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Oregon senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have asked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to intervene in the discovery of toxic air hot spots throughout Portland.

(Rob Davis/Staff)

Federal lawmakers on Friday implored the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to respond to growing alarm over what they said were dangerous amounts of toxic pollution in Portland's air.

As state regulators remained silent about plans to address the city's cancer-causing air pollution, Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Rep. Earl Blumenauer asked for the EPA to intervene, calling the situation a public health emergency.

The three Oregon Democrats escalated the already high-profile chorus of political leaders suddenly prodding environmental officials to take decisive action.

Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality has moved slowly to respond to scientists' discovery of toxic pollution hot spots throughout Portland. The agency has known that some neighborhoods likely breathed dirtier air than others. But it kept that information secret for eight months. Since it became public, the agency has avoided answering questions about what it knows.

Without specifically criticizing the state response, the federal lawmakers sent a letter to the EPA's leader saying urgent action was needed.

"We, along with the public, are alarmed by seeming revelations that these toxic emissions fall into a regulatory loophole," they wrote, "and are demanding that the agencies entrusted to protect public health act decisively on this matter."

It was the U.S. Forest Service that first alerted Oregon environmental regulators in May 2015 that it had detected high levels of heavy metals in a study of Portland-area tree moss. The state agency didn't start air testing to confirm the moss data until October.

Officials received the results on Jan. 20, showing average arsenic levels 159 times higher than the state's safety goal in Southeast Portland; cadmium levels were 49 times higher. The state said the concentrations are cause for concern.

Breathing those levels of pollution for a lifetime sharply increases residents' cancer risk -- from a goal of one case in a million to one in every 4,800 people.

The state issued its first news release on Feb. 3.

Wyden, Merkley and Blumenauer called for swift action to regulate stained glass manufacturers across the country that burn heavy metals. A variety of metals, including lead, cadmium and arsenic, are used to add colors to glass. When those metals are burned in furnaces, no controls are in place to keep the fumes from seeping into nearby neighborhoods.

The state has connected two pollution hot spots to glass studios: Bullseye Glass in Southeast Portland and Uroboros Glass, between Interstate 5 and the Fremont Bridge. Bullseye voluntarily suspended use of cadmium and arsenic, which were found in unsafe levels in the nearby air. Uroboros said it would stop using cadmium and hadn't used arsenic for years.

The lawmakers said an immediate assessment should be conducted of the health risks faced by nearby residents. Cadmium accumulates and persists in the body, causing kidney problems and cancer. While many residents are paying for blood and urine testing on their own, the Oregon Health Authority has said it doesn't have the funding to study or collect the results.

What's now unfolding in Portland is remarkable. Though state regulators have known for a decade that the city's air was dirty, filled with unsafe levels of cadmium, arsenic and other pollutants, the state's limited monitoring has never been precise enough to pinpoint the sources.

But when U.S. Forest Service scientists began studying heavy metal concentrations in tree moss, their research acted like a magnifying glass, adding street-level detail to a problem that the Department of Environmental Quality hasn't aggressively investigated.

With the Forest Service's $20,000 study, cancer-causing air pollution instantly went from being an anonymous city-wide problem to a neighborhood-specific concern. Innocuous tree moss lifted the curtain, squarely putting higher levels of carcinogens in some Portlanders' backyards: Arsenic was detected in Gov. Kate Brown's Portland neighborhood.

But the state has so far done little with that knowledge, drawing outrage from neighbors and advocates. Though the Department of Environmental Quality deployed an air monitor to pinpoint Bullseye Glass, it hasn't announced any plan to survey the air elsewhere or to crack down on companies that may be responsible for cadmium or arsenic pollution.

Brown has given the Department of Environmental Quality and Oregon Health Authority a Friday deadline to respond to questions about the issue. As of 2 p.m., the agencies had not yet replied.

-- Rob Davis

rdavis@oregonian.com

503.294.7657

@robwdavis