"EPA Starts MCHM Air Testing, But Lacks Adequate Data"

"Federal regulators on Friday unveiled a program to monitor air quality during the remaining cleanup at the Freedom Industries facility along the Elk River in Charleston, but they said their effort suffers from the same lack of data about potential health efforts of the chemical MCHM as did testing of the region’s drinking-water supply after the Jan. 9 leak.

Nearly 10 months after the leak, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials were in Charleston this week to collect air samples that would give them a “baseline” for comparison to measurements they plan to take once Freedom begins remediation work to remove soil contaminated by the coal-cleaning chemical.

The EPA program, being conducted in cooperation with state officials, comes about three weeks after some significant cleanup work — the dismantling and removal of more than a dozen chemical storage tanks — and involves an air quality “screening level” based largely on a much-criticized federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention number used for monitoring MCHM in drinking water contaminated by the leak."

Ken Ward Jr. reports for the Charleston Gazette October 17, 2014.