Air and water are much cleaner since EPA's founding any Detroit residents are happy to describe how cleaner air and water has changed their lives in the 30 years since the EPA's creation. James Williams was elated about the incinerator shutdown at Ford Hospital. When your neighbors get sick just from being there, you're not treating your neighbors right. And even the agency's toughest critics, such as U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Dearborn, concede the benefits of cleaner air. Now you can see where you are going when you drive down Ecorse.
Water is cleaner, too.
Today, the Rouge is far from pristine, but neither is the river a dying sewer as environmentalists feared three decades ago. But the scientific consensus on the positive health effects of cleaner air and water has changed significantly in recent years. Since 1970, the EPA has banned or refused to permit dozens of herbicides and pesticides suspected of causing cancer and restricted the use of dozens of others. In addition, the EPA has restricted or banned a number of industrial chemicals that were finding their way into food and water supplies like PCBs used most commonly by electric utilities to cool transformers. Further, the EPA has put in place strict controls on cancer-causing pollution releases into the air, water and landfills from factories and other industrial sites.