By Joshua Daniel Hershfield 12/3/06
The so-called “Environmental Protection Agency” has ordered the closing of three of its national libraries as well as a specialized library on chemicals. The libraries contain a variety of information on pollutants, wetlands, effects of industrial practices on human and environmental health, acid rain, and include sources, articles, and publications not usually found anywhere else.
The Office of Prevention, Pollution, and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) Library in Washington DC was the EPA’s only specialized library on properties and health effects of toxic chemicals and pollutants. It was closed without notice to the public or affected scientists.
EPA officials claim that the information stored in the libraries will be digitized, but EPA chemist Bill Herzy said the chemical library was told to take a valuable collection of environmental journals and “just throw them out.”
Leslie Burger, president of the American Library Association, said “We don’t know which items are being tossed and which items are being saved. They have 35,000 to 50,000 unique documents available only in EPA libraries. If that information is not saved, it’s gone forever.”
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) Executive Director Jeff Ruch stated, “By its actions, it appears that the appointed management at EPA is determined to actually reduce the sum total of human knowledge. EPA is not an agency renowned for its speed, so its undue haste in dumping library holdings suggests a political agenda rather than anything resembling a rational information management plan.”
EPA officials claim they will save $2 million by closing the libraries. It is interesting that they have already spent more than that through the process of closing them. It is also interesting that they are not concerned with what it will cost in human and environmental health, especially as we are confronted with a chronic epidemic of cancer and birth defects from industrial pollutants, the most massive wave of extinction this planet has ever seen, and a global climate that is being rapidly altered by human pollution.