Texas quietly moves to formalize acceptable cancer risk from industrial air pollution. Public health officials say it’s not strict enough.

Petrochemical facilities along the Houston Ship Channel sit a few miles from a playground at a Deer Park elementary school. The state's environmental agency is moving to formalize its target cancer risk level for air pollution permits without holding public hearings. (Credit: Mark Felix for The Texas Tribune/Public Health Watch)

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The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has quietly proposed maintaining a target cancer-risk level for air pollution permits that scientists and public health officials consider inadequate to protect public health, especially for communities like those east of Houston that are exposed simultaneously to many sources of industrial emissions.