CIA criticises FoE pollution reporting
19 Jun 2001
The Chemical Industries Association has stated its 'disappointment' at Friends of the Earth's latest update to its Factory Watch pollution inventory. The data used in the FoE survey are out of date, and the classifications of chemicals are not accurate, the CIA claims.
Factory Watch, a feature of Friends of the Earth's website, aims to show the major polluters around the UK, giving information on emissions according to postcode. Additionally, the organisation claims to find correlations between the level of pollution and socio-economic conditions - links which the CIA says are 'spurious'.
'We applaud FoE's efforts to seek links between pollution and social issues, but this requires more sophisticated and accurate analysis,' says Judith Hackett, the CIA's director for business and Responsible Care. FoE's attempts amount to 'thinly disguised, blatant continued targeting of heavily regulated industry.'
According to Hackett, the FoE data uses information from the Environment Agency's pollution inventory from 1999, but does not use internationally recognised classifications for carcinogens, such as the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer). 'As a result, the FoE database overstates the emissions of carcinogens from regulated factories,' she says.
'In addition, it makes no attempt to recognise the steps that companies are taking to reduce emissions or the reductions that have been made in recent years,' Moreover, it does not take into account the largest single source of emissions of benzene, butadiene and lead in the UK - road traffic. 'These emissions cannot be measured or reported by location because they are diffuse,' the CIA comments.
