EPA is abdicating its mission

While we all are struggling with the fear, confusion and frustration surrounding the coronavirus, the federal government agency whose mission is to protect human health and the environment (EPA) has notified companies that they do not need to report how much they pollute.

The EPA's mandate is to ensure that Americans have clean air, land and water based on best scientific information. Federal laws protecting human health and the environment are required to be administered and enforced fairly by the EPA. However, a mid-March notice of enforcement policy from the EPA allows companies to stop critical health and safety monitoring. This policy applies to every industry in the country.

Within the Chicagoland area, many communities are already impacted by dangerous chemicals, such as ethylene oxide, and air, land and water pollution caused by coal plants, coal ash pits and illegally released contaminants into the waters of the Great Lakes. All communities are negatively impacted, but particularly communities of color who suffer higher rates of asthma and respiratory illnesses.

Why would the EPA allow dangerous contaminants to go unmonitored and even released, when the best scientific information indicates that compromised persons are at a greater risk for illness or death from a circulating virus which attacks the respiratory system?

We all should have a feeling of outrage that individuals and their families are "on their own" to protect themselves from unmonitored and illegal acts of pollution. As an advanced society that expects federal agencies to follow their legal mandates, this messaging from the EPA is total abdication of their mission to protect the public and the environment in which we all live.

Our communities expect that the EPA and the ILEPA perform their mandate to the highest standards and fulfill their legal, ethical and moral responsibility to all of us.

Laura Davis

Inverness