Air-monitoring station headed to South Memphis
After weeks of questions, Shelby County Health Department leaders confirmed that the EPA has approved an air monitoring station for xAI’s Memphis Supercomputer ZIP code.
There are 14 article(s) tagged Environmental Protection Agency:
After weeks of questions, Shelby County Health Department leaders confirmed that the EPA has approved an air monitoring station for xAI’s Memphis Supercomputer ZIP code.
Because Tennessee has never regulated PFAS, it’s unknown how much of the forever chemicals are in Memphis’ drinking water.
The EPA returned to Memphis officially for the first time since last fall when the agency explained the health risks created by local EtO emissions. Representatives discussed proposals to reduce the community’s risks from the chemical.
However, it could take years for the proposed regulations, which would govern emissions of a cancer-causing chemical, to be finalized and enforced.
When a study last year looked at how much of cancer-causing chemical was seeping into the air, and potentially harming local residents, it used standards better suited to indoor air quality and workers in protective equipment.
A plume of chemical contaminants is traveling along the Ohio River at about one mile per hour and will eventually enter the Mississippi River.
By looking at the cumulative lifetime cancer risk from individual pollutants scientists can glean how much one chemical is contributing to overall risk.
The demolition of the three 400-foot-tall chimney stacks at the now-defunct Allen Fossil Plant is the final step in a four-phase plan to prepare the site for redevelopment, and repurpose the 500 acres of land it occupies in Southwest Memphis.
What’s at stake in the case is the federal jurisdiction over the nation’s most valuable natural resource: water.
“What we’re doing here is asking them to initiate those same interventions that they’re putting in their other sites across the country and not wait for the EPA,” said Memphis City Council member Jeff Warren.
The EPA included Memphis’ Sterilization Services of Tennessee on a list of high-risk facilities in August, but a pending lawsuit says the agency is moving too slowly; the Memphis City Council is also considering what actions it can take.
Residents who live near the Sterilization Services of Tennessee facility in South Memphis have a lifetime cancer risk of 100 in a million from EtO exposure, according to the EPA.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order in January 2021 representing the biggest federal commitment to environmental justice in the nation’s history. It’s intended to help communities achieve their clean energy goals and more.
A recent assessment of a local commercial sterilization facility shows elevated risk of long-term exposure to ethylene oxide, a chemical that is carcinogenic to humans through inhalation.
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