Tag: Dr. Jeff Warren

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Council Wants Company to Curb Cancer-Causing Emissions

(Credit: Environmental Protection Agency)

The Memphis City Council wants Sterilization Services of Tennessee to start curbing its harmful emissions now, rather than waiting for a mandate from the federal government. 

The company, on Florida Street in South Memphis, emits ethylene oxide (EtO), an odorless, colorless gas used to sterilize medical equipment and other materials. EtO is a carcinogen and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has warned that residents around the facility are at a higher risk of getting cancer. 

An EPA review of EtO found it it to be 60 times more toxic than previously believed. The agency did not learn the chemical could lead to higher cancer risks around emitting facilities until 2016. 

An EPA risk assessment of Sterilization Services published in October found that if 1 million residents around the facility breathed air with EtO all day every day for 70 years, 100 of them would be expected to develop cancer due to the exposure. However, the agency couches the projection, noting it “cannot predict whether an individual person will develop cancer.”

City council member Dr. Jeff Warren said Tuesday most of the company’s EtO emissions are not released through a smokestack. Rather, they are “fugitive emissions,” released through doors and “just the natural operations of the business,” Warren said. 

Caroline Freeman, director of the EPA’s Region 4 (which includes Memphis) told council members two weeks the agency was concerned about the situation in South Memphis. As of October, however, the company had not installed new EtO pollution controls and had no plans for new controls, according to the EPA.  

However, Freeman told council members the agency is working on new regulations for EtO emissions and hopes to issue a new rule on them this year. But the Clean Air Act gives companies two to three years to comply with new rules, according to council research. 

On Tuesday, a council committee unanimously approved a resolution asking the company to start work on the issue soon. The resolution wants Sterilization Services to immediately begin working with the EPA, the state of Tennessee, and the Shelby County Health Department “to halt fugitive emissions, in lieu of waiting for the passage of federal regulation as the health and safety of Memphians continues to be at risk.”

“This particular company has multiple locations across the country,” Warren said Tuesday. “In some of the other locations, they are already moving to initiate activities to limit fugitive emission. What we’re doing here is … asking them to initiate those same interventions that they they’r putting in other sites across the country.”

The resolution also asks for the named government agencies to keep citizens updated with information about the company and its emissions. 

Most members of the council’s Parks and Environment Committee signed on as co-sponsors to the resolution. Council member Edmund Ford Sr. got the heart of the matter saying the move was “very important because it puts in the air something we don’t want for our people.”

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Council Member Requests Return of Memphis Mask Mandate

Dr. Jeff Warren (Credit: Memphis City Council)

Mask mandates for Memphis could return via a last-minute request from Memphis City Council member Dr. Jeff Warren for Tuesday’s council meeting. 

As council meetings were underway Tuesday morning, a revised committee agenda was issued. The new agenda included a resolution requesting Mayor Jim Stickland’s administration “to reinstate a mask mandate in the city of Memphis.” The new resolution was made public about 15 minutes before the committee to review the measure was scheduled to begin. 

The resolution came with an additional request for same-night minutes, meaning if the resolution were approved Tuesday, it could not be changed at a future council meeting. However, if the resolution is approved, it does not bind Strickland to act upon it. 

City leaders dropped enforcement of the city-wide mask mandate on May 15th. The move followed Gov. Bill Lee ending the state-wide public health emergency and the Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) ending its mask mandate. 

COVID-19 numbers have risen and continue to rise, however. Though, the SCHD said in July it had no plan to bring back its mask mandate. However, masks are required, once again, in Shelby County government buildings. Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey told WMCTV that COVID mandates are, basically, over.   

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Opinion

The Problem with Kriner Cash

Kriner Cash

  • Kriner Cash

Kudos to The Commercial Appeal and reporter Jane Roberts for getting MCS to release records of Booker T. Washington principal Alisha Kiner’s 2009 suspension, but it should not have taken such unusual effort to get the information.

Unfortunately it is characteristic of the tenure of Kriner Cash as superintendent. Media requests for such basic information as enrollment are met with instructions to file a Freedom of Information request. That is what The CA did to get Kiner’s records. Releasing that information a year ago might have scuttled BTW’s chances of winning a shout-out and visit from President Barack Obama this year, but the fortress mentality at MCS precedes that event.

BTW’s outlier graduation rate caught my attention last year and I wrote about it in February, arguing that it was not replicable due to a significant enrollment decline in one year. The column drew a rebuke in a signed comment from Alisha Kiner. At a school board meeting, Cash singled out BTW for praise and compared its performance to optional schools White Station and Central, which I thought was unfair to BTW, misleading on the part of Cash, and inaccurate. A couple of months later the stakes were raised when BTW became a finalist for the Obama visit.

As The CA reported, there were people in MCS who knew about Kiner’s suspension and there was even a petition. I heard from some of them and encouraged them to come forward. I assumed, wrongly, that internal pressure would force MCS to divulge any potentially embarrassing information before Obama’s visit. An education blogger also wrote about the BTW graduation rate. And my former colleague Mary Cashiola, who is now spokeswoman for Mayor A C Wharton, wrote about her problems getting public information from MCS on enrollment that might influence school-closing decisions.

School board members apparently did not know about the suspension. Dr. Jeff Warren said disciplinary issues involving teachers and principals are for management to handle, while the board deals with policy.

“That typically won’t come to us,” he said.

Warren is sympathetic to Kiner. He believes she was new to BTW and made a mistake for which she has paid the price. “She has become an exemplary principal,” he said.

Board member Kenneth Whalum Jr. said he did not know about the suspension until reading about it Thursday.

“Institutionally, the board knew – or should have known – about it as a function of our oversight responsibilities, even if that knowledge was very general in nature,” he said.

Like most Memphians, I was moved by the televised BTW graduation and Obama’s visit. I later met some of the graduates at a civic club luncheon and was very impressed by them. There are apparently some positive things going on at BTW under Kiner’s leadership.

But the end doesn’t justify the means, whether it’s college sports programs chasing national championships or public school systems under pressure to increase test scores and graduation rates. The good work of many can be tainted by the cheating of a few.

I don’t happen to think that Kiner’s suspension is as big a deal as, say, the lawsuit last week against First Horizon over $883 million of its mortgages, which the CA ignored for four days. But that’s not the issue. The Kiner suspension was news because of BTW’s remarkable improvement in graduation in one year and moreso when the school was singled out for national acclaim.

In education, big improvements are hard to make in a year or two. That is not to say they don’t happen, but the underlying facts must be known before a super teacher or super principal is hailed. Many outstanding teachers and principals labor in anonymity and achieve slow, steady progress. Happily, some of them are getting recognition, like the math teacher at Whitehaven High School who was the subject of a story in The Commercial Appeal earlier this year. A friend of mine whose wife is a standout advanced calculus teacher is trying to get the College Board to identify extraordinary AP teachers. I hope they do.

Honest data and prompt, full disclosure are crucial as the Memphis and Shelby County school systems move toward a merger. Spin and stonewalling won’t work. Trite as it sounds, that’s the main thing.