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Backyard Talk

Halloween Nightmare

I dreamed that just as I entered a Halloween haunted house the first monster I ran into was Frackenstine.  Just like the book Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley about a creature produced by an unorthodox scientific experiment I noticed that the Frackenstine that stood before me was also made up by combining many parts.  Frackenstines legs turned out to be the Ohio legislature that gave the monster his legs to make his way around Ohio, his torso was made of the Ohio oil and gas industry, his arms were the different state agencies that gave the monster the strength to strong-arm Ohio communities by not allowing citizens or local government to have any say into whether or not they wanted this massive industrial process to destroy their community.  The Frackenstine monster was so big I was having a hard time seeing who or what made up the head  but as I moved farther away from the monster I could see that the monsters head was Ohio’s own governor, Governor John Kasich who has become the mouthpiece and cheerleader for industry.

Down a long dark hallway I came to a closed door, as I opened the door I saw a room full of bubbling cauldrons.  As I looked around the room I saw thousands of Material Safety Data Sheets with all of the toxic chemicals blacked out.  There was also a flashing sign that warned of radiation.  While trying to read all of the signs I was suddenly approached by someone dressing in a hazardous materials moonsuit telling me that bubbling brew was safe and not to worry.  Even though he was dressed in protective garb he informed me that I was not allowed to know what was in the bubbling toxic brew and the door was quickly closed in my face.  As the door closed I could hear the sinister laugh of a crazy person who had spent too much time inhaling the toxic vapors of the bubbling cauldrons full of fracking fluid.

As I continued down the dark hallway I turned a corner and was face to face with a Vampire with blood dripping from his fangs. NO wait, it wasn’t blood dripping, I realized his fangs are drilling rigs that were dripping oil and he is hungry for more and more.  He can’t get enough; he is sinking his rigs into hundreds of thousands of acres of Mother Earth just to see if he can find more oil or gas to feed his needs.  I thought if I can just hold out until dawn the sun would destroy this vampire, but I was so wrong.

As I was about to exit the haunted house I heard the screams of the banshee foretelling the death of life as we know it.  No longer will we have local communities where we can cross the street without worrying about being hit by one of the thousands of trucks or being harassed by out of state workers that have no since of pride for the community.  We face industrial facilities in places where they have no business being in.

But wait, I suddenly realized I was not asleep, I was not having a nightmare.  What I had thought was a horrible nightmare was indeed reality for many communities in Ohio and across the nation that are faced with the nightmare known as fracking.

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Backyard Talk

Our Children's Schools Matter – When We Fail-They Fail

It is sad that across the country as new youngsters are entering school they are placed in harm’s way. Their emotions are mixed worried about leaving their home, daily environment and routine, while at the same time excited about their new experiences.  But toxic dangers in the air or nearby are not part of their mantra.

Yet in schools across the country parents are concerned that the location of the school building will threaten the health of their children and possible their children’s ability to lean. For example, in Richmond, Virginia there is a petition, asking the Richmond School Board to ensure the preschoolers of Norrell Elementary, near a landfill are being educated in a safe environment.  Although the petition has gained some national attention to an issue, there hasn’t been any resolution to longstanding concerns to Richmond, Virginia residents.  It hasn’t provided the pressure yet to force authorities to answer parents questions.

It has with 27,370 signatures created awareness about schools on landfills across the country and beyond. And, signatures on this petition has provided energy to beleaguered city residents who feel like they’ve been disregarded and disrespected by authorities.  A new round of testing has been committed of the school building grounds near the landfill but there is no evidence of safety.

“Local resident Kim Allen said, these developments have empowered us as we’ve come to know ourselves as people who make a difference in our community.  I, and other private citizens like me, are lending a voice to concern for the safety of children, children like my four-year-old nephew Malachi. We speak on behalf of ourselves and our families. Being a private citizen is a privilege and a powerful place to stand when addressing the safety of the children who attend Norrell Elementary school.

The question I asked myself was, Would I be okay with Malachi being in the Norrell School building for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week?  My answer . . . I don’t know. Given that concern and the urgent nature of the matter, I helped to initiate the petition.”

Despite working for over thirty years at CHEJ I’m still shocked by the blatant disregard for children’s health year after year.  Schools continue to be built on or near dumpsites like Ms. Allen speaks about or the school built in Detroit literally on top of a Superfund site. Most of these schools, not surprisingly, serve low wealth and communities of color.

Further harming everyone in the school family, when the children fail at the standardized testing it is the parents or the teachers fault — not the fault of the chemicals that inhabit their ability to learn or cause them to be sick and absent too often from school to keep up.

In Houston, Texas their recently built high school, which houses 3,500 students, is encircled by a dozen chemical facilities.  So close that if there is an accident or release at any of them, the children are trapped, left only to put wet paper towels along the window sills.  Yet, the releases from these facilities are constant and as children enter, leave or go outdoors for recess or sports they are exposed to air pollution daily.  Like the other schools when these young people fail at meeting the goals of standardized testing their parents and teachers are blamed.

It is time for all Americans to stand up and speak out about putting our children in harm’s way.  It is our tax dollars that are building these schools and we should have laws that compel schools authorities to build places of learning in safe environments.  Enough is enough.  Our children matter and are the future of our country.

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Backyard Talk

Protect Your Grandchildren Today – Eat Fat Free – Less Dioxin

A few years ago a study conducted by the NY State Department of health on former Love Canal residents identified two very important facts.  First the rate of birth defects in Love Canal children (those who were children living in the area during the crisis) is as high as it was for adults during exposures while living at Love Canal (56% of children were born with birth defects). The second finding was that there were statistically more girls than boys born to Love Canal children.  Generally it is believed that that change in normal ratio of male/female children is an indicator of exposures to hormone disrupting chemicals.

You may have already heard about these health outcomes in our newsletter or other communications.  It was the recent news about a study of dioxin and rats that reminded me of  the Love Canal studies.  At Love Canal there were 20,000 tons of chemicals buried in the center of the community and one of the chemicals identified in backyards was dioxin.

When I read the recent animal studies around dioxin and how exposures impacts children across generations, I was worried again.  Not only about my family, friends and former neighbors but for all the communities like Time Beach, Mo, Pensacola, FL, the ones people may have heard about but also communities not in the news in Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, Washington and every other community with a paper mill, wood treatment facility and pesticide sprayers.

Here is the scary news. “Pregnant rats exposed to an industrial pollutant passed on a variety of diseases to their unexposed great-grandkids.” Washington State University scientists found that third-generation offspring of pregnant rats exposed to dioxin had high rates of kidney and ovarian diseases as well as early onset of puberty. They also found changes in the great-grandsons’ sperm. The great-grandkids – the first generation not directly exposed to dioxin – inherited their health conditions through cellular changes controlling how their genes were turned on and off, the researchers reported. The dioxin doses used in the study were low for lab rats, but are higher than most people’s exposures from the environment. The study raises questions that won’t be easy to answer about people’s exposure to dioxins from food and industrial sources.

Dioxin builds up in the body and has up to a decade-long half-life in humans, so scientists say a woman who becomes pregnant even 20 years after exposure is at risk of transmitting the consequences of her exposure to later generations.  Most human studies of dioxins have focused on the direct exposure in adults and fetuses. A study of a 1976 industrial accident in Anshu Seveso,  Italy, documented health defects in the grandchildren of women that conceived as long as 25 years after exposure to dioxin. No human studies have investigated how a person’s dioxin exposure will affect their great grandkids.

So what does this mean for the millions of people directly exposed dioxin and almost everyone eating dioxin contaminated foods daily?  The average American is at 77% of the level below which exposures are considered to be safe.  That level is set for adults not babies and small children.  Children have different eating habits than adults. They tend to eat more dairy products that are high in dioxin. Dioxin is prevalent in foods that are high in saturated fat, primarily meat and dairy.

This information really reaffirms that everyone needs to eat foods with little animal fats and fat free dairy to protect our great, grandchildren.  It also should send an urgent message to EPA to get industries to clean up and stop producing dioxin pollution now.  We can’t wait nor can our grant grand babies.  Read more:

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Backyard Talk

Identifying Disease Clusters – What Comes Next?

It’s hard to say how many disease clusters have been identified. The website of the National Disease Cluster Alliance (NDCA) which held a national conference last week has a map that identifies 73 clusters. Several people attending the meeting pointed out that their cluster was not on the map and there are no doubt many others not on the map. While identifying clusters is an important step, knowing how to respond and what steps to take once a disease cluster (even a suspected disease cluster) has been identified is, perhaps, more important. This and other questions about disease clusters were discussed at a National Disease Cluster Conference held in Washington, DC last week by the NDCA.

It was clear from several presentations that no guidelines exist for what action steps a government agency should take once a disease cluster has been identified. This is a big problem, especially since most health agencies typically close their investigation once a cluster has been identified, concluding that they could not determine the cause of the cluster. This is not the time to walk away from a community that is struggling to determine not just whether a disease cluster exists, but what‘s causing it as well.

There are plenty of examples of communities where a disease cluster was identified. There is the cleft palate cluster in Dickson, TN, increase cancers in Clyde, OH, and childhood cancers in Toms River, NJ, Sierra Vista, AZ and Fallon, NV to name a few (see NDCA map). There are few examples, however, of agencies being able to identify the cause of the cluster. Woburn, MA is the exception as the state health department was able to identify contaminated drinking water wells as the cause of a childhood leukemia cluster.

No doubt determining the cause of a disease cluster is a difficult question to answer. It took the MA state health department over 10 years to conclude that the contaminated drinking water wells were the cause of the cluster in Woburn. But because it’s difficult is not reason enough for public health agencies to walk away. This is unconscionable and irresponsible. Public health agencies need to come up with an action plan for how to follow-up the finding of a cluster. Part of the response needs to include an environmental investigation into what may be causing the cluster. In addition, the community would likely benefit from the distribution of educational materials about the disease in question and the methods used to investigate clusters and their causes. Whatever follow-up occurs, the government needs to include from the very beginning of the process the affected community as part of the planning group directing the investigation.

One example highlighted at the conference was the work of Dr. Paul Sheppard from the University of Arizona who conducted an environmental investigation following the identification a childhood leukemia cluster in Fallon, NV. Between 1997 and 2004, 17 children living in Fallon were identified with leukemia, three of them died. For three years Sheppard studied heavy metals in air, especially tungsten which had been identified as increased in Fallon. Sheppard used tree leaves and tree rings to measure tungsten and found a high concentration of tungsten in the center of Fallon, the home to a tungsten refinery and a tungsten plant since the 1960s.

Although Sheppard was unable to prove that exposure to tungsten caused the increase in leukemia, his work has clearly related the two. His work provides a model for how to follow-up finding a disease cluster. Investigating environmental exposures in a community with a cluster makes perfect sense. Now we need to convince the public health agencies that they need to include this step in as part of their responsibilities. For more about the conference, see www.clusteralliance.org.

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Reflection on Women's Stories from the MTR and Climate Change Tribunal

Re-post of an article worth reading about the effects of Mountain Top Removal of coal.

Rebecca Barnes-Davies, Presbyterian Church Eco Justice

Reflections and words from my trip to Charleston, WV for the Central Appalachian Women’s Tribunal on Climate Justice

The Central Appalachian Women’s Tribunal on Climate Justice on May 10, 2012 was a powerful and meaningful event of local women lifting up their voices and engaging in action to protect the health and integrity of their families, their communities, and their land. I was honored and energized to be in this gathering of powerful grassroots advocates who are working hard to take care of the things they love. The speakers and leaders of this event were local residents who shared their personal stories of witnessing to the devastating effects of Mountaintop Removal (MTR) Coal Mining in their homeland of Appalachia. Some of these local women have won prestigious awards, gained national recognition, and/or been interviewed in documentaries for their great efforts. They come from a four state area: TN, WV, VA, and KY.

These women’s lives have been drastically impacted by MTR and I was convicted and inspired by their stories. Hearing their testimonies, I am ever more committed to continue to pray and work for an end to the destructive practice of MTR that is damaging this part of God’s creation. I hope you will join me in these efforts, both from reading these glimpses of local residents’ stories and from knowing our biblical, theological, and denomination mandate to care for God’s creation.

People of faith have every reason to engage this struggle as a core part of their Christian vocation and identity. As Presbyterian Church USA policy from 1990 says, “God’s work in creation is too wonderful, too ancient, too beautiful, too good to be desecrated.” God’s work in the mountains of the southeastern United States is: the work of these powerful women, this vital stand against MTR, and the beauty and health of Appalachian communities.

This gathering last week was one in a series of global tribunals that help to lift up the particular vulnerability of women to, and strength in the face of, climate change. These tribunals have given voice and recognition to women who live all around the world and are fighting for justice in their environment. Reflections from this Appalachian tribunal will go to the “Rio+20” United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development this June 20-22, 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I will be at the Earth Summit as part of the World Council of Churches delegation, and will be sharing with Presbyterians and others back home my sense of the developments there. This local Women’s Tribunal was a great first step to this important global conference and will influence my participation there.

Nearly twenty women shared their personal stories, testimonies, ideas, and demands related to Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining. While nothing can replace being in person to hear someone’s story, here are some of the words and stories I took away with me from local residents that I want to share with you. I cannot verify that my hand-written notes captured exact quotations, so although I will represent them (for clarity) in quotation marks, this is my disclaimer that the actual wording may have been slightly different!

“It’s not possible to destroy our mountains without destroying us. It’s not possible to poison our streams without poisoning our children….For all the voices you hear today, remember there are others who have been silenced or intimidated.” From a woman who can remember watching the blasting on the mountains from her bedroom window since she was 5 years old.

A 25 year old woman, who knows that the legacy of environmental degradation in her mountains is to “stunt Applachians’ health before they’re even born,” wants MTR stopped because she desires that it be “safe to birth my future children in my homeland…living where our families have lived for generations.” Knowing that in Appalachia “we need healthy babies for a bigger, brighter future,” she argues that we must undo the “shackles around our good health.”

A nurse takes note of “strange and serious illnesses” in her home territory (after going away for nursing training and then coming back home). She was particularly stunned by an extremely rare illness that took the life of her cousin (an illness with which only 20,000 people have ever been diagnosed) that is now the diagnosis for another person in her community and one more nearby. She says there is not one home located near coal mines that has been untouched by serious illness.

A woman whose 12 year old daughter lost a classmate to cancer—the same daughter having severe sinus troubles because of MTR (including the membrane in her nostrils being cut by the lose rock dust the family had to breathe)—shared her anger that her daughter’s health was being sacrificed to the energy demands of cheap coal in this country. This woman’s family stayed sick the entire time they were blowing up the mountain above their home. To add insult to energy, the reports from the coal company discounted the health disparities in these communities affected by MTR coal mining because the case studies didn’t take into account “consanguinity” (in-breeding)! (If anyone is looking for an example of environmental justice (i.e. environmental racism and classism), here it is! Outrageous!)

Coming from a family that has been in coal mining for generations, one woman shared that in her 20 year saga of trying to protect her land, it has been an ongoing battle that takes a ton of work, and unfortunately “people here are frightened of the industry.” In many families, people worry “they’ll take my pension…burn down my house” and she shrugs as she speaks, knowing their fears are realistic and part of the fabric of this struggle. She has fought long and hard, pushing politicians who often won’t do anything, which she recognizes is because “it is political suicide to try to do anything” against coal in this part of the country. Yet she has hope, even as there’s another round of fighting ahead (the coal company has yet again filed permits for the land near her home, permits that have been denied multiple times). She smiles and says, “Get all these ladies together and do what women do and that’s win the battles!”

Another woman whose male relations are all in coal mining, and who herself was a stay-at-home mom, shared her story about being “thrust” into this movement by the coal company itself. How could she have a choice when this MTR coal mining “can turn lungs into concrete,” and when constantly “babies are wakened by noise” and when a toddler in his bed was crushed by a boulder falling into his house from the mountaintop above? Sludge gets into the water. She declares, this is “equivalent to a war zone.” She wants her children to know that they have choices. So when her legislator, agreeing with her in principal but nervous to take action says “we have an awful lot of coal” she retorts “we also have a lot of sun and air.” She is clear that “they mine coal where we live, not we live where they mine coal.” Families and communities come first. And, besides, “Nothing else matters if we can’t breathe the air and drink the water.”

Telling a story about an old preacher who laid a dollar over the scripture selection about it being hard for a rich person to get to heaven (and then asking someone who wasn’t seeing the point, “well, can you see it now?!”) another woman focused on following the money in this debate. She has seen the medical expenses in her community, the cost of roads (driven on by too-heavy coal trucks) go into the creeks, the flooding in her community and wants these economic costs to be part of the discussion. When people talk about the economic boon of coal mining, do they consider these things that matter to local residents?

When discussing the effects that MTR coal mining has on the local community, one woman shares that the coal mines “after they ruin your community and quality of life, then they come in and offer money to buy you out.” She has seen 30 communities dry up and disappear in her 44 years of living in the area. She says “you can’t have Mountaintop Removal and communities…it’s one or the other.”

Another woman talks about the chemicals in water, air, and land. One family reportedly has a continuous flame in their well because of the explosive methane that seeped into their water supply from mining. Birds and fish are dying, she explained, and property values plummet because homes are covered in coal dust. Mountain ginseng and mountain flowers are buried. Family cemeteries are sometimes made inaccessible because of coal mining. One cemetery was pushed over by a bulldozer. All of these things break the sense local residents have of belonging to the land.

A woman who started standing up to the coal company in her town started explaining how the fabric of community is torn by the coal company: “fear.” If her truck was in her neighbors’ driveway, her neighbors got in trouble for associating with her. She lost her best friend. She stopped being asked to serve on volunteer organizations because the coal company wouldn’t give donations to any local organizations that activists, like her, were a part of (even if they didn’t have anything to do with the struggle against coal mining). People were afraid and felt controlled, and they got alienated from each other.

The long-time custom of “porch sitting” is another example of how communities are harmed by coal mining, says another woman. You can’t sit on your porch with the huge trucks going by, coal dust spewing, she explained. MTR coal mining also reduces the labor pool, so that creates tension. Drug use has gone up, the more people get depressed and look for outlets to escape.

A “stubborn holler dweller” (as she was called by the EPA) stood up to the coal company in her area and received serious death threats. Encouraged to move to a hotel, she stood her ground. With a 6 ft chain link fence, security cameras, and attack dog, this local woman would “not be put out of my grandfather’s home,” even when people were caught sneaking into her property. It is her home and she has a right to stay there.

“Mom and Dad’s chimney was pulled away from the wall” and they “lost access to water” because of coal mining, another woman said. When her parents lost access, the coal company graciously brought a barrel of water over, pouring bleach in it when it was obviously full of things you could see floating around in it. This woman, not trusting anything, took a sample. Her sample showed the water was not fit to drink. This struggle sometimes is just “too hard… people decide to move.” Her parents stayed, but one huge blast and shaking of the house brought a heart attack to her Dad. A year later, after having been moved away, her Mom died “crying to go back home.” This woman tells us “I feel like an orphan…People have no idea what we go through.”

A local pastor reports that the local river isn’t one where you can put your feet in or catch fish from. “No baptisms in this river,” she says. Meanwhile the receiving chairs on her porch are covered in coal ash. The prayer concern list at church has “so many health problems.” She believes in the statement from Martin Luther King, Jr. that the church should be the headlights, but that in this case, the church is the taillights in standing up for the people in Appalachia against coal mining companies.

At first in denial over the devastation of MTR, having bought land and built a dream house, another local woman was forced to accept it when her well water turned bright orange. She shares resigned disbelief that the burden of proof was on her (and her pocketbook) to prove that it was the coal company’s fault. This was a “huge wake-up call,” she says. She quickly came to realize that many state officials have a kind of culture of “customer relations” with miners that they don’t have with residents. Meanwhile, she found that when she sampled her water, she had to send it 70 miles away (refrigerating it that whole time) because the company’s water tester will “switch your samples for tap water” so again, “the burden of proof is on me.”

These women are strong, wise, and courageous. I was honored to be in their presence and hope that you will join me in prayer and action to help them protect their homes. In addition to the strong stance that the Presbyterian Church USA has long taken—that low-income communities not be disproportionately impacted by negative environmental practices—in 2006 the PCUSA General Assembly approved a resolution to abandon the use of mountaintop removal coal mining. We believe that the earth is God’s, and all people and all parts of creation are to be valued, respected, and tended with care. I pray that we will indeed join our hearts, minds, and bodies to this faithful call and work for an end to MTR.

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Local Group Calls for Shutdown of Old Mission Repository

Kellogg, ID: Lead issues have long plagued entire communities as a result of mining, smelting or other production of lead products. One of the worst locations for lead contamination is in the Coeur d’Alene mining district (CDA), Idaho. The Bunker Hill mine was one of the richest lead producing mines in the US. There are hundreds of mines in Shoshone County, Idaho, most are inactive at this time but several that are still mining; this is one of the richest heavy metal mining areas in the world, and has produced billions in mining production.

Bunker Hill is also a Superfund Site, which is a site where toxic wastes have been dumped and the EPA has designated them to be cleaned up. According to the EPA, the Coeur d’Alene-Spokane River Basin contains “significant measurable risks currently exist to humans”. Because of over 100 years of mining impacting the  area, lead contamination in surface water “as much as 90 times exceeds” EPA standards. 300,000 citizens live within a 1,500 square mile area beginning at the Montana border and extending into Washington State, with over 166 miles of CDA River corridor, downstream water bodies, fill areas, adjacent floodplains and tributaries that are contaminated and “the most heavily impacted areas are devoid of aquatic life.”

As a result of the contamination, children in this area have blood lead levels above the national CDC standards.  “One of every four children tested outside the 21 sq. mile “box” is found to have an elevated blood levels and are now lead poisoned. Numerous children in the Bunker Hill site are also still being tested a routine began in about 1974 and are found with elevated lead levels.

EPA planned to address the huge area contaminated with lead by creating a repository. In 2008, the Cataldo Mission, a national historic landmark located in Old Mission State Park became a temporary dumping ground (repository) for tons of lead contaminated soil. The Silver Valley Community Resource Center (SVCRC), a local group, led protests against remediation citing that the repository sits on a flood plain that flood annually, no assurance that regular flooding will not contaminate ground water and wells, and no assurance that toxic run off from the flooding will not reach the N. Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River through seepage or flow continuing to contaminate area.

SVCRC continues to address the failure of the repository and hold EPA accountable for remediation actions. SVCRC wrote a letter to EPA, signed by thousands of citizens, local and national groups opposing the repository and a call to have a permanent clean-up plan. For approximately a year, SVCRC, Sierra Club and Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) have pursued requests from EPA and IDEQ staff to provide the scientific data supporting their allegation, “that the water is cleaner after it goes through the (Mission) repository”. To date the agencies have not been able to provide the data to back up this statement.

Recently it was learned from FOIA materials sent by the Dept. of Transportation that the repository is nestled between the Yellowstone petroleum gas line and a natural gas line that has been in place in the area for the past 50 years. Affected citizens are asking the question as to why the pipelines were never made public at any time while the Mission Repository was proposed and developed. The Yellowstone pipeline and the natural gas lines have been in the Mission Repository for five decades. They are accidents waiting to happen with all the heavy equipment that is in operation at the site throughout the year and all the traffic and population that travels Interstate 90 a stone throw from Exit 39 where the 20 acre repository is located.

“Drop in gas pressure, lack of response by EPA to affected community members, CD’A tribal sacred grounds being desecrated, a major wetland being destroyed, National Historic Preservation laws being broken, millions of tons of pollution continuing to be deposited downstream to the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene Rivers, this is not emotional attachment to the Old Mission, this is about EPA’s destruction to the environment and human health risks. EPA needs to move to have this repository shut down, immediately”, said Shane Stancik, lifelong Silver Valley resident, lead poisoned child and SVCRC board member.

SVCRC is continuing its grassroots work to shut down the repository and assist EPA in refocusing its cleanup priorities to protect the environment and human health specific to blood lead testing and intervention.

“Furthermore, the use of child blood lead levels used as a remedial action objective cannot capture the broader dimensions of health and well-being that should be taken into account in remediation efforts. To this end, it should be argued that remediation efforts should not only focus on harm reduction but also contribute to efforts to ameliorate environmental and social injustices. Securing a health future for the residents of the contaminated mine sites, such as Kellogg, requires more than just reducing child blood lead levels; it requires attention to the complex set of factors underlying the pattern of systematic disadvantages that compromise the health and well-being of a post-production, mining community”, Ethical Issues in Using Children’s Blood Lead Levels as a Remedial Action Objective, Moodie, Evans, 2011.

For additional information to learn about the issues of the Bunker Hill/CD’A Basin Superfund site and get involved to address problems with the Mission Repository, contact SVCRC at www.silvervalleyaction.com or call 208-784-8891.

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Fracking Waste is Too Toxic For Niagara Falls

We’re not selling out future generations of our children for corporate greed.

This was a statement made by a Niagara Falls Council Chairman who at one time attended school in the Love Canal contaminated neighborhood.  It is refreshing to hear someone who has learned from our society’s past mistakes and takes steps to avoid the same problems in the future.

Niagara Falls has recently gone on record against treating wastewater from hydraulic fracturing, with elected officials saying they don’t want the city that endured the Love Canal toxic waste crisis to be a test case for the technology used in gas drilling operations.

The City Council also approved an ordinance Monday that prohibits natural gas extraction in Niagara Falls, as well as the “storage, transfer, treatment or disposal of natural gas exploration and production wastes.”

This does not mean that the Niagara Falls Water Board, who owns the treatment facility can’t agree to take the fracking waste, despite the city council decisions.  However, they would have to air lift the wastes in which would be costly, because the City will not allow it to be transferred or stored.

After celebrating this proactive and protective decision by the city council I realized that years ago a similar policy was passed in the city of New Bedford, MA.  In that situation the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) wanted to place a portable incinerator near the shoreline and burn the PCB wastes that were going to be dredged from the harbor.

When the city said no and passed a similar policy, the USEPA said we can air lift the incinerator on to the site.  The city countered by saying they would refused to give them permits for water and electricity. The USEPA came back with, we’ll air lift the incinerator, a generator and water tanks.  This became a big scandal and EPA backed down.

The lesson here is — believe the unbelievable when it comes to greed at any costs.  The city of Niagara Falls needs to watch carefully to make sure that their proactive intentions of protecting public health and the environment are in fact accomplished.

As a former resident I have to say that I am proud of the recent decision and foresight the city has demonstrated. If only Ohio could see the problem in the same light. They’ve had earthquakes and other related problems with waste disposal already. When will they ever learn?

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Study finds risk to children from coal-tar sealants










Children living next to driveways or parking lots coated with coal tar are exposed to significantly higher doses of cancer-causing chemicals than those living near untreated asphalt, according to a study that raises new questions about commonly used pavement sealants.

Researchers from Baylor University and the U.S. Geological Survey also found that children living near areas treated with coal-tar-based sealants ingest twice as many polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from contaminated dust tracked into their homes as they do from food.

The peer-reviewed study, and other new research documenting how coal-tar sealants emit high levels of troublesome chemicals into the air, comes as several cities in the Midwest, South and East are trying to ban the products’ use on playgrounds, parking lots and driveways. Some major retailers have pulled the products from their shelves, but coal-tar sealants remain widely available elsewhere.

“There’s been a long-held assumption that diet is the major source of exposure for children,” said Peter Van Metre, a USGS scientist who co-authored the studies. “But it turns out that dust ingestion is a more significant pathway.”

About 85 million gallons of coal-tar-based sealants are sold in the United States every year, mostly east of the Mississippi River, according to industry estimates. The sealants, promoted as a way to extend the life of asphalt and brighten it every few years with a fresh black sheen, are sprayed by contractors or spread by homeowners.

During the past decade, studies have identified coal-tar sealants as a major source of PAHs, toxic chemicals that can cause cancer and other health problems. Pavement sealants made with coal tar can contain as much as 50 percent PAHs by weight, substantially more than alternatives made with asphalt.

Anne LeHuray, executive director of the Pavement Coatings Technology Council, an industry trade group, said she was reviewing the new findings.

“It appears they have some other agenda here, which is to ban coal-tar-based pavement sealants,” she said of the government scientists.

LeHuray and other industry representatives have argued that vehicle exhaust, wood smoke and grilled hamburgers are more significant sources of the toxic chemicals than coal tar.

But the latest USGS research estimates that annual emissions of PAHs from the application of coal-tar-based sealants exceed the amount from vehicle exhaust. Two hours after application, emissions were 30,000 times higher than those from unsealed pavement, one of the new studies found. Parking lots with 3- to 8-year-old sealant released 60 times more PAHs to the air than parking lots without sealant.

By Michael Hawthorne of the Chicago Tribune

The studies are published in the scientific journals Chemosphere, Atmospheric Environment and Environmental Pollution.

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Backyard Talk

Chicago, We have a Problem! Another School Siting Gone Bad

Since 2000, CHEJ’s Childproofing Our Communities (CPOC) campaign has been working on environmental school based issues and specifically school siting. What is school siting? School Siting is the process of where to locate a school facility. For decades this has been a contentious problem for decision makers because often where to place a school can be influenced by the budget. Decision makers have been enticed into purchasing ridiculously low cost land or property often not taking into consideration the cost to remediate or clean-up any toxic contamination. This oversight has cost school districts extra millions of dollars to clean-up site and even more because often on-going monitoring must be put in place.

There have been many examples of poor planning of where to place a school. The Belmont Learning Complex in Los Angeles was built on top of a former oil field full of explosive and toxic gases and other contaminants. The full environmental assessment was not completed until after $123 million was already put into the project. The site was them abandoned due to the health and safety concerns. A new school was built after a thorough cleanup. Over $300 million was spent on the project!

Now in Chicago there are plans to locate an elementary school on contaminated land in an industrial area. The proposed site is near a power plant and in an area already documented to have the state’s highest levels of toxic chromium and sulfates, a hazardous air pollutant and probable human carcinogen. [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][Read More]

The economic advantage that school boards hope for with the purchase of a contaminated site is rarely as beneficial as designed. Often the ones who have very little input in the process suffer the most, children. The community can have input in this process by making sure your state have some type of school siting policy. In October 2011, the EPA released its School Siting Guidelines to assist school districts in assessing environmental factors when deciding where to place a school. Although guidelines  does not pertain to existing schools, it can be used as a tool to enact a policy in your area and assess existing schools for potential environmental hazards.

Check out CHEJ’s School Siting Toolkit for additional information on how to take action on where to place a school facility in your area.

CHEJ’s Focus on Schools webpage offer resources on other children’s environmental health issues.  

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Backyard Talk

What the Chemical Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know!

The American people will panic if they find out there is dangerous levels of dioxin in their food. That’s the argument the chemical and food industries are using to stop the release of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) scientific report on dioxin.   Really. . . do they really think people will panic rather than take steps to protect their families?  The American people didn’t panic and not place their children in vehicles when they learned that more kids are injured in auto collisions than in any other type of accident. Parents installed safety seats.

The EPA’s dioxin report has been meticulously peer reviewed and is scientifically sound.  Yet, the power of the corporations that are responsible for dioxin in our environment and food has kept this critical scientific information (over 20 years of study) from reaching the public.  Consequently, the public is unable to make personal decisions about what foods they’ll eat and how best to reduce their families’ risks.

Dioxin, a known cancer causing and endocrine-disruptor chemical, is a byproduct of combustion and various industrial processes and is found everywhere in the environment. Chlorinated dioxins are released into the air and travel great distances landing on fields, pastures and waterways from waste incineration, burning household waste and a variety of industrial processes, including smelting, chlorine paper bleaching, PVC plastics and pesticide manufacturing. When animals graze in the pastures or eat feed that has animal byproducts, they ingest dioxin which is then stored in their fat.  So when little Joey drinks his whole milk, he also ingests dioxin contained in the milk’s fat.

Ninety percent of the public’s body burden of dioxin comes primarily from animal fat in the food supply.  The Environmental Working Group has found that the amount of dioxin a nursing infant ingests daily is up to 77 times higher than the level EPA has proposed to protect the endocrine and immune systems. The fact that both breast milk and infant formula are contaminated with dioxin highlights the urgent need for EPA to release its report.  For cancer risk, the situation is also concerning because the general public is exposed to up to 1,200 times more dioxin than regulatory agencies typically consider safe.

Parents place bike helmets on their children, fasten their seat belts, and take their babies for regular checkups because they understand the risks of not taking these steps.  However, everyone is being kept in the dark when it comes to dioxin in our food.  For example, breast milk contains fairly high levels of dioxin.  Nevertheless breast milk is still the healthiest food for baby.  EPA must release this information to new mothers so they know that nursing is the healthiest option.

Whose protection is our public agencies’ priority?

Recently, there has been an increased lobbying effort by various industries to stop the release of the EPA’s dioxin report. The International Dairy Foods Association, for example, wrote EPA a letter stating, “Animal products, such as milk and dairy foods, have the highest concentrations of dioxins, albeit at levels that are only in the parts-per-million and clearly below levels that have been determined to be unsafe. However, EPA’s proposed values for evaluating dioxin, if translated publicly to a “reference dose,” would scare consumers away from our products, and this would be contrary to the government’s own dietary guidance to consume three servings of low-fat or fat-free dairy each day in order to get essential nutrients found in milk and dairy.”

Releasing the EPA’s dioxin report will help consumers make choices in food products that are low in fat content (as recommended by government’s dietary guidance) and could educate the dairy lobbyists as well since they got it wrong in their letter. Low fat and fat free products are not the big problem, because dioxin is carried into food products through the fat content.

Consumers should call their federal representatives and urge them to support the release of the EPA’s dioxin report so they can make their own decisions about what is safe.  It is time to stop assuming the American people will not understand and give them the scientific information.