Deadly Secrets (Industrial Pollution and The Poor)

[nosmokes]

The article is excerpted from the author's bookThe Secret history of the War on Cancer which just might hafta go on my reading list. She ceratainly does one helluva job with this essay and I sure like her style.
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original-powells

Deadly Secrets
by Devra Davis



Young children tell secrets, many of which turn out to be fabulously untrue. But what passes as child's play can turn deadly when adults agree to keep matters of life and death under wraps.

Few have ever heard of Reveilletown, Louisiana. In 1987 30 families, in what was then a poor black community next to Georgia Gulf's flagship plant, sued the company alleging that their land was packed with hidden toxic contamination. The company responded by turning the claims into secrets, buying up the town, paying the residents for their homes, leveling the entire neighborhood, and requiring that no information on what had happened to the health of the people would ever become public. Some of the local environmental and community advocates protested that this solution removed the people but did not remove the hazards. Silence was bought and research stopped.

But was there any risk to people's health? Nobody knows and nobody is asking. A few years later, the town of Mossville also was wiped off the map. Living downstream of several major chemical facilities, folks in the area got used to what was called "sheltering in place." Della Sullivan who grew up in the town remembers, "A big boom would go off, rattling the house and everything in it. Sometimes windows would crack. Running out in the middle of the night in this swamp can be scary, especially for little kids who grow up looking out for swamp monsters."

I asked her, "Come on now, did you really believe in swamp monsters?"

With a deadpan look, she answered, "Of course there are swamp monsters. What do you think a water moccasin or an alligator really is? We grew up knowing things to stay away from. Nobody in their right mind goes into a swamp at night in their bedclothes unless they be scared out of their head."

Swamp monsters were not the only things in the area that didn't leave clear tracks. The residents of Mossville shut their doors and windows to smoke and fumes, but couldn't shut their bodies from pollution that entered their water and food. In 2005, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported that older persons from the area had more than four times the amount of dioxin in their blood of their peers in the rest of the country.

All that was left of Mossville when I visited two years before Katrina leveled the region was a solitary white painted board with a slogan painted in black:

In memory of workers and citizens who have paid with their lives for a toxic environment. Our fight for a clean environment is for you, our families and our future.

Surrounding this statement were more than fifty hand-lettered names. As we walked along what was left of Mossville, we found the remains of small cement-block foundations. Tall grasses claimed the space of what had once been a vibrant hunting and fishing community.

In Mossville, the lucky ones who were still alive collected money from Conoco and Condea-Vista before they left town. But there was a catch, as one investigator anonymously confided. Everything became a secret. "There was one clause in all the agreements that no matter what pollution, no matter what illness ever came up in the future, from no matter what chemical, no matter what source of what chemical, they were no longer going to be allowed to sue the chemical companies if they got sick later on."

I haven't been back to the area since the big hurricanes hit — first Katrina, then Rita. In the ocean, as hurricanes build and move across the surface, a train of lee waves is produced. Behind them, a large zone of upwelled water rises that sweeps over whatever it finds, until it runs out of steam. Jerome Longo, head of the National Wildlife Federation, comes from Mossville. He told me that a wall of water more than twenty feet high swept through what was left of the small town. When it receded, it took along sludge and waste of years, spreading the toxic residues more broadly than before.

~snip~
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complete article here

[Wilms]

1. .

[flashl]

2. Blacks lifestyles and poverty are usually mentioned as the ONLY contributors of health problems

HBCU Experts Call on Congress to Assist Minority Communities Near Toxic Waste Sites

Experts from two Black colleges are calling on Congress to help low-income, minority communities, which are disproportionately more likely than other communities to live near toxic waste sites with health hazards for children and families.

The House and Senate should hold hearings, clarify legal mandates and adopt new regulations to promote environmental justice, the witnesses told a Senate subcommittee in late July.

“Our communities cannot wait another 20 years,” said Dr. Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, noting that advocates have sought attention on this issue for at least two decades. Risks have increased since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, as oil spills and flooding have left many Gulf Coast areas with long-term damage.

“Getting government to respond to the environmental and health concerns of low-income people and people of color communities has been an uphill struggle long before the world witnessed the disastrous Hurricane Katrina response nearly two years ago,” he told the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health.

Minorities are overrepresented near hazardous waste facilities in 90 percent of all U.S. states, Bullard said. They also constitute the majority of U.S. residents living within two miles of the worst toxic waste sites.

[nosmokes]

3. Of course they are! Blame the victim is the classic method of

shifting responsibility from the corporate*Real 'merkun Hero* to the lazy shiftless criminal oriented minorities. What pisses me off is that this shit is still going on. And it's being underwritten with tax dollars and they call it Economic enterprise Zones and and other fancy assed names and actually assess the people that live next to these poison factories w/ an extra tax bill under the fallacy that they'll be getting one of those $100k jobs as an engineer at the plant. But folks that didn't have much of a shot at finishing HS aren't likely to have the goods to work as an engineer, ya know? Lincoln mighta freed the slaves but not everyone got the memo...

edit:Flashl-I meant to say that's a great site in your link.thanks!

[flashl]

4. Thanks. If you are interested there are more ...

National Black Environmental Justice Network

As you will see, there have been urgent calls to take immediate action on environmental justice issues.

[bobbolink]

16. That's a great site! I especially liked "The World's A Dirty Place When You Are Poor"

well, I didn't like it, but....

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/09/09/Opinion/The_world_s_a_dirty_p.shtml

One of our persistent national fantasies - right up there with having God's permission to do pretty much anything we want - is that America has no class system. We tell ourselves we're not like stratified, calcified Europe. Here it doesn't matter if you went to school at Andover or Dixie County High; if you drink chateau-bottled Burgundy or Schlitz; if you live behind a gate or behind the landfill. In America, we are all equal.

Well, to steal from Ernest Hemingway, wouldn't it be pretty to think so? But some Americans are clearly more equal than others, especially when it comes to the environment. The poor suffer disproportionately from the destruction of our wetlands, the poisoning of our waters and the degradation of our air and our soil. This is particularly true in the South, as Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, points out: "Historically, the South lagged behind the rest of country economically, and so would welcome any industry, no matter how dirty."

That article deserves it's own thread... I hope you'll do the honors!

:applause:

[babydollhead]

5. her other book, "When Smoke Ran Like Water" is great!

she's been instumental in my art, her words paint better pictures then any photogragh. google her. Devra Davis

[Robbien]

6. The entire article is hard to read.

One atrocity piled upon another piled upon another.

[scarletwoman]

7. k & r (nt)

[bobbolink]

8. Great thread!! Dr. McCampbell is doing great work on related issues in Santa Fe.

http://chemicalsensitivityfoundation.org/board-resumes.htm

Thanks so much for posting this article--I'm looking forward to reading it!

After being homeless for 1 1/4 years, I had to leave the apartment I had just moved into because it was polluted---and we poor folk had NO RECOURSE!! Either keep getting sick from the pollution, or go back to living in your car. Great choice. :sarcasm:

My only regret with your thread is that I can only recommend it once... :applause:

[Totally Committed]

9. K & R

Great OP!

TC

[Cleita]

10. Another

:kick:

[nam78_two]

11. K&R

Excellent post :kick:.

[Whisp]

12. unforgivable.

I guess this is what is meant by the War on Poverty... corporate wars against the poor.

I am trying to think of the name a movie that John Travolta did a few years ago - where he was a lawyer representing some people in a town much like in the OP. Beatrice foods was involved, I think - and it was based on a true story.

anyone recall?

[bobbolink]

13. No, but it sounds like a movie I'd like to see, so I hope someone can

ID it.

Even though I don't care so much about John Revolting... ~~chortle~~

The other night I saw another showing of Erin Brockovitch, and was taken again by how there are a *few* people with real conscience and integrity, who keep pushing, and end up taking on Goliath.

Then I think of all the instances where there is nobody to take on Goliath.. and people fall.

"...justice for all."

Right. :(

[Whisp]

14. aha! found it, called A Civil Action...

Tagline: Justice has its price.

Plot Outline The families of children who died sue two companies for dumping toxic waste: a tort so expensive to prove, the case could bankrupt their lawyer.

Plot Synopsis: Jan Schlichtmann, a tenacious lawyer, is addressed by a group of families. When investigating the seemingly non-profiting case, he finds it to be a major environmental issue that has a lot of impact potential. A leather production company could be responsible for several deadly cases of leukemia, but also is the main employer for the area. Schlichtmann and his three colleagues set out to have the company forced to decontaminate the affected areas, and of course to sue for a major sum of compensation. But the lawyers of the leather company's mother company are not easy to get to, and soon Schlichtmann and his friends find themselves in a battle of mere survival.

==
Schlichtmann became famous in the 1980s as a result of his lawsuit against W. R. Grace and Beatrice Co., which brought to the public's attention the fact that chemicals from these companies had contaminated drinking water in a small town north of Boston (Woburn, Massachusetts). Extensive tests by Schlichtmann's experts and by the EPA proved that defendants W. R. Grace and Beatrice Co. had polluted Woburn's water with dangerous levels of various carcinogenic chemicals.

The contamination is alleged to have resulted in the deaths of children from leukemia. This civil action case, often referred to as "Woburn," was chronicled in the 1995 book A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr, which in turn was made into a film starring John Travolta as Schlichtmann.

Schlichtmann has continued in his practice of the law, with a focus on toxic torts and consumer protection. He is currently engaged in a legal battle with a debt collection agency known as "The Cadle Company." Schlichtmann is also representing families from Wilmington Massachusetts in a case that resembles his representation of the families from Woburn.

He is currently working with Bob Ackley, a gas specialist, in an effort to save the urban forest from natural gas leaks.

===
Legal Broadcast Network

Jan Schlichtmann co-founded The Legal Broadcast Network with Mark Wahlstrom in 2005. LBN is a blogging and podcasting site of interest to trial lawyers and consumers interested in various aspects of trial law and settlement issues. In 2007 he also founded The Civil Action Center as a means of educating attorneys and citizens about alternatives to litigation, means of empowering consumers and discussion of environmental law.



;)

[bobbolink]

15. Thanks! I guess Schlichtmann is my new hero... ^_^

I dont' have a way to watch movies now, but I'm bookmarking this, and will see if I can find the book.

I'm so glad to know there are some people with real integrity around in this age of greed!

Thanks! :hi: