Ashtabula, Ohio, is
facing problems which could overload their already struggling social
welfare services. Across America more people are being forced onto
food stamps or facing starvation. Some of these have lost their jobs.
Others can no longer work because of disabilities which can be
accounted for in other ways.
This appears to be especially
true, and becoming more so, in Ashtabula, a small town of 29,000
inhabitants which sits at the epicenter of four superfund sites, one
of the most in any county in Ohio today.
While many of the
companies responsible for the toxic waste have packed up and moved
operations to third world countries, others have moved in, continuing
the same practices. From the perspective of such companies, for
instance Millennium, the attractions of the area include the history
of previous pollution. Although the impact on the people and
environment, calculated monetarily, would be enormous the company has
routinely paid a tiny stipend, frequently around $50,000 a year in
fines to the EPA.
Diseases and conditions which, two
generations ago, were barely known, now account for a significant
number of the individuals now requiring aid. Among these conditions
are Parkinson's and Multiple Sclerosis, both neurological in origin,
both becoming far more common in Ashtabula.
From multiple
directions and sources indications now affirm something has changed.
Tracking the incidence of these devastating diseases could result in
nothing but more rapid action to identify the conditions which are
increasing their incidence in Americans. Yet legislation which would
accomplish this is stalled in Congress. In 2010, the House passed
H.R. 1362, a act similar to the stalled Senate bill, S. 425: National
Neurological Diseases Surveillance System Act of 2011.
The
House bill passed with 206 cosponsors. The nearly identical Senate
bill has 14 cosponsors, nine Democrats and five Republicans.. Both
would provide for the establishment of permanent national
surveillance systems for multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and
other neurological diseases and disorders. But until both pass and
are signed into law, this cannot happen.
Having information
freely available not only enables better choices for all of us, today
it may well spell the difference between life and death for many
Americans. Not knowing forces us to struggle in ignorance of facts
essential for our health and well-being. And since these facts widely
include information collected and retained by those in public
service, whose salaries are paid by taxpayers, this calls into
question the motives of those working for government.
In
Steve Lerner's book, “Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic
Chemical Exposure in the United States,” we see the unstated policy
of ignoring corporate impact in specific areas for reasons which are
never stated, also applied to the lives of the people who live there.
The section of the Lerner book, which outlines the impact of
Manganese poisoning in Marietta, Ohio, could well have been written
about Ashtabula.
By so doing, the joining of corporate
interests with the power of the state to externalize their costs and
so augment their profits. In a rational world destroying the present
value of resources which are common to all of us as the life-spans,
intellectual and health of people are diminished and destroyed would
be automatically treated as crimes.
Evading the consequences
of these crimes by using the institutions of government smacks of a
violation under color of law. Now, we must ask ourselves if the
present compilation of policies is random, or planned.
A“National
Sacrifice Zone” is defined as an area so contaminated or depleted
of its resources as to have little or no future use. The term has
been applied to areas which are badly polluted through previous
corporate abuse of resources which go far beyond any right of
ownership which can, rationally, be claimed by those responsible. Of
the enormous number of examples presently in the forefront of public
consciousness are fracking and manganese poisoning.
But the
'sacrifice zones' go beyond land, air, water, and the environment of
which these are elements. It also includes people. In Ashtabula, and
across both Ohio and Indiana, the sacrifice made to corporate
prosperity included people's health, their lives, and an additional
cost has been paid in the slow, but inevitable shock suffered as they
individually discovered the institutions, for which we pay, were
actually working against them.
As you read Lerner's book you
hear the words of ordinary Americans, struggling to understand what
is happening to them and why their lives and well being do not
matter.
“We thought we had the American dream,” says
Lesley Kuhl, who since 2002 has lived with her husband and two young
children on a quiet, leafy street in Marietta, Ohio.
Mrs.
Kuhl is a Republican, who considered herself conservative, when the
threat to her children forced her into action along with both
environmental activists and others in her town, like Caroline
Beidler, who could no longer ignore the visible impact of pollutants
on the health of their families.
Caroline Beidler and her
husband, Keith Bailey, a carpenter, had built their “dream home,”
in Marietta, Ohio. At the time they were unaware that their little
piece of heaven was only four miles, as the crow flies, from the
French-owned ferroalloy plant of Eramet Marietta, Inc.
According
to Steve Lerner, author of “Sacrifice Zones,” “Eramet (which
uses manganese, cadmium, and lead, among other feedstocks, to
strengthen steel and purify chromium) releases tons of heavy metal
dust into the air. It is one of the county’s top polluters.”
Their efforts transitioned from an informal club which logged
the ugly odors carried by the breeze from the plant to increasingly
organized efforts to stop the emissions. These struggles began in
2002. They continue today.
Tetrachloroethylene, “a chemical
that can cause dizziness, headaches, nausea, unconsciousness, and
even death.,” was only one of the pollutants being emitted.
Tetrachloroethylene was not even on the long list of chemicals that
Eramet admitting having released. In 2004, the company did, “emit
15,000 pounds of chromium compounds into the air and 75,000 pounds
into the river and 500,000 pounds of airborne manganese.”
Manganese is a known neurotoxin. Manganese poisoning mimics
Parkinson's Disease, among many other conditions.
At first,
Beidler was reluctant to make trouble. Over time she realized just
how many road blocks existed between the safety of her children.
Little help was forthcoming from state regulatory officials.
They
discovered how many ways accountability could be evaded by companies
which routinely spend money to influence government but never enough
to solve the problems they create. Fingers were pointed in every
possible direction but little changed.
According to Lerner,
“Total releases of toxic chemicals by Eramet reported to federal
officials were radically cut from about 12 million pounds when the
company was purchased in 2000 to about 6 million pounds of TRI
releases in 2004.”
In December 2005 a report by David Pace
of the Associated Press listed Eramet as the top factory nationwide
“whose emissions created the most potential health risk for
residents in the surrounding community.” Washington County was
ranked number one for the “highest health risk from industrial
pollution in 2000.”
This was the year Lesley Kuhl really
confronted the problem.
The group which formed around Beidler
and Kuhl, “began to collect information about air quality in their
region and make their network of members aware of key regulatory
developments, scientific studies, health studies, and emissions at
Eramet.”
The bottom-line motive was the continuing threat
to children, their children. In December 2005 Mrs. Kuhl read an
article in the local newspaper on the impact of elevated levels of
air-borne heavy metals their possible impact on the development of
the brains of very young children. The Kuhl children had suffered
numerous sinus infections that had to be treated with antibiotics,
and one of whom was diagnosed with a developmental disorder. Loss of
IQ points was also listed as a possibility.
Further research
revealed older people could experience mood and movement problems
from exposure. Suggestions for a 'study,' to take three years, was
not a solution.
Also, the families realized even moving was
no guarantee of a safe haven. How could they know where was safe?
Their children began to be tested for manganese exposure.
The
Kuhls and others continued to be shocked at the disregard for the
health and well being of their children. Their knowledge of the
problem, and how long it had been known, increased.
Dick
Wittberg, another resident, who heads the Mid-Ohio Valley Health
Department, had carried out a pilot study in the late 1990s. The
study compared the ability of children in Marietta to perform
physical tasks and answer academic questions. These were compared the
results from Marietta with, “a control sample of children from a
similar-sized town in Athens, Ohio, located forty-five miles away.”
A battery of 13 tests were administered to fourth-graders in
both cities. The children were matched, “for age, sex, and parental
education. The tests measured such things as educational proficiency,
balance, visual contrast sensitivity, and short-term memory.”
The
results were disturbing: “across the board: the Marietta youngsters
scored significantly lower on the tests than did those from Athens.”
In his opinion, “the study points to some neurological differences
and one has to suspect manganese. Nobody knows, for kids, how much
[exposure] is too much.”
The stalling tactics continue from
Aramet.
Protocols for handling potential pollutants, thus
eliminating the danger of impact exist today. This is not
rocket science. The only impact to be felt if such procedures
become standard is to end a threat to public health, the need
for clean-up, all too often paid for by taxpayers, and awaken
corporate balance sheets to the reality of a real free market.
There is no inherent freedom to cause harm to others.
It
is time to get specific about what protocols must be applied and on
the issue of liability.
This is how a free market is applied.
You can tell if it is a free market because if government can
intervene to limit liability or allow acts which are, by their nature
criminal, what you are seeing is corporate fascism.
As bad as
the situation is in Marietta, what is facing Ashtabula could be far
worse. The toxic releases of Manganese are double what is present in
Marietta, the source of pollution, Millennium, is far closer to
population centers, and a clock, of which we have only recently
become aware, is ticking toward a point of no return for many people.
A
study,
Parkinsonism Induced by Chronic Manganese Intoxication" An
Experience in Taiwan, by Chin-Chang Huang, MD, includes the troubling
facts, “Excessive manganese exposure may induce a neurological
syndrome called manganism, which is similar to Parkinson’s disease
(PD). However, close observation of patients with manganism reveals a
clinical disease entity different from PD, not only in the clinical
manifestations, but also in therapeutic responses. “ “...after
long-term follow-up studies, patients with manganism showed prominent
deterioration in the parkinsonian symptoms during the initial 5-10
years, followed by a plateau during the following 10 years.”
The
summary, in large part quoted above, ends with, “Although typical
patients with manganism are different from patients with PD, the
potential risk of inhaling welding fumes, which may accelerate the
onset of PD or even induce PD, has been raised during recent years.
This controversial topic requires further investigation.
The
results of this study should be considered along with this graph
showing money spent on lobbying by the American Chemical Council.
Source:
Open
Secrets While it is nearly impossible to know how the money was
spent the timing is telling.