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18 years and counting: EPA still has no method for measuring CAFO air pollution

18 years and counting: EPA still has no method for measuring CAFO air pollution

When gases from large livestock facilities overwhelm communities, the health impacts can be severe.

Children at schools near concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, are more likely to experience asthma. Exposure to ammonia and hydrogen sulfide — both emitted in large quantities by CAFOs — can lead to chronic respiratory issues, and in some cases, cause damage to the nervous system.

In states like North Carolina and Ohio, families that are Black, Hispanic or low-income are more likely to suffer the consequences.

Carrie Apfel

Yet 18 years after starting to develop methods to measure and control air pollution from livestock operations, the Environmental Protection Agency still has not complied with its own mandate to protect Americans from the harmful health effects of air pollution from big farms.

And thanks to an agreement between the EPA and livestock industries, thousands of CAFO owners are shielded from some EPA penalties while the process of developing tools to measure emissions drags on.

“It’s a huge problem,” said Carrie Apfel, senior attorney in the Sustainable Food and Farming Program at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental justice legal organization. “The huge problem is that the agricultural lobby is hugely powerful and hugely influential, and I really think that has a lot to do with it.”

An EPA Office of Inspector General report that investigated the delay in 2017, however, indicates a lack of technical expertise and resources within the EPA is largely responsible for hampering the agency’s progress toward regulating air emissions from livestock operations.

Regardless, in CAFOs thousands of livestock animals live in covered barns, where they eat, drink and poop in mass quantities.

That manure, usually stored in tanks or lagoons, undergoes chemical transformations, releasing harmful chemicals into the air.

Under its authority provided by the Clean Air Act, the EPA sets limits for how much of these chemicals are emitted, but the agency still does not have a method for calculating how much pollutant a livestock facility produces.

For many other industries that cause air pollution, EPA scientists have created formulas to estimate how much pollutant a facility emits.

In 2005, the agency said it would finalize these models, called emissions estimating methodologies, or EEMs, for livestock operations by 2009. It still has not done so.

EEMs to be finalized this year following public comment, industry review

The EPA published its first draft EEMs for CAFOs in 2012, but after receiving criticism from the agency’s Science Advisory Board, it did not publish revised drafts until 2020.

Since 2020, the agency has periodically published revised drafts of the livestock facility EEMs for various chemicals, including ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, particulate matter, and volatile organic compounds. However, the recent drafts do not address all of the Science Advisory Board’s recommendations.

The drafts will not be reviewed again by the advisory board, as the agency has moved beyond the peer-review portion of the EEM development process.

“Now that the draft emission models for all animal sectors are complete, EPA will review and revise all models before releasing the entire set of models for stakeholder review” later this year, EPA spokesperson Shayla Powell said in a statement to Investigate Midwest.

Tarah Heinzen

The agency will finalize the EEMs after a public comment period, Powell said. The agency did not specify when the public comment period would start.

Some environmental groups say the current EEM drafts for livestock operations are insufficient, and that the data forming the basis of the formulas are flawed, in large part because of livestock industries’ involvement in the research behind the EEMs.

“The study was designed to fail,” Tarah Heinzen, the legal director for Food and Water Watch, said. “It was largely designed by industry. It didn’t result in usable data, or complete data, even for the very small number of facilities that were studied.”

Environmental, industry groups await final models 

Food and Water Watch, which has worked on the issue of livestock operation EEMs since 2012, petitioned the EPA in 2021 to end the contract between EPA and CAFO owners because it provides legal protections to some CAFOs. The EPA has not yet responded to the petition, but did meet with the coalition once in August 2022.

Despite seeing insufficiencies in the current drafts, Earthjustice believes the EPA should finalize and enforce the drafts before working on improved versions.

Food and Water Watch said the EPA should “put an end to the federal amnesty and abandon the EEMs process entirely, because the flawed NAEMS study is incapable of producing viable emissions models. However, if EPA insists on finalizing EEMs, than at the very least it should not continue to provide amnesty to polluting CAFOs in the meantime.”

“The reality is that facts and science change over time, and emissions assumptions will also change over time,” the coalition wrote in its petition. “There is no end to that process. However, EPA can, and routinely does, estimate emissions from many sources of air pollution, including (animal feeding operations), using the best science available. The agency must do the same here.”

Andrew Walmsley, senior director of government affairs for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest lobbying group representing the agriculture industry, said the group is opposed to “air permits that are not science-based for farms.”

“Our policy also opposes mandatory standards because with (standards) would undoubtedly come enormous compliance costs, including permitting fees, and a mountain of new paperwork,” Walmsley said.

Two laws requiring facilities to report air emissions have been amended in recent years to exempt CAFOs from the rules, but the Clean Air Act still applies to livestock operations.

“I think that there’s a very strong but false narrative on the other side about the struggling farmer and how hard it is to comply with these regulations,”

Carrie Apfel

Under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA), livestock operations were among the facilities required to report emissions of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide that exceeded legal limits — until 2019, when the Trump-led EPA exempted CAFOs from the law. Environmental advocacy groups including Food and Water Watch sued the EPA to reinstate the reporting requirement for CAFOs, but the exemption remains in place.

A 2018 law passed by Congress — the FARM Act — also exempted livestock operations from reporting air emissions under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).

The EEM development process is one piece of a pattern of regulatory exemptions for large agriculture operations, said Carrie Apfel, senior attorney in the Sustainable Food and Farming Program at Earthjustice.

“I think that there’s a very strong but false narrative on the other side about the struggling farmer and how hard it is to comply with these regulations,” Apfel said. “When you do a deeper dive into the regulations themselves, the small family farmers aren’t emitting enough to trigger any sort of regulatory requirements. A lot of these regulations are really targeted at the big industrial agricultural facilities that are sophisticated and big enough to comply with these regulations.”

The Biden administration has said publicly it plans to revisit the EPCRA exemption for CAFOs, but has not yet moved forward with the rule.

If the Biden-led EPA does reinstate the reporting requirement, CAFOs that release pollutants in excess of EPCRA emissions thresholds of 100 pounds per day of ammonia or hydrogen sulfide would have to report the pollution to authorities. That information would be publicly available.

Emily Miller

Even if the agriculture exception to EPCRA stands, livestock operations would still need to use the EEMs to determine their compliance with the Clean Air Act and obtain Clean Air Act permits, if they exceeded emissions thresholds, said Emily Miller, an attorney with Food and Water Watch.

Ray Atkinson, director of external communications for Smithfield Foods, one of the biggest pork companies in the U.S., said the company does not expect the EEMs to have a significant impact on Smithfield’s operations.

Both the National Milk Producers’ Federation and National Pork Producers Council told Investigate Midwest they would comment on the EEMs once the final versions are released by the EPA.

The National Pork Producers Council, which participated in the study of CAFO air emissions, noted that “EPA has an obligation to finalize these long overdue tools for producers to use.”

Associations representing the egg and poultry industries did not respond to requests for comment. Investigate Midwest also reached out to other large U.S. meat companies, including Tyson and JBS, but did not receive responses.

CAFOs remain protected today from some EPA penalties

CAFOs were few and far between in the U.S. until the late 1990s, when the livestock system began to transform, becoming more concentrated. In states like North Carolina, and later Iowa and Minnesota, the quantity of large CAFOs rapidly increased over the last two decades.

Today, the vast majority of American meat comes from animals raised in CAFOs.

In the early 2000s, few studies measured the actual emissions from livestock barns. In response to the increasing concentration of CAFOs and the operations’ impact on human health, the National Academy of Sciences called on the EPA in 2002 to further study air emissions from CAFOs.

Without sufficient existing data to create emissions estimates, the EPA turned to the livestock industry for a solution.

Over the course of two years, the agency negotiated with the dairy, egg and pork industries to determine how to study CAFO emissions.

In 2005, the parties landed on a deal, called the Air Compliance Agreement.

Participating producers from each of the industries volunteered as potential study subjects and paid a one-time civil penalty, ranging from $200 to $1,000 per CAFO, depending on the facility’s size. (In recent years, companies in industries other than livestock found to be in violation of the Clean Air Act have paid multi-million dollar penalties.)

More than 2,500 owners and operators representing 13,900 animal feeding operations — more than 90% of the country’s CAFOs — paid penalties to the EPA.

Those penalties would pay for a study to collect emissions data from the CAFOs. The EPA would then use the data to create its EEMs, which would inform its enforcement of the Clean Air Act in the future.

In exchange for the industries’ participation and funding, the EPA promised not to sue the participating producers for certain past and ongoing violations of air emissions laws while the study and EEM development process were ongoing.

The contract would stay in effect until the EPA notified the CAFO owners that the EEMs had been finalized, or until the agency determined it would be unable to create the EEMs. It is still in effect today.

Facilities included in some of the research on air emissions from CAFOs. Credit: Courtesy of Albert Heber

For 18 years, this agreement has shielded nearly 14,000 CAFOs from EPA penalties – yet only 25 facilities actually participated in the data collection.

At the time the agreement was established, meat companies were fearful of lawsuits and EPA penalties over the pollution they produced, said Garth Boyd, who represented Smithfield, one of the country’s largest pork companies, in the negotiations over the study and agreement.

All Smithfield operations at the time signed the contract, Atkinson told Investigate Midwest, and two of its facilities participated in data collection for the study, called the National Air Emissions Monitoring Study, or NAEMS.

Boyd remembers the consent agreement being “controversial” among those on the private industry side of the negotiations, because companies were hesitant to pay the upfront penalty and admit to emitting pollutants.

But others, including Boyd, believed the EPA was negotiating in good faith and that the agreement could protect companies from bigger fines in the future.

“At the time, it seemed to make sense to me to sign the (consent) agreement, because things were tense and it looked like it would possibly prevent penalties,” Boyd said.

John Thorne, a lobbyist representing livestock organizations in the negotiations, said the industries had a mixed response to the consent agreement.

“They were distrustful of anything the EPA had its stamp on,” Thorne said.

Thorne added that livestock industry leaders were fearful that the study and consequent EEMs would eventually force the companies to spend massive amounts of money to curtail emissions.

Critics question sufficiency of data behind EEMs

After working out a deal to fund the research, the industry and EPA stakeholders next needed to decide who would run the study.

The committee selected Albert Heber, Ph.D., agricultural air quality expert and professor at Purdue University, to oversee the study design and data collection for the NAEMS.

Albert Heber

NAEMS, which collected data from 2007 through 2010, is still the largest study of its kind, Heber said.

Heber had consulted for both the EPA and for livestock producers, so he represented a middle ground between the EPA and the industries the agency regulates, he said. He had also served as an expert witness for both the EPA and livestock operators in nuisance cases.

“Environmental groups say the study is industry tainted,” Heber said. “So here’s my answer: It wasn’t tainted in any way. Purdue was totally independent in the selection of specific sites. I personally selected the sites. I personally selected the research team and oversaw the conduct of the study.”

Heber said he didn’t take directions from industry leaders, but he did discuss site selection with industry groups to understand which types of facilities were most common in each industry.

“The only part of the (study) design that they were involved with is, what type of barns and farms should be included?” Heber said. “That was a collaborative effort, but they have the information on what kind of farms they have.”

Heber’s team monitored emissions at 27 sites on 25 CAFOs in 10 states. (At two of the CAFOs, teams monitored multiple emissions sites.) The team monitored each site continuously for two years.

Heber said that he chose to monitor a smaller number of sites for a longer period of time to better understand how factors like weather and animal life cycles impacted emissions.

Credit: Courtesy of EPA

Critics, including some environmental groups and scientists, say that the data is insufficient to create rules for the entire country, and invalid because of the industry’s role in crafting the study.

“The sample size was not large enough, to be honest,” said Viney Aneja, Ph.D., an agricultural air quality expert and professor at North Carolina State University, who served on an EPA Science Advisory Board panel that reviewed the first drafts.

When the EPA published the NAEMS protocol for public review in 2005, many stakeholders submitted comments, concerned that the number of monitoring sites was too few to account for the diversity of livestock operations across the country.

Viney Aneja, Ph.D., in his office on the North Carolina State University campus on Monday, February 13, 2023. (Photo by John Hansen Photography/for Investigate Midwest)

The final dataset that forms the basis of the draft EEMs includes data from two Tyson Foods CAFOs submitted by company-funded researchers and validated by the EPA, as well as other data provided by respondents to a “Call for Information” by the EPA.

Prior to the start of the National Air Emissions Monitoring Study, Tyson had already dedicated $1 million to Iowa State University researchers for a study of ammonia emissions. As part of the Air Compliance Agreement, the team studying the two Tyson facilities expanded the monitoring to encompass all of the chemicals included in the NAEMS and to meet the EPA’s quality assurance criteria.

RELATED STORY: 7 key moments in EPA’s 18-year-long delay in measuring livestock air emissions

Atkinson, the spokesperson for Smithfield, said the EEMs would be “useful” but noted that the pork industry has adapted since the NAEMS.

“Much has changed over this time period that has likely impacted the base data used to develop the EEMs,” Atkinson said. “For instance, feed conversion and overall efficiency have improved industrywide, along with a reduction in the amount of crude protein fed. Both have had the effect of reducing emissions.”

The EPA stands by the validity of the data.

“The EPA is comfortable the data are sufficient to develop an emission estimation method for the animal operations monitored by NAEMS,” the agency said in its response to questions from Investigate Midwest. “EPA is open to discussing options for future monitoring and data collection projects to both expand the amount and type of data available for these operations and how to expand to other animal operation types (e.g., cage-free egg layers) as the industry continues to change.”

Key reasons for delay: conflict with Science Advisory Board, lack of resources 

The EPA published the first draft EEMs in 2012.

But the revision process stalled after a panel of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board reviewed the drafts and took issue with aspects of the formulas.

The panel sent a letter to the EPA in 2013 outlining issues with the drafts, particularly with the data that formed the basis of the formulas.

“The EPA has developed statistical models based on combined data sets and predictor variables which have limited the ability of the models to predict emissions beyond the small number of farms in the dataset,” the panel wrote.

“While basing the EEMs on data from a small number of farms does not necessarily limit the applicability of the EEMs to national populations,” the 2012 drafts should not be applied to all CAFOs, the panel said.

Scientists monitored air emissions from CAFOs during the National Air Emissions Monitoring study, led by Albert Heber. Courtesy of Albert Heber. Credit: Courtesy of Albert Heber

The panel’s final report includes several recommendations for the drafts, many of which involve clearly stating the limitations of the NAEMS data for users.

The Science Advisory Board panel strongly recommended that the EPA use a “process-based” model for the EEMs. A process-based model would require more data than the agency had access to at the time, and would be more time-consuming to produce, but would more accurately represent the wide range of factors that contribute to emissions at CAFOs around the country, the panel wrote.

Upon receiving the Science Advisory Board’s recommendations, the EEM development ground to a halt. The EPA stopped dedicating resources to the effort and key staff retired, according to the 2017 EPA Office of Inspector General report investigating the delays.

“EPA has made strategic hires to bring in talent with agricultural air expertise to work specifically on this project,” a spokesperson for the agency said in February.

“The fact of the matter is, if the study had included a diverse background of scientists to help advise in the design of the study, the nation would have benefited enormously. That did not happen.”

Dr. Viney aneja

The National Resource Council and the GAO both also recommended the agency use a process-based, rather than a statistical approach. Food and Water Watch attorneys argued that a process-based approach would be easier to implement for farmers.

The EPA’s current draft EEMs do not use a process-based approach.

“The amount of input data that you need to run these models is mind boggling,” said Heinzen, the legal director for Food and Water Watch. “To think that every animal feeding operation owner and operator across the country who needs to comply with the agreement, following the publication of these, is going to be able to do that successfully is ridiculous.”

Materials in the office of Viney Aneja, Ph.D., on the North Carolina State University campus on Monday, February 13, 2023. (Photo by John Hansen Photography/for Investigate Midwest)

The EPA told Investigate Midwest it will create a tool to assist CAFO owners and operators with inputting the required data, such as weather conditions.

Aneja, who participated in the Science Advisory Board review of the initial drafts, took issue with the funding of the study and the lack of involvement of scientists and university departments from disciplines outside of agriculture.

“The fact of the matter is, if the study had included a diverse background of scientists to help advise in the design of the study, the nation would have benefited enormously,” Aneja said. “That did not happen.”

The post 18 years and counting: EPA still has no method for measuring CAFO air pollution appeared first on Investigate Midwest.

More pregnant women need prenatal care in North Carolina’s Border Belt. But how?

More pregnant women need prenatal care in North Carolina’s Border Belt. But how?

By Ivey Schofield

Troaria Sampson wanted to be a mom.

But Sampson, who weighed 360 pounds and had diabetes, said her doctors in Robeson County discouraged her from pregnancy, warning that her baby could die.

In 2015, after trying for five years with her husband, Sampson got pregnant at age 27 – a milestone that should have excited her but instead filled her with guilt and dread.

“There are people like me who don’t have insurance and are being judged by their outer appearance,” said Sampson, who is Black and worked at the time as a cashier at Food Lion. “But it didn’t lessen my want to be a mother.”

Sampson visited doctors in the early weeks of her pregnancy, but many women in Robeson County do not receive such prenatal care that health officials say is crucial for the well-being of mothers and their babies.

Robeson is not considered a maternal care desert, according to the March of Dimes, which tracks access across the countryUNC Health Southeastern in Lumberton says it delivers about 1,200 babies each year.

But Robeson ranks last among North Carolina’s 100 counties for the percentage of pregnant women who receive early prenatal care, with 53% visiting a doctor during their first trimester, according to Healthy Communities NC.

Other counties in North Carolina’s Border Belt aren’t far behind, with about 56% in Columbus County, 58% in Scotland County and 61% in Bladen County, data shows.

The state’s goal is for 80% of pregnant women to receive health care during their first trimester by 2030.

Several organizations across southeastern North Carolina, including health departments, hospitals and pregnancy centers, are trying to increase awareness and access to prenatal care. Health officials say Medicaid expansion, which the state legislature adopted in March, will help ease the financial burden for low-income women who are pregnant.

A lack of prenatal care increases the chances for labor complications, birth defects, and hypertension and postpartum hemorrhages, said Dr. Donald McKinley, an obstetrician and gynecologist at UNC Health Southeastern.

“Prenatal care is absolutely one of the most important aspects of having a healthy pregnancy,” he said. “When pregnant, the patients need to be seen as soon as possible to change medication or start medication to survive a very important developmental stage.”

Pregnant women might be hesitant to seek care for a variety of reasons, including illegal drug use, lack of health insurance, lack of transportation to appointments and previous negative experiences with doctors, experts say.

Sampson said her interactions with medical professionals added to her skepticism during her subsequent pregnancies. She now has three children.

About 12% of married Black women report facing at least one barrier to receiving prenatal care, compared to 9.8% of white women, according to a 1997 study. Black women have the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States, with 69.9 per 100,000 dying due to their pregnancy, compared to 26.6 per 100,000 white women, according to 2021 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data was not available for Native American women.

Sampson said she ultimately got the support she needed from Healthy Start, a program at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke that has been funded by the federal government since 1998 to reduce the infant mortality in Robeson County.

“Every appointment,” Sampson said, “they were there.”

shows a woman standing by a rack of children's clothing and child toys
Megan Knight oversees Mercy House in Bladen County. The organization offers free clothing to mothers who complete online parenting courses. Credit: Ivey Schofield/ Border Belt Independent

Megan Knight, who lives in the Bladen County town of Dublin, said early prenatal care changed her experience. She had complications during her first two pregnancies. When she got pregnant for a third time, she saw a doctor who told her she had a defect with MTHFR, a gene that tells the body to metabolize folic acid.

Knight said she started taking blood thinners and didn’t experience any complications during her third and fourth pregnancies.

“Complications occur because we’re afraid, we don’t seek help or we say, ‘I can’t get a ride, I don’t want to tell my mom or my boyfriend I’m pregnant,’” Knight said. “And that creates risk. But those risks can be easily eliminated.”

Local resources

Knight, who recently opened a pro-life pregnancy center called Mercy House in Elizabethtown, wants to help pregnant women in Bladen County access prenatal care.

Bladen County is considered a maternal care desert, where there is no hospital or birth center that offers obstetric care and there are no obstetric providers, according to a recent report by March of Dimes.

Mercy House offers free medical-grade pregnancy tests, online pregnancy and parenting classes, diapers, clothes and emotional support.

“I know that when women are in crisis, their immediate response is I need to get rid of this,” Knight said. “And we want them to know they’re not without hope, they can do this and there are resources.”

Janet McPherson, who oversees Living Hope, a Christian-based pregnancy center in Columbus County, said many pregnant women don’t know about local resources.

“There’s not any one place you can go and say, ‘If you’re pregnant, this is what’s available,’” she said. “This is a real problem. There is no coordination among ministries and groups.”

Pregnant women should contact their county health department to find if they qualify for Medicaid and WIC, a nutrition program for mothers and young children, said Carlotta Rivers, maternal health coordinator at the Scotland County Health Department. Parenting and breastfeeding classes are also available.

Women with high-risk pregnancies due to substance misuse, domestic violence, homelessness or other factors can qualify for pregnancy care case management that includes monthly check-ins from social workers, said Barbie Britt, nurse supervisor at the Robeson County Health Department.

“We try to do as much as we can here,” Britt said.

Coastal Horizons, a Wilmington-based nonprofit with a pregnancy and postpartum office in Whiteville, offers specialized help for pregnant women struggling with addiction, program coordinator Gayle Beese said.

The office communicates with local medical providers to make sure patients go to their prenatal appointments and provides transportation when necessary. It also offers Suboxone, which Beese said is safe to take during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Beese said shame often prevents pregnant women who struggle with addiction from getting prenatal care early in their pregnancy. They worry they’ll be judged by their medical provider or their baby will get taken away by the Department of Social Services.

“Recovery doesn’t get easier just because you have a baby,” Beese said. “They deserve care too.”

In Robeson County, UNC Health Southeastern has a doctor who specializes in pregnant women struggling with addiction.

One in every four pregnant patients at the hospital, which has several satellite offices across the county, has been diagnosed with an opioid use disorder, McKinley said.

Helping others

Healthy Start helps connect women in Robeson County with resources across the region and provides transportation, said Erica Little, the program coordinator.

In 2019, when Sampson’s child stopped breathing and needed to be induced, a Healthy Start worker drove her to the hospital. In 2021, when Sampson got pregnant with her third child, the program connected her with a provider who prescribed anxiety medication.

“Even though I’m saying our county has a biased way of looking at people, Healthy Start is in our community,” Sampson said. “They do not treat you with the same bias our community has. They’re trying to overcome the bias in our county.”

Because of her experience with Healthy Start, Sampson has become an advocate for pregnant women.

Sampson said a pregnant 17-year-old came to her after being disowned by her mother and kicked out of her church choir. Sampson helped the girl get a job at a local boutique, where she became employee of the month. Since then, the girl has gotten engaged and found a new job.

“I was so proud of her,” Sampson said.

Sampson also encourages her sixth-grade students at Deep Branch Elementary School and her youth group at Deep Branch Missionary Baptist Church to talk about sex education. She carries around a few brochures about the free services at Healthy Start, just in case.

“Never let guilt and shame prevent you from getting the health care you need,” Sampson said.

The post More pregnant women need prenatal care in North Carolina’s Border Belt. But how? appeared first on North Carolina Health News.

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