
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 6, 1994                   TAG: 9406060076
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

RESEARCHERS SAY AIR A BIG POLLUTER OF BAY

There is increasing evidence that the Chesapeake Bay faces substantial threats not only from pollutants that enter through the water but from those that arrive via the air, researchers say.

"We're still crunching data, but it's not unreasonable to assume that the bay is a giant basin for atmospheric pollutants," said Gregory A. Cutter, an Old Dominion University oceanographer.

Cutter is one of several scientists working on a study of pollutants that enter the bay from the atmosphere. Cutter and a Virginia Institute of Marine Science researcher collected rain and air samples in 1990 and 1991 from Haven Beach in Mathews County. Other scientists did the same at two rural bay beaches in Maryland.

Using their data, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's bay office recently concluded that air pollution, which contains a host of metals and chemicals that in large doses can kill fish and plants, is a major source of toxic pollution in the bay. The EPA estimates that one-third of the most common toxic metals in the bay arrive in exhaust, soot and dust.

Cutter said researchers have traced the pollutants falling into the bay to two basic sources: emissions from cars and factories in the metropolitan areas of southeastern Virginia, Richmond, Washington and Baltimore; and soot and particulates from towering factory and power plant smokestacks in the Ohio Valley.

by CNB