulators spent four hours checking the air quality outside Wyandotte Early Childhood Center, a preschool blocks from an ExxonMobil refinery. They say the air there meets "all known health and safety standards."
Some activists question whether state regulators have any incentive to look for air quality problems, let alone find them. "They started out to prove that they didn't have a problem," activist Orr says of Louisiana officials. "Taking a single sample at a school can't be used to say things are safe 365 days a year. I don't see how they can even take the data and conclude things are safe."
That's also the fear of some environmental experts. "The states have what I think is a very obvious conflict of interest," says Al Armendariz, an environmental engineering professor who reviewed the Louisiana and Pennsylvania findings. Armendariz, a professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, says state regulators "issue the permits for the facilities ... For them to turn around now and find that there's a public health impact, that would be embarrassing."


Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2009-03-04-toxic-states_N.htm