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SALT LAKE CITY -- Salt Lake County ranks second among 100 counties on the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory. Utah ranks sixth as a state.
The EPA stresses the rankings do not equal potential risk.
Salt Lake County's ranking is largely due to Kennecott Copper's mining operation in Bingham Canyon. It accounts for 85 percent of the state's releases.
Company spokesman Kyle Bennett says most of it involves trace metals.
"We want to be completely transparent, but we just want people to understand there's no threat to human health or the environment," he said.
The company says the more it mines, the more it reports and the more it cleans up.
Among the compounds mentioned in the report are lead, zinc and copper. Zinc and copper can be found in multi-vitamins. The EPA also says this isn't an indictment.
According to the Deseret News, EPA regional spokeswoman Barbara Conklin said, "You could have thousands of pounds of one substance, and that could be less toxic than a very small amount of dioxin."
The newspaper reports the EPA's data documents 650 chemicals manufactured, processed or "otherwise used" by various industries. The EPA says the high rankings just mean the county and state handle a lot of the chemicals.
The newspaper reports last year Salt Lake County had 120.3 million pounds of materials containing toxic substances deposited, handled or processed, while this year it had 145.7 million. Overall releases were down.
E-mail: aadams@ksl.com
