Document 2JedeyeqVzz5ko2jvXazO484p

The Poisoning of America By fTlichaei H. Brown Every year billions of pounds of lethal chemical wastes pollute our water, euen the air we breathe. To clean up the mess. Congress has created a $1.6 billion "superfund, " which experts agree is but a drop in the contaminated bucket. A complete cleanup may cost $44 billion. that this supply too what former California Congressman will be polluted. John E. Moss described as "the sleep --In a trailer ing giant of the decade" in August park in Orange 1978. That's when New York State County. Calif. -- a began evacuating 237 homes in Love five-minute drive Canal, a section of Niagara Fails from Disneyland located near an abandoned chemical -- vent pipes had dump Health statisticians found a to be installed in startling rate of miscarriages, birth the soil to allow a defects and liver disorders among safe escape foT residents of the middle-class homes, potentially sicken ^ along with high ievels of toxic com ing gases brewing \ pounds that had crept into their below basements from the waste site. -- In Baton * During the spring of 1980, when a Rouge. La.. 540 ' Federal consultant found what ap acres of pasture t peared to be chromosome damage in and swampland x people living outside the evacuation were flooded with zone. President Carter issued an an odorous sludge f emergency order, and the Federal resembling diesel ' Government offered to remove 800 oil -- a mix of high- i additional families from the area. (A ly dangerous poi- g number of lawsuits by residents are sons that have per- ^ pending, but it is difficult to prove a manently scarred y direct link between chemicals in the the terrain. environment and disease, and such Each year m cases can be tied up in court for Amerca. our fac years ) tories generate as As it turns out, however. Love much as 125 4 Canal was but the rip of an enormous , . , billion pounds of The fire lost time A "witches' brew of toxic chemicals ^ * mo. exploded and devastated Elizabeth. Y J .last spring. iasses.th]ck con. toxic iceberg. The United States En vironmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) now estimates there are be cocttons that tween 30.000 and 51.000 sites where `Thousands of people are get contain unwanted mercury, solvents toxic wastes have been stored or ting sick from toxic wastes. We're talking about a problem that makes the nuclear waste issue paltry by comparison." and pesticidal ingredients known to cause tumors in laboratory mice. Much of this material -- about 60 per cent -- comes from the nation's bur geoning chemical industry And the Hugh Kaufman. Environmental Protection Agency vast majority of it -- an estimated 93 percent -- is disposed of improperly. This mishandled industrial waste, n -Jackson Township. N.J . a rash Iof senous kidney and skin disorders turned up after the community s underground water source became badly contaminated with 38 chemicals, a number of them suspected cancercausing agents To this date, the township must pipe in water from a supply miles away, and there are fears agree Federal and state officials, is now causing the gravest environmen tal challenge in United States history. In a recent report prepared for the Senate Environment Committee, Dr. Julius Richmond, the Surgeon General of the United States, said that throughout the decade the nation will `confront a series of environmental emergencies" due to toxic chemicals that "are adding to the disease burden M.c.Hoe' H Bn3u*i $ ">e author of Laying Waste The Paison-.ng ol America bv Toxic Chemica.s iFsasheoni ro be pvbi.ihea n papeoocit *cxt month 'Pocket Books* .. in a significant, although as yet not precisely defined, way." The country began awakening to tuned -- and thar 2.000 pose serous health threats Their poYtion threat ens water supplies for literally millions of Americans, and :n some instances, ihey already nave been blamed for caustng illnesses strikingly similar to what was found in Niagara Fails. A recenl reminder of the insidious dangers came from the port town of Elizabeth. N.J There a waste dis posal firm named Chemical Control Corporation had stockpiled 45.000 rusring, 55-gallon barrels containing a veritable witches brew of refuse: everything from hospital garbage (ex tracted tapeworms and excised tumors) to low-level radioactive material, toxic metals and the com pound tetradioxin. one of the worio's most deadly substances. (It is estimated that, if evenly distributed, three ounces of dioxin could kill at least one million people i he company, subsequently Tcharged by the state with- opera ting a quick-cash scheme In which wastes were never properly treated, had also taken m discarded explosives: TNT. nifroglycenn and. for good measures, tetraethyl lead, which can ignite simply upon ex posure to the air Late in the evening of April 21. 1980 -- ironically, the eve of Earth Day -- the Chemical Control stock pile suddenly burst into flames reaching temperatures of up to 3.000 degrees. The tire raged out of control for 10 hours, sending scores of firemen to the hospital and a billow ing. 300-foot plume of tarry smoke over large sections of New York and New Jersey. The next day. schools were closed throughout the area and residents were advised to stay indoors with the windows shut, as an acnd mist descended along the shoreline. While technicians struggled to find out what exactly was in the smog, the state breathed a sigh of relief that it had removed many of the explosives shortly before the fireball erupted "If (continued! SAM4.V WEEKLY. try n. i MORRIS MESSAGE CENTER &r URL 03717 FREE MORRIS MESSAGE CENTER WITH 9-LIVES' LABELS (ANY SIZE. ANY FLAVOR.) ' Free for 35 Label* <limit; 1 ). 12-50 with 15 Ubeh. * 53.95 with no Label*. Oniy 1 free Meeaef* Cantv per household or (roup, i Total number Mee(* Center* ordered. ______ Free with 3S lebeb iVrnii: 1 i. ________ 12.50 with 15 Label* each I no Lena *. -- S S3.95 each, wdh no bbeh ino bmei. 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Organize yourself... and everyone you care about Order Morris Message Centers today. The Poisoning of America (continued) up and down the nearest road of paralysis, skin sores, chest pains and kidney malfunctionmgs. Dnnking the water made some residents dizzy. "1 couldn't sleep." says One resident. Ethel Boyd. "1 mean. I'd get up and it would seem like I was going to fly off Then I would vamrt." Michigan has been especially hard hit by toxic wastes. Two years ago. the state discovered that a pesticide and chlorine plant near Montague had sullied two billion gallons of groundwater, allowing at least a million gallons a day to enter White Lake, a popular fishing resort that New Hampshire dumpsite 93 percent cf toxic waste is disposed oj improper',). empties into Lake Michigan. One of the compounds. C-56, is fisted as that material was still on the site." Newark. N.J.. street. "You can go out 10-times more potent than phosgene comments New Jersey Assemblyman and tent a piece of property -- tent it. nerve gas. Meanwhile, farther east, in Raymond Lesniak. "I think we'd be don't buy it. Rent 10 acres. 20 acres: a small town appropriately named missing part of Elizabeth right now." get a permit to handle drums. Bring it Hemlock, residents living near a sys Throughout the Northeast, where on the property and just store them. tem of waste wells have reported the chemical trade firsl began, come As soon as the heat gets too great, lust dozens of chicks born with then in countless reports of water contami go bankrupt. get out of it " testines outside their bodies, geese nation. On Long Island, according to So lucrative is the waste business -- D state anlayses 1.9 million people and so poorly regulated by govern | have been potentially exposed to ment -- that profiteers have formed tainted groundwater at one time or an underworld network in many of 2 # another. When New Jersey's Depart our states They are paid from $150 ment of Environmental Protection to $100 a barrel for hauling the mate- tested 163 wells during a spot sam nals from factory gates to hidden des pling. il found virtually all oi them to tinations Testifying in March 1980 contain damaging compounds An before a New York legislative subcom estimated 200 commumiies in New mittee. former state prosecutor John England have been io!d their supplies Fine claimed the toxic-disposal busi may be infected with tetrachloroethy- ness is `dominated by hoodlums asso lene. which has been found pounng ciated with organized crime." Car- out of a number of kitchen taps. racmo recently testified that orga Nor is the problem confined to the nized-crime figures forced him off the Eastern states The "top ten" indus premises of Chemical Control at gun trial waste producers also include Illi point and took over the company. nois. Indiana Ohio. Michigan. Ten nessee. California ana Texas. Almost hatever the influence of everywhere, industry's dregs have been poured untreated into land pits, covered over with a thin layer of soil and forgotten -- until health problems Wcrime syndicates, the ma jority of problems are created by large, legitimate companies that utilize huge landfills suddenly arise. A recent E P.A for their unsalable by-products and survey stated that at feast 600.000 thus avoid the expenses of tech people live near enough to ihe 100 nologically tendenng the materials worst dumps now known to be direct harmless When rainfall penetrates ly affected by toxic mishaps these landfills, the water picks up con To compound the crisis, authorities taminants and drips them into subter Lewiston. N.V., creek- Water for have had to contend with a rash of ranean streams like a coffee per millions of Americans is threatened. bootleg waste haulers. These opera colator From there, they can travel tors cut their overhead by ilfegaliy miles under the ground until, years or with their wings on backward and dumping toxicants along the roadside even decades later, a homeowner hordes of horse! and cows that had in dark of night, storing chemical suddenly finds his water smelling like developed purplish teeth and tails and drums on vacant lots or in abandoned rotien eggs or old shoe polish. died of no dear cause buildings or unloading their unmarked This is precisely what happened to Clearly there is much to be con tankers into the most convenient more than a dozen families living in cerned about. A 1974 study of the stOTm sewer or rural creek. One such Toone. Tenn.. a small town 70 miles Mississippi Rivet showed 48 chemi "midnight dumper" contaminated 210 east of Memphis Beginning in 1969. cals present in the water -- com miles of North Carolina roadway with the Velsico) Chemical Corporation pounds with names such as chloro PCB's. an electrical insulator that can dumped 300.000 drums and fiber form. hexachlorobenzene and dime- persist tn the environment -- and canons into sandy trenches near their thylsulfoxide. It seems more than human organs -- for decades homes -- wastes that contained the coincidental that cancer rates in New "The economics behind it is. if you same potent insecticides the late Orleans, which draws its supply from don't have to treat it, there's no cost Rachel Carson warned of in her pro the Mississippi, were found to be the except for transport." says William phetic 1962 book. S/lent Spring By third-highest of 268 metropolitan Cairacino. former president of Chem 1977. the water was so polluted that areas for kidney mortalities and the ical Conrrol and a man conv icted of il factorylike smells permeated the sixth for malignancies of the bladder. legally pouring noxious liquids on a households. Soon there were reports Overall. New Orleans's cancer in cidence is 32 percent above normal. Despite the many warning signals. Federal and srale governments have still not passed sufficient measures to regulate the increasingly deteriorating siruation One promising law that was passed in 1976. the Resource Con servation and Recovery Act. just re cently went into effect in mid-Novem ber. Under this act. dangerous chemi cal wastes will be traced "from cradle to grave." with each person or com pany handling such wastes having to account for what happens to them ow effective the new law will Hbe. though, is questionable There are still no legal controls on permanently destroying toxic wastes or rendering them harm less. Many companies, however, wor ried that the act will leave a "paper trail" leading back to them, began a frantic run of midnighl dumping last fall, trying to rid themselves of as much chemical waste as possible before the law took effect. The most promising news in the fight against chemical wastes involves URL 03718 Congress' work on a "superiund" to begin cleaning up toxic waste dumps and chemical spills. Late into its December lame-duck session. Con gress passed a $1.6 billion supeifund bill, with 88 percent of the money coming from the chemical industry and 22 percent from the Federal Government. And while all agree that the $16 billion fund is a step ih Ihe nght direction (Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New Yotk said it might be "the most important environmental legislation of this decade"), it is but a small step -- sources estimate that a full national cleanup could cost up to $44 billion The ultimate answer, most author ities agree, would be to destroy dan gerous materials or recycle them into harmless products rather than to store them underground. Theoretically, there are dozens of ways to destroy toxic wastes, ranging from chemical reactions and separation techniques (separating the harmless from the dangerous) to high-temperature in cineration and solidification of wastes so they do not mix with water. But these methods are much more costly than landfilling, and in some cases the technology is not yet available to safe ly disassemble the exotic new crea tions of man. The explanations, however, do little to comfort victims like Raymond Boyd of Toone. Tenn.. whose father was temporarily paralyzed and whose firsl child. Benjamin, was bom deformed, with his intestines outside his body. "They said it wasn't hereditary" Boyd comments, "but can't get no one to say it was cherrucals Can't do it. They're all afraid, and seems like, like np nobodycaresnomore" HLJ FAMILY WEEKLY Jtnulr, IM1