An environmental advocate in Washington, D.C., charged Wednesday that International Paper in Jay had significantly increased its air emissions of carcinogens over a four-year period.
Carcinogens are chemicals linked to cancer.
In a 1:30 p.m. telephone news conference, Eric Shaeffer, director of Environmental Integrity Project, said IP “more than doubled its toxic emissions between 2000 and 2004.”
But IP spokesman William Cohen likened EIP to “environmental extremists who take pieces of data and blow them up into emotionally charged issues.”
At issue are Toxic Release Inventory reports from 2000 to 2004.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory Web site, these reports contain information about more than 650 toxic chemicals that are being used, manufactured, treated, transported or released into the environment.
The Jay mill was one of 13 large manufacturing plants across the country identified by EIP, because each had a significant history of toxic emissions before joining the EPA’s National Environmental Performance Track program in 2001.
Performance Track, according to its Web site, is a voluntary partnership program that recognizes and rewards private and public facilities that demonstrate strong environmental performance beyond current requirements.
It was designed to augment the existing regulatory system by creating incentives for companies to achieve environmental results beyond those required by law.
Schaeffer said EIP compared the Jay mill’s air emissions of toxic pollutants from 2000, the year before it joined Performance Track, with amounts reported in 2004.
Doesn’t sound right’
Overall, the data showed a 90 percent increase in carcinogens from the Jay mill, Schaeffer said.
But, Cohen argued, that data “doesn’t sound right to us.”
It also didn’t sound right to Richard Greves, an environmental specialist with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, contacted Wednesday in Augusta.
“I didn’t think anyone had gone up” with emissions, he added.
Greves and Cohen both said they didn’t have time Wednesday to research the data that Schaeffer said EIP compared to reach its conclusion.
“To use those numbers in a comparative fashion is inappropriate. We believe that the company has made a major commitment to reduce – by greater than 40 percent – our releases between 2000 and 2005,” Cohen said.
The Toxic Release Inventory Web site stated that its data reflects chemical management practices, not exposures of the public to those chemicals.
“The data are generally not sufficient by themselves to determine exposure or to calculate potential adverse effects on human health and the environment,” the site states.
To view Schaeffer’s news release, visit www.environmentalintegrity.org/pub360.cfm.
To view the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory, visit www.epa.gov/tri/.
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