Opinion

A tiny fraction

Anniston incinerator fails test for PCB pollution

03/09/04

The results are in, and they are disappointing, if not cause for unnecessary alarm. Despite all expectations and assurances to the contrary, the chemical weapons incinerator in Anniston belched out too many PCBs during trial burns last November.

The news of the incinerator's failed pollution test became public last week. Fortunately, the margin of failure was exceedingly small.

The incinerator's permit requires that the incinerator destroy 99.9999 percent of the PCBs that are in the rockets being burned there. It failed three of four tests; in the worst of the three, the incinerator had destroyed 99.99958 percent of the PCBs.

In other words, the Anniston incinerator fell short of standards by only the tiniest of tiniest fractions.

The site manager over the incinerator, Tim Garrett, called the permit requirements a "mathematical impossibility."

"We're already at the edge of the ability of the analytical equipment," he said. "We're as low as man can go. You're already putting nothing in, and you're trying to measure part of nothing."

The standard, though, is the same for all industries and incinerators. Presumably, there is some scientific basis for the standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. If so, there is a reasonable expectation that the standard can be and will be met.

It is especially important in Anniston, which is the most populated area in the country with a chemical weapons incinerator and is already the nation's most PCB-contaminated community because of industrial pollution. The people who live there don't deserve to be subjected to even more health hazards.

Incinerator officials are rightly working to find out why the PCB emissions are too high, and they're awaiting more tests to be conducted this month.

The difference between success and failure is a minute amount of PCBs, so minute that it may not be considered a significant threat to public health. But that minute amount is still significant: It's the difference between passing and failing, the difference between meeting environmental safety standards or not meeting them.