University of Massachusetts researchers say General Electric Co. is the third worst corporate air polluter in the United States, behind only Bayer Group and Textron ”“ with a Bridgeport facility numbering among GE”™s dozen biggest culprits.
Fairfield-based GE made its “ecomagination” environmental products and initiatives a major marketing focus at the Olympic Games in London, amid an ongoing push to promote its record as a steward for the environment, including efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its facilities.
In its 2011 ecomagination progress report, GE says it has reduced those emissions 29 percent since launching the initiative in 2005, and several environmentalists sit on its ecomagination board of directors.
When it comes to air pollution, the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at UMass Amherst sees things at GE differently. PERI studies air releases of hundreds of chemicals from tens of thousands of industrial facilities across the United States, using 2007 data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The PERI rankings take into account not only the quantity of releases but also the toxicity of chemicals; factors such as prevailing winds and height of smokestacks; and the number of people exposed. PERI does not rank companies on corporate pollution as a ratio against their total output, facility footprint, employee base or other relative measures.
“We assess not just how many pounds of pollutants are released, but which are the most toxic and how many people are at risk,” said James Boyce, co-director of PERI”™s Corporate Toxics Information Project, in a statement. “People have a right to know about toxic hazards to which they are exposed. Legislators need to understand the effects of pollution on their constituents.”
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) lists Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania as the worst polluters in the country, due to a reliance on coal-fired power plants. No Northeast state ranked among the top 20 nationally.
At the same time, the NRDC report found a 19 percent decrease in all air toxins emitted from power plants in 2010, the most recent data available, compared to 2009 levels, due in part to an increase in natural gas and to the installation of state-of-the-art pollution controls by many plants in anticipation of new health protections issued by the EPA.
In addition to the GE facility on Boston Avenue in Bridgeport, PERI also pointed to multiple GE buildings in Manchester for their pollution. Nationally, however, GE”™s appliance factory in Cicero,Ill., was by far the biggest culprit, accounting for as a large an environmental effect as the next five facilities combined.
Other area corporations on the list include 30th-ranked Praxair Inc. of Danbury and 38th-ranked United Technologies Corp. of Hartford. Goodrich Corp., which UTC acquired last month, ranked 87th.
UTC subsidiary Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., the largest manufacturing facility in Connecticut, was far down UTC”™s list for air pollution, though UTC”™s Pratt & Whitney plant in East Hartford trailed only a Carrier Corp. facility in Charlotte,N.C.
With Connecticut down wind from some of the country”™s biggest pollution emitters ”“ Textron is in Rhode Island”“ the American Lung Association routinely assigns Fairfield County a passing grade on the particle pollution to which residents are exposed here annually, though the county gets an “F” for ozone problems to which people are exposed.
