Every now again a community comes along to assemble the disparate sources of information about coal tar sealants in one place. It serves the purpose to assist their respective communities in decision making and is a communication tool if any legislative action is taken. The City of Austin, TX did this early on in their effort to pass an implement a ban, but the update to their website is not as current as others. During 2009 and 2010 the City of Springfield, Missouri created a different summary that had new resources including presentations by the USGS, the City of Austin, and the Pavement Coatings Technology Council (PCTC).
Now McHenry County, a suburban county outside of Chicago has assembled a new information summary. Topics include:
- Studies at state and local level
- Independent studies
- Examples of legislation
- Additional coal tar related information
- Blogs and industry arguments (including industry funded studies)
This is a very good summary, and not just because this blog is referenced. By the way, someone may get the unintended notion from this document that CoalTarFreeAmerica is funded by some anti-coal tar corporate interests. Not at all.
A few notable exceptions that should be included in future editions, in my humble opinion, are:
- the USGS summary document for decision makers that we reported on in this blog. This explains the state of USGS’ research in a non-scientific manner that should be helpful to entire non-technical community members.
- the wear off study by the City of Austin. Officially, A Photographic Method for Estimating Wear of Coal Tar Sealcoat from Parking Lots it sets for our knowledge of how quickly these materials leave parking lots.
- a video presentation by Barbara Mahler & Peter VanMetre of the USGS explaining to the Springfield City Council the essence of their research with information about USGS research protocol, and the abc’s of coal tar and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). While it is kind of long (1 hour and 45 minutes), it is worth the time if you are just trying to understand the big picture with this issue.