Last Thursday, there was a major explosion as part of the Texas Eastern Transmission gas pipeline ruptured, sending flames 300 feet into the air. The explosion killed one, hospitalized five, destroyed railroad tracks and caused the evacuation of the nearby mobile home park. The case was transferred over to federal investigators, who say that corrosion may have contributed to the pipeline rupture. <Read more>
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Tag: environmental health
On Wednesday, for the fourth time since April, there was an explosion and subsequent fire at a Houston area petrochemical plant. No one was seriously injured, but 37 people suffered from minor burns and injuries. Exxon Mobil’s plants in Baytown have a history of chemical violations in leaks, the last being in March. Currently, they are defendants in a lawsuit from Harris County citing environmental violations. <Read more>
Wilson County residents and other North Carolina property owners fighting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline won a small legal victory Wednesday when a federal judge extended a stay in a dozen cases.
“It’s just completely unnecessary expense and aggravation and the judge made a common-sense decision,” Therese Vick (BREDL) said. “This would be just irreparable harm to these folks, these families and farmers and property owners.”
by Liz Goodiel, CHEJ Science & Tech Fellow
This Friday, August 2, 2019 marks the anniversary of the historic evacuation of Love Canal. The landmark tragedy sparked an awareness across the nation to the environmental dangers present in everyday communities. The unfortunate reality of this event remains that the Love Canal is not an isolated event. Throughout the last half a century numerous towns and cities have come forward with cases of bad pollution. Despite decades of education and awareness, toxic tragedies have occurred and continue to occur in locations across the country. Many communities to date are still organizing together to fight similar incidents as Love Canal and continue to face challenges in their effort to achieve remediation or evacuation status.
Love Canal was an idyllic vision established by William T. Love in 1982 as paradise community connected to Niagara Falls by a canal. Due to economic failures, the canal project was abandoned and converted into a municipal and chemical waste dumping site by the Hooker Chemical Corporation and the City of Niagara. In 1953 the Hooker Chemical Corporation turned the land over the city where the canal was covered up, along with the secret chemicals it housed, and the construction of a new community began. With an understanding that the area was perfectly safe for residence, hundreds of homes were built as families migrated into the area.
Nearly 20 years later, the city disclosed information regarding the toxins present in the community, its subsequent health effects, and no details about how the government was going to right the wrong. Lois Gibbs, along with her neighbors, united over their shared frustration and general concern for their exposed families and established the Love Canal Parents Movement. Together the group voiced their concern and fought for change that finally came on August 2, 1978. The New York State Department of Health ordered the evacuation of pregnant women and children under the age of two to be evacuated. Just five days later, the rest of the community received relief as the government agreed to buy all 239 homes closest to the center of the canal.
Following the Love Canal evacuation, other communities began receiving attention in response to harmful pollutants poisoning the residents. One similar instance occurred only a few years later on the opposite side of the country. San Jose, California, a seemingly beautiful spot to raise a family, absent of any visible smoke stacks or toxic air releases, began noticing some unexpected birth defects in 1982. Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, a computer technology producer, found evidence of nearly 50,000 gallons of leaked toxic chemicals underground. The most alarming chemical discovery was that of trichloroethane (TCE), a cancer causing toxin. San Jose residents began raising concern when mothers of the area compared shared miscarriage experiences and birth defects among their young children. Nearly 50 days after the discovery of the leak by the state health department, a local newspaper released the disclosed information to residents. Larraine Ross, a distressed mother of a daughter with a serious heart defect took action and united 15 neighbors together to sue the Fairchild Corporation, along with the area’s main water supplier, Great Oak Water. The case concluded in 1986 with a multimillion dollar success settlement in support of nearly 530 affected residents in the Los Paseos area.
Despite decades of environmental activism from communities banning together to fight for clean air and water, there are still groups today fighting for a voice and an action for change. North Birmingham, Alabama has been a booming home to the steel and coal industry for decades. The facilities in the area have contributed chemical pollutants including arsenic, lead and benzo(a)pyrene. After constant investigation, in 2011 the EPA recommended a “time-critical removal action” for the 35th Avenue Superfund Site. The EPA determined a necessary clean up for the northern region of the community, yet years passed with no movement. In July of 2017 it was revealed why there was such a lag in government support for clean up. Alabama Representative Oliver Robinson was convicted for bribery by Drummond Company, a large contributor to the pollution in the region. Rep. Robinson took the bribes in an effort to keep the EPA from expanding the Superfund site and for keeping the area off of the NPL list for receiving advanced community pollution remediation. After the trial and years of battling pollution contributing facilities, community residents are still fighting for significant change and relocation away from the reach of cancerous toxins.
August 2, 1978 marked the beginning of a movement for communities to unite together for the shared vision of a clean backyard. The success of evacuation for Love Canal residents stands as an inspiration and model that through organization and persistence environmental change is possible. There are many cases throughout the last few decades that show the success cities and towns have had in community remediation. However, even today the battle still rages on as cities and towns across the country fight for the same right to clean air and water.
Some Pittsboro, North Carolina residents have been suspicious of their water since testing in 2017 showed that there were elevated levels of PFAs in Cape Fear River, their main water source. The toxins come from the Chemours Fayetteville Works chemical plant, located upriver of Pittsboro.
According to Pittsboro’s mayor, very few residents are aware that their water may be contaminated with PFAS. While the levels found weren’t technically above the legal limits, research suggests that there isn’t a safe level of PFAS contamination in water because the chemical remains in people’s systems for extended periods of time.
Duke University will be conducting a study on the impacts of PFAS in the bloodstream on human health, and will take blood samples of atleast 30 Pittsboro residents in the coming year. <Read more>
As the Huffington Post Reports, according to recent data from the EPA, the amount of unhealthy air days in major cities across the US have increased in the past two years, even though polluting air emissions have decreased overall. <Read more>
Categories
Building a Kaleidoscope Movement
by Lois Gibbs
As we approach the 2020 elections, I am excited about the opportunities to engage in a broader pubic conversation about creating real social change. Elections provide us with opportunities to engage the public in conversations about serious deep changes that are needed, not only environmental and health but social justice issues across the board. Class, race, living wage, immigration policies, economic growth, climate change, environmental justice are all connected. We need to begin today to expand the movement and build bridges with other leaders, develop strategies and take advantage of the 2020 public conversation to move an agenda that is about people, protection, jobs, justice and so much more. Now is the time to plan and now is the time to build those bridges to work together for change.
Over the 38 years since the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) was founded, we have dedicated ourselves to broadening the base and strengthening the skills of the grassroots movement for environmental health. Our goals are to raise popular consciousness about fundamental problems in the current system, provide a positive, unifying vision, and build a sense of empowerment by reinforcing the power of an organized group of people to create change.
The Kaleidoscope Movement is a formation of groups at local, state and national levels that are joined together around building and strengthening community. The issues are varied, as are the class, race and geographical locations. What is common is the desire for justice, to prevent harm to human health, the economy, environment and the ability of our children to achieve the American promise. It is not anchored in a single political party or class of people, but rather inclusive, dynamic and strategic.
This is a movement that takes people where they are, listens to their concerns and builds power around their issues and concerns. It is not D.C. or policy focused, rather it’s focused on people, values and strategic place/practice-based goals. For example, our definition of “environmental health and justice issues” is where people live, work, learn, pray and play. Systemic change has come from this approach by building power at the local level.
The results historically have been very exciting. By organizing one family at a time, one church at a time, one school at a time, and one neighborhood at a time, CHEJ and partners have been able to accomplish things that have been out of reach to groups taking a policy or regulatory approach to systemic change. We have our supporters and grassroots activists to thank for this success. In fact, in most cases the policy has not kept up with the shifts in practices. Our methodology for change is to bring people together, build power around issues people care about that are strategic and fit into a larger vision of change that is needed.
CHEJ does not bring people together to agree on a platform or policy agenda and then try to move groups into action. Our approach, instead of top down, is to pick strategic issues that people care about and then move people directly into action from the bottom up. Through this process the public conversations raise fundamental values and the work is based on solutions that are source based for a more permanent change in public opinion and in practice.
The victories of changing the “practice,” are unlike regulatory or policies based wins. These victories are not as likely to a slide backwards or are enforcement centered. Consequently, they stay in place even when there is a change in elected representation or a decision maker.
Through these specific issue related efforts, CHEJ linked activists together to build a broad progressive movement. While organizing, educating, and building the base, we actively teach people about the root cause of their problems and the need to become active participants in the governance of their communities and state. Our work also helps activists experience the power of working collaboratively in local or statewide coalitions.
To continue to build a progressive movement, it is critical to find ways to remove the barriers between organized groups nationwide, identify common frames that can unite groups of groups, and take advantage of opportunities to flex this multi-faceted, multi-issued political muscle.
CHEJ works with diverse constituencies that focus on a single issue – such as nuclear disarmament activists, disease-related groups focusing on issues like birth defects or breast cancer, environmental justice leaders, firefighters, teachers, parents, faith-based leaders or toxics use reduction groups. We are all learning to support each other, respect each other’s issues and underlying shared values, and appreciate the value of speaking with a unified voice.
2020 offers us all the opportunity to continue to not only learn about one another’s cultures, issues, and tightly held values but to advance them through public conversations this election year. We all win if we continue to break down barriers between diverse segments of the environmental health movement and building bridges to related social justice movements like Black Lives Matter, Health Care for All, living wage campaigns, building a new economy and so many more.
I believe that by investing in ground up activities across lines of issues, race, gender and geographic boundaries, we can create the world we want. I’m looking forward to this challenge this year with the many opportunities that will present themselves during all presidential election years.
Last Monday, Keurig Dr. Pepper announced they would be pulling their bottled water brand Peñafiel from the shelves, as a report found the arsenic levels in their water to be non compliant with FDA bottled water standards.
One of the reports in question, by the Center for Environmental Health (CEH), found both Peñafiel and Starkey bottled water to contain high levels of arsenic. Peñafiel is sold at Target and Walmart, and Starkey is sold at Whole Foods.
Arsenic in water bottles may be more common of a problem than we think: a study conducted last April found 11/130 bottled water brands sold have detectable levels of arsenic. <Read more>
This is the question that journalist Jim Daley raised recently in an article published in Scientific American. According to the article, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is substantially changing the program that evaluates the toxicity of chemicals by shifting staff and program emphasis from the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) to duties related to implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Daley writes that “Former EPA officials contend that the shake-up takes chemical assessments out of the hands of career scientists, potentially to the detriment of public health.”
As evidence of this shift, Daley writes that that the agency has reduced the number of its ongoing chemical toxicity assessments from twenty to three.
The IRIS Program began in 1985 to support EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment by identifying and characterizing the health hazards of chemicals found in the environment. The IRIS program has become the most respected scientific program in the agency. Its health assessments are the backbone of EPA risk analysis work and is the preferred source of toxicity information used by EPA to determine public health risks. It is also an important source of toxicity information used by state and local health agencies, other federal agencies, and international health organizations.
The TSCA program on the other has a much narrower focus which is primarily on reporting, record-keeping and testing requirements, and restrictions relating to chemical substances and/or mixtures, according to EPA’s website. Certain substances are not covered by TSCA including food, drugs, cosmetics and pesticides. While the 2016 amendment to TSCA greatly improved this regulation, it did not address its narrow focus. This shift began with the leadership of Andrew Wheeler who took over for a beleaguered Scott Pruitt as administrator of EPA in July 2018.
One EPA official who declined to be identified was quoted in the Daley article saying that IRIS and TSCA are “very different” in their approaches to evaluating the public health risks posed by exposure to chemicals. “One could make the argument that this is political interference, in that high-level people are saying which methodology we should be using to assess the safety of a chemical. “And the policy’s pretty clear that they’re not supposed to do that.”
Bernard Goldstein, Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, who served as EPA Assistant Administrator of the Office of Research and Development (ORD) from 1983 to 1985, summed it up this way in the Daley article, “I really see this as part of a restructuring of EPA in such a way that science will have very little to do with what EPA is basing its regulation on, and that we will end up with much weaker regulations in terms of protecting public health. “It’s troubling, in large part because it’s very consistent with an overall approach – a very astute approach – to take out the inconvenient facts.” Also cited in the same article was a comment by Thomas Burke from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a former EPA lead scientist adviser and Deputy Administrator of ORD from 2015 to 2017, “’any reduction’ of the number of IRIS chemical assessments ‘is a loss for public health and, unfortunately, puts populations who are exposed at risk.’”
Read the full article here.
As WWMT News reports, an EPA advisory group will hold three community meetings for the Allied Paper, Portage Creek, Kalamazoo River Superfund Site. These meetings are meant to serve as town halls for the community to discuss the status as the clean up, as well as the role of Michigan and Natural Resource Trustees in the clean up. Each meeting will discuss a different aspect of the Superfund Site clean up. <Read more>
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Portage Creek Superfund site on the Kalamazoo River Jeremy M Wintworth, Creative Commons
