{"id":1085,"date":"2023-02-27T10:40:34","date_gmt":"2023-02-27T15:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/?p=1085"},"modified":"2023-02-27T10:58:51","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T15:58:51","slug":"editorial-the-epa-has-failed-kingsbury-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/education\/editorial-the-epa-has-failed-kingsbury-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Editorial: The EPA failed residents of Kingsbury, New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has told<\/a> residents of the town of Kingsbury, Washington County, that it’s shoring up oversight after an elevated risk of cancer was found for those working and living near a local industrial plant. The facility, Sterigenics, uses the chemical ethylene oxide to sterilize medical devices.<\/p>\n

Sterigenics\u2019 parent company notes that it meets or exceeds all regulatory standards. But as the EPA has learned more about the risks of ethylene oxide \u2014 linked to blood and breast cancers \u2014 it is taking a closer look at how these facilities operate.<\/p>\n

\n

To residents of Cohoes, this may all sound familiar.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where, a few years back, the aggregate plant Norlite was fueling its incinerators with firefighting foam containing toxic PFAS chemicals without testing whether it was safe to do so \u2014 and leaving the EPA and the state Department of Environmental Conservation playing catch-up. (New York has since banned PFAS incineration.)<\/p>\n

At the time, Norlite noted that the foam compounds were not considered hazardous waste or pollutants under federal regulations, and they were under no obligation<\/a> to disclose their incineration to the city. PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are associated with illnesses such as thyroid disorders and cancer. Amid continuing concerns over dust contamination from Norlite, residents are being relocated from one nearby public housing complex.<\/p>\n

The common thread here: The community has a right to know what\u2019s happening inside the industrial plant next door, and regulators need to do a much better job of protecting them.”<\/p>\n

Read more from the Times-Union editorial board here:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.timesunion.com\/opinion\/article\/editorial-failure-protect-17805399.php<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has told residents of the town of Kingsbury, Washington County, that it’s shoring up oversight after an elevated risk of cancer was found for those working and living near a local industrial plant. The facility, Sterigenics, uses the chemical ethylene oxide to sterilize medical devices. Sterigenics\u2019 parent company notes that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1085"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1087,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1085\/revisions\/1087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}