St. Louis Ranks Among Most Polluted Cities in America
St. Louis, Mo., rates as one of the dirtiest cities — in the bottom 10 percent — in the United States “in terms of air releases of recognized carcinogens,” according to scorecard.org.
It pains me to have to put more horrifying news about St. Louis out to the world. If anyone not from St. Louis, my home city, thinks anything of this historic, blues-music thrumming, Gateway Arch-boasting, Stan Musial-loving, Mississippi River-guarding city, it’s likely about the city’s position in the annual “most dangerous city” rankings.
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For a moment, I’ll somewhat necessarily digress…
When it comes to those crime rankings, I point out that there are unusual circumstances that heavily skew those statistics. For example, St. Louis’s boundaries are quite constricted as at a time many decades ago the fathers of the city drew them to exclude the city from the county. It was a money thing, a power thing, a political thing, no doubt. As a result, it severely diminishes the population of the city-proper and, thus, focuses only on the high-concentration area of crime, rather than taking into account the relatively much lower crime statistics nearby that would surely dilute the danger factor.
But when it comes to this report on pollution found through scorecard.org, I think I’m stuck in the muck — mostly.
Localized Pollution Reports
Using scorecard.org, individuals can plug in a zipcode and instantly get feedback on how their city fairs in terms of air pollution. The report for St. Louis includes a list of the worst 20 companies (most offensive as toxic chemical polluters, citing 2002 statistics) in the city. Here are the top five:
Company Pounds of Pollution
Anheuser-Busch, Inc. ———— 453,220
Mallinckrodt, Inc. ————— 222,268
Sensient Colors, Inc. ———— 116,236
Sigma-Aldrich Co. ————– 98,205
Precoat Metals —————– 90,142
On a positive note for St. Louis, the 2004 rankings of cities based on toxic waste sites, has the Gateway City in the top (cleanest) 10 percent.
Scorecard’s report(s) go into much more depth than the snippet I’ve posted here. Find out about lead dangers in your city, and how many days in a year your city’s air is rated as healthy. (St. Louis’ air is good 41 percent of the time.)
Dig through the environmental justice figures, comparing the numbers as distributed (or not) across socioeconomic and racial factors. See how your water cleanliness stacks up, and how to get in touch with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, if necessary.
Photo: Adam Williams
Sorry to hear that (and not just because I’m also breathing that air). I am kind of surprised to find A-B at the top of the heap… one would think that brewing wouldn’t involve much in the way of toxic emissions, but that just shows what I know…
I’m also breathing that air. But I have to burst the bubble about our toxic waste rating. For years St. Louis companies like Monsanto used East S. Louis as their own personal dumping ground, polluting the ground something terrible. It may not be in St. Louis, but it’s certainly our fault. The issue highlights the ugly history of race, poverty, and health in the St. Louis area.
Jonathan Kozol wrote about it in Savage Inequalities: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Third_World_US/SI_Kozol_StLouis.html
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