Report | October, 2009
New Report: Ashta Chemicals Still Emitting Mercury
Every year, industrial factories report to the United States Toxics Release Inventory the amounts of pollutants emitted or discharged into the environment. For years, environmentally conscientious citizens could rely on this self-reported data to better understand where toxins were entering the environment. However, in last year’s Toxics Release Inventory, Ashta Chemicals (one of the last mercury-based chlorine factories in the country) reported to the Environmental Protection Agency that the factory emitted zero pounds of mercury into the air and zero pounds of mercury into Lake Erie. Oceana performed air testing around the Ashta Chemicals factory in June 2009 to validate the figures reported to the EPA. Ashta Chemicals, he smallest of four remaining mercury-based chloralkali plants in the United States is the unmistakable source of elevated mercury air concentrations detected downwind of the plant during two days of air monitoring conducted by Oceana in June of 2009.