How Toxic is your County?

Hey guys!  A colleague of mine passed on an interesting link to me the other day.  You can input your zip code and it shows you a review of how toxic your little county is!  Is ignorance bliss?  Or would you rather know, and try to change something?  The choice is yours :) 

http://scorecard.goodguide.com/index.tcl

I was sad, but not surprised, to learn I live in a city that "ranked among the dirtiest/worst 10% of all counties in the U.S. in terms of total environmental releases" in 2002, and my guess is it hasn't gotten a whole lot better.  And we're the #9 Worst County in the state.  But at least we're not so high when it comes to dumped toxic waste... we're in the worst 40% though... still worse than average. 

As for air?  Well, here's an email I received from the City health department last year:

Take a deep breath!  Notice anything different?  For the first time in well over a decade, Cincinnatians are breathing air that meets the Federal Government’s Air Quality Standards for ozone... New, even-stricter federal ozone regulations take effect in 2011.  So enjoy that breath of federally approved air.  It may not last long.

 Hm, well, I guess that's something!  I don't tend to think federal regulations are all that strong, but hopefully they're getting closer!!

 

From Chris Madden website

And water?  Heh, well, when my friend visited from Washington with it's beautiful crystalline blue waters... she was disgusted by the murky brown that runs though the state!  Yep, that lovely Ohio River that I drive past every day for work - brown, dirty, and smells awful when it floods up closer to the roads!  So, no suprise that we're averaging in the top 10% for worst water, too!  As the semi-joking saying here goes: stay out of the rivers, or you may come out on the other side with an extra eyeball!

You can look at total environmental releases, and then look at the individual toxins ofwhat your county is dumping into the air, water, land, animals, etc.

How does your home town look?