Plant life.

• Author: Singley, Elizabeth
• Position: LETTERS - Letter to the editor

I live in Kingston, Tennessee, not far from the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant, one of numerous coal-fired electricity-generation plants built and operated by the federal government ("You Too Can Break Into a Chemical Plant," by Art Levine, March 2007). Not only has the TVA been given all but a complete pass by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in all these years--meaning that workers are exposed to unconscionable levels of friable asbestos, beryllium, arsenic, and other life-threatening substances--but upper management erected a large tank farm to hold tens of thousands of gallons of anhydrous ammonia. Despite warnings from lower-level employees familiar with the dangers of anhydrous ammonia, TVA management located these tanks within shooting range of a public road, and immediately adjacent to a TVA access road...