If you're trying to fail to win we...

If you're trying to fail to win weight or reduce your credit card offence there's a tried-and-true technique touted by way of many experts: Keep a daily log scrupulously recording everything down to the 50 cent you teat out of your pocket for the daily newspaper, the handful of popcorn you grabbed from a co-worker's desk or the number of stairs you walked. This method works like magic. That's because all those little things add up and keeping the log brings that fact to your attention.

in such a manner I must admit to a bit of confusion about for what purpose the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency thinks les detail and fewer log entries are going to help model toxic levels in what has been called "one of the greatest in quantity effective environmental programs in the nation's history." That's according to a dozen state attorneys general (including Illinois' Lisa Madigan) in a note they wrote to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson urging him not to change the Toxic Release Inventory.

The inventory is a handy tool that's extremely user-friendly: onward the EPA Web site, mark in your ZIP code and up reports a list of toxic chemicals that are being released in your neighborhood's air, land and water. Think you live in a "clean" area? Well, check it abroad at http://epa.gov/triexplorer.

It's the same Web site that a arrange in Pilsen used last year in its auspicious struggle to clean up emissions in its southern Side neighborhood. The Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization is among the numerous grass-roots clumps nationwide that have used the inventory in the past 20 years. according to all accounts, this government program has been a resounding succes since it was conceived in 1986 as a direct reaction to the chemical plant leak in Bhopal, India, that killed thousands.

if it were not that that Web site may not be around greatly longer -- at least not in its common form. Changes proposed last fall were designed to ease the reporting carrying capacity on industry.

The propos changes have l to testifys from people including members of Congres scientists and environmental assign places tos that say we should know if or for what reason we are being put at risk for cancer, asthma or any number of diseases because the EPA says it's too often of a bother to require the company down the arrest to fill out a not many more forms.

In short, the propos changes would resolve into the Toxic Release Inventory reporting period from each year to every other year and remodel the amount of details that would be disclosed.

Environment Illinois said the changes would increase from 10 times the level of a certain number of toxins that industries could emit before they have to report them, and certain toxins could be dropp from the list altogether.

The cluster said the proposed changes would mean that 207 facilities in Illinois would no longer be required to report their releases to the inventory, and communities in 27 Illinois ZIP digests would lose all the pollution information, including nine in prepare for the table County, three in McHenry, couple in Lake and one in DuPage.

The propos changes aren't fix in stone yet, and there's a growing motion in Washington to keep the Toxic Release Inventory intact. Last month Senate Democrats Frank J Lautenberg and Robert Menendez cited the propos changes as the reason they bring forward a "hold" on the approval of Molly O'Neil, the Bush administration's nominee to head the EPA's Office of Environmental Information.

In May, the House vot to obstruct the rollback by refusing to capital the proposed changes. A showdown is awaited when the Omnibus Appropriations Bill arrives up for a vote, chiefly likely in September or October.

We're past the official EPA public note deadline, but you can still help save the Toxic Release Inventory simply at writing to your U.S. senators and telling them you be worthy of to know exactly what kind of toxins at what flats are being released in your neighborhood.

take an account of Senators Dick Durbin and Barack Obama that you want more details, not les because calm small amounts can add up to self-same big problems if we don't give them the peculiar attention.

Marla Donato, journalism educator and former editor of Conscious Choice magazine, is a free-lance writer who specializes in environmental and health issues.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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