Originally published January 15 2006
AP creates map of air pollution across the U.S.
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
With federal help, the Associated Press has created an extensive map of industrial air pollution that covers every county and neighborhood in the U.S.A., and in this article, the risk factors are laid out and explained to readers who may be concerned about the healthiness of their surroundings.
A little-known government research project assigns risk scores for industrial air pollution in every square kilometer of the United States.
With help from government scientists, The Associated Press has mapped the risk scores for every neighborhood counted by the Census Bureau in 2000.
The scores were then used to compare risks between neighborhoods and to study the racial and economic status of those who breathe America's most unhealthy air.
The areas have pollution levels ranging from 19.4 to 31.7 times the national medium of ambient air quality.
Tract 401 in Rensselaer County, which covers the north end of Lansingburgh, and Tract 628 in Saratoga County, which covers southern Waterford, have pollution levels that are 21.6 and 31.6 times the national median.
In Saratoga County, tract 624, which covers west of Route 9 to the Hudson River, north of the Mohawk River, scored a pollution level 25.4 times the national median.
The nine neighborhood-size census tracts in New York state where industrial air pollution poses the most serious threat to human health either lie right beside or within a mile or two of Eastman Kodak Co.'s 1,300-acre park in Monroe County, the AP analysis of federal pollution, health and census data found.
Since 1987, when federal regulators started rating industries by pollution, air emissions at Kodak Park have plummeted 85 percent.
More than half of its 2.9 million pounds in discharges last year came not from photo-industry chemicals but from Kodak's own coal-burning power plants, said spokesman Chris Veronda.
The health risk factors used by the AP focused entirely on factories and power plants, and did not take into account the potential dangers posed by emissions from other sources, like autos, trucks and buses.
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