The EPA Let Companies Estimate Their Own Pollution Levels. The Real Emissions Are Far Worse.

U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works, an industrial plant that emits benzene, particulate matter and other pollutants, in Clairton, Pennsylvania, on an early morning in October when atmospheric conditions trapped air pollution close to the ground.

This story was originally published by ProPublica. For decades, noxious, cancer-causing gases poured from some of the nation’s largest industrial polluters, seeping invisibly from cracks in antiquated pipes or billowing out of smokestacks in plumes that choked the communities nearby. And for decades, the Environmental Protection Agency tracked those emissions not by monitoring the air … Continue reading The EPA Let Companies Estimate Their Own Pollution Levels. The Real Emissions Are Far Worse.