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ProudLib72

(17,984 posts)
Sat Sep 30, 2017, 05:28 PM Sep 2017

Hurricane Harvey-Related Diseases Have Increased, Health Officials Warn [View all]

It's not just PR. Newsweek article.

http://www.newsweek.com/hurricane-harvey-related-diseases-have-increased-health-officials-warn-675040

Among Dr. Shah’s concerns is the recent uptick in floodwater-related illnesses such as respiratory disease, skin infections, and gastrointestinal (GI) infections.

“The [water] contains sewage. It contains runoff from who knows what,” Dr. James McDeavitt, dean of clinical affairs at Baylor College of Medicine, told ABC News.


And this one from Verge: Toxic waste seeps from a Houston Superfund site after Harvey's floods: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16385568/hurricane-harvey-superfund-site-houston-dioxin-cancer-chemicals

Hurricane Harvey’s unprecedented rains and flooding last month caused a leak from a heavily polluted site along the San Jacinto River east of Houston, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Some of the highly toxic chemicals found include dioxins; they’re known to cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, and cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization. A sediment sample at the site showed dioxins at 70,000 ng/kg — orders of magnitude higher than the recommended level at the site, which is 30 ng/kg. That’s already trouble, but it gets worse: Certain types of dioxins can be very hard to dispose of, increasing the risks of contamination. The dioxin in the Superfund site waste doesn’t dissolve easily in water, but it can seep into the surrounding sediments, the EPA says.


This is NOT the time to be playing golf or tweeting incendiary comments. This lackadaisical attitude is going to kill hundreds if not thousands of people before the year is out.

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