Author: chejadmin

After forty years, the NYS Department of Health is finally launching a health study of people who lived in an area affected by a huge toxic chemical spill south of Rochester, NY. About 35,000 gallons of trichloroethene, or TCE, was released during a 1970 train derailment in Le Roy, Genesee County, creating a 4 ½-square-mile plume of contaminated groundwater.

People in several dozen homes drank and bathed in private well water containing TCE for two decades until officials finally provided public water. Others inhaled indoor air containing trace amounts of the solvent until recent action to alleviate that problem.

Two state health surveys done years ago found nothing out of the ordinary. But public attention has re-focused on the derailment spill site in recent months, and some residents have asserted that people who lived above the plume did suffer a higher-than-normal rate of cancer. The study will examine the Le Roy-area site and eight other lightly populated locations around the state where TCE have been found. Data for the nine sites will aggregated, so the sample size being analyzed is larger and thus more statistically meaningful.

The other locations are in Cayuga, Cattaraugus, Dutchess, Greene, Rensselaer, Ulster and Washington counties. The study will look at cancer incidence and also at birth weight, birth defects and pre-term births among people living at those sites as far back as the early 1980s. (Source, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, 9/8/12)

Associated Press reports that many Native American communities are being negatively impacted by power plants.   In a July 4th article, they reported serious health problems in  Native American communities from coal plants.

A “coal-powered plant blamed for polluting the southern Nevada reservation’s air and water is visible from nearly every home. “Everybody is sick,” said Vicki Simmons, whose brother worked at the Reid Gardner Generating Station for 10 years before dying at age 31 with heart problems. Across the country, a disproportionate number of power plants operate near or on tribal lands. NV Energy maintains its plant near the Moapa Paiute reservation is safe and has been upgraded with the required clean emissions technologies.

Meanwhile, local, state and federal health agencies say they cannot conduct accurate health studies to verify the tribe’s complaints because the sample size would be too small. In all, about 10 percent of all power plants operate within 20 miles of reservation land, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Many of those 51 energy production centers are more than a half-century old and affect roughly 48 tribes living on 50 reservations. Fewer than 2 percent of all people in the United States identify as Native American and only a small portion live on tribal land.

In many cases, Native American leaders have long embraced energy development as an economic opportunity for communities battling widespread unemployment. But a growing backlash has some tribal leaders questioning whether the health and environmental risks associated with energy production has put their people in harm’s way. While it’s not conclusive that coal operations pose a direct danger to reservation residents, the Moapa Paiutes are one of several tribes demanding the closure of their neighborhood power plants.

Sherry Smith, a history professor who co-edited the book “Indians and Energy: Exploitation and Opportunity in the American Southwest,” said hardly anyone paid attention or were aware of potential environmental consequences when the power plants were built decades ago. “These are not simply people who have been duped by the government or the energy corporations,” said Smith, director of the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Texas. “They are simply 21st century people who are coping with the same issues the rest of us are about economic development and the environmental consequences and having to weigh these things.”

When coal is burned, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury compounds are released into the air, according to the EPA. Research has shown those fine particles can be linked to serious health problems, including premature death. Children, who breathe more often, and senior citizens, who tend to have health problems agitated by pollution, are particularly vulnerable, said Colleen McKaughan, an associate director in the EPA’s air division.

CHEJ was sad to hear that Dr. Rosalie Bertell passed away this week.  Dr. Bertell was an international leader in radiation health hazards and championed many campaigns to protect communities from radioactive waste sites and nuclear reactor releases.   

Dr. Bertell was a nun whose life’s work at the International Institute of Concern for Public Health resulted in cutting-edge publications and research on the health effects of radiation.  Her seminal book, “No Immediate Danger”, explains in layperson’s terms how radiation is harmful.  Sister Bertell was often the only public health specialist who helped communities impacted by radioactive hazards, including the NL Industries uranium site in Albany, NY and the Uniontown IEL in Ohio.  We commend Dr. Bertell for her compassionate dedication and her pioneering work on radiation health hazards.