The Chicago Tribune celebrated their new layout with another great story from environmental reporter Michael Hawthorne splashed across the newly-designed front page.

The article shines a light on EPA pollution data that has gotten short shrift.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency spent millions of dollars to assess the dangers that air pollution poses but has failed to fulfill promises to make the research more accessible to the public. So the Tribune is posting the information on its Web site, where users can easily find nearby polluters and the chemicals going into their air.

 While Hawthorne's articles have traditionally focused on Midwestern pollution issues, he and researcher/co-author Darnell Little, have done a huge favor for anyone concerned about air pollution in the U.S. Where the EPA has dragged their feet, the Trib has excelled by making the entire database available on their Web site.

Interested in air quality near you? Get a list of the worst polluters in any county in the U.S.

But as exciting as the newly accessible information is...the news is not good for us here in Chicago. Cook County has the worst numbers in the country.

"This raises very important questions about public health in our communities," said Dr. Peter Orris, chief of environmental and occupational medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center. "If the government's own data shows we have a problem, they should be doing more about it."

One wry commenter noted that the only recent high profile case that the EPA has brought in Chicago was against the Blommer Chocolate factory that sits near the Loop and gives downtown its iconic and often mouth-watering aroma. According to the numbers exposed by Hawthorne and Little, EPA needs to be less focused on that "death by chocolate" threat posed by the 7,498th riskiest facility in the nation when the 5th most dangerous facility is only a few miles away (and 7 of the nation's 100 worst air pollution threats to the public health sit in Cook County)...