Warning: Breathing may be hazardous to your health

More disappointments from the Environmental Politics Agency:

A leaked document from the Environmental Protection Agency suggests that the agency is considering a significant change in air-pollution rules. It would give chemical factories, refineries and manufacturing plants new leeway to increase emissions of pollutants that cause cancer and birth defects.

John Walke, who heads the clean-air program for the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, says he received the document from sources at the EPA who wanted the public to become aware of this "backward step."

Uh oh, I smell a patented Bush-style investigation into the source of that leak. Or is that toxic chemicals I smell?

If reading that makes you need a drink, I'm afraid I have more bad news:

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to allow higher levels of contaminants such as arsenic in the drinking water used by small rural communities, in response to complaints that they cannot afford to comply with recently imposed limits.

The proposal would roll back a rule that went into effect earlier this year and make it permissible for water systems serving 10,000 or fewer residents to have three times the level of contaminants allowed under that regulation.

About 50 million people live in communities that would be affected by the proposed change. In the case of arsenic, the most recent EPA data suggest as many as 10 million Americans are drinking water that does not meet the new federal standards.

[...]

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996, complying with federal drinking water standards is not supposed to cost water systems more than 2.5 percent of the median U.S. household income, which in 2004 was $44,684, per household served. That means meeting these standards should not cost more than $1,117 per household.

Under the EPA's proposal, drinking water compliance could not cost more than $335 per household.

It's hard not to arrive at the conclusion that the EPA no longer exists to, you know, protect the environment, but to make sure that Bush administration supporters aren't burdened with expenses related to not killing us.

Between this and the USDA's plans to all but stop testing for mad cow disease, it appears that it's no longer safe to eat, drink or breathe.

Thank you George Bush.