COLUMBUS — A federal agency has threatened to penalize the state's largest egg producer unless it reduces airborne clouds of dust laden with chicken manure.

        State regulators say they have no authority over the air emissions, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is threatening civil and criminal penalties against Buckeye Egg Farm.

        The EPA said after reviewing air tests at the company's Marseilles facility in Wyandot County that dust and small particles spewed from exhaust fans might be harmful to public health.

        Tiny dust particles, called particulates, emitted by factories have been linked to asthma and other respiratory ailments.

        “We believe they are violating the Clean Air Act,” Bill MacDowell, chief of air enforcement and compliance assurance at the EPA's Region 5 office in Chicago, said. “These test results would seem to strengthen that argument.”

        “This is really something the U.S. EPA needs to take the lead on,” Ohio EPA spokeswoman Carol Hester said Saturday. “This is new territory with national implications for these types of facilities across the country.”

        Bill Glass, chief operating officer at Buckeye Egg, said his company is being unfairly singled out.

        He also disputed the validity of the EPA's analysis of the air tests his company conducted in June.

        The EPA's analysis said Buckeye Egg's operations at Marseilles would blow more than 100 tons of dust and other small particles into the air each year if exhaust fans ran eight hours a day.

        The emissions would increase to 167 tons a year if the fans operated for 12 hours, and 325 tons if they were always on, according to the EPA analysis.

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