The EPA (1971) has had trouble in defining science. It is an agency
that allows a certain level of what others would consider
contamination to released. In the clean-up of heavy metals, cadmium
and nickel, that once were associated with the nearby historic West
Point Foundry in Cold Spring, NY (Marathon Battery National Priority
Superfund site) the State (which also has its own superfund which
perhaps unlike the federal one, half funded by the chemical industry's
insurance and half with "double costs for fines and cleanup" is even
more politically manipulated) has other acceptable levels of heavy
metals in the environment. As these laboratory tested standards (which
often do not include "synergistic" mixtures of contaminants) change,
so do the levels of acceptable exposure and clean-up, at one time the
story was "go ahead fed clean it, will be there after you to do it
right" I heard for the Foundry Cove, next to Constitution Island,
where as part of the archaeology evaluation and mitigation was found
the prototype of the "Swamp Angel" used in the incendiary bombardment
of Charleston, South Carolina in 1863 and perhaps the inspiration for
Jules Verne "From the Earth to the Moon"  (1865).