[photochemsyn]

Or the people working for the EPA didn't want to get downwind of the plume themselves, so they took their air / water samples upwind of the mess, to avoid exposure (and maybe to make things look less bad as well) and called it a day. Really wouldn't be surprising.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

I'd expect anybody measuring things near there to be in full HAZMAT-suits? Especially if this is declared as local state of emergency, and the National Guard involved?

[acdha]

Do we have any reason to believe that happened? There’s been training and response plans for this kind of thing going back to the 70s so it seems like that would be a huge scandal.

[photochemsyn]

The EPA's response to the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout - in particular allowing widespread use of Corexit - was pretty scandalous:

https://www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2015/04/27/...

I think they also dropped the ball on lead in drinking water supplies across the USA. It's another 'regulatory capture' situation, most likely.

[acdha]

I’m not saying the EPA is perfect but simply asking whether we have reason to believe that this case was due to measurement choices, or if that was simply made up for the sake of argument.