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A tale of poison, deceit and heroism
I was going to go for the obvious today and tell you why fireworks are bad for the environment. But you already know that, right? It's a story that involves our old nemesis, perchlorate, and people who would dare to ask for an environmental assessment of year-round fireworks at a marine life park.
But I was stopped short by Susan Sward's story in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, a gripping tale of how a California woman battled the chemical company that was poisoning her High Desert town. Read it here, and catch Part 2 on Monday.
For reasons we're all too familiar with, this kind of investigative story is becoming the exception, rather than the norm, in the U.S. newspaper business, as publishers keep slashing staff and news space in what seems to be a never-ending spiral. (Sward's story appeared the same week the LA Times announced it was cutting 150 people from the newsroom.) For a newspaper-phile like myself, almost as interesting as Sward's story was the note about how she got it:
ABOUT THE SERIESRita Smith first called The Chronicle wanting to tell her story in 2002. She told an editorial assistant who answered the phone that her husband, a former chemical plant worker, was very sick after working at a plant in the San Bernardino County town of Trona in the Mojave Desert. She said thousands of birds had died near the plant - then named IMC Chemicals Inc. The details were sketchy.
The notes taken by the editorial assistant were passed on to Chronicle reporter Susan Sward. Over the next few years, Sward listened to Smith tell bits and pieces of her story over the phone, and more than a year ago, Sward began pursuing the story.
During her investigation, Sward interviewed more than 100 people - plant supervisors, former and current plant workers, some of their families, regulators, scientists, professors and Trona residents. She traveled twice to Trona. She asked the company dozens of questions about its operations. The company, now named Searles Valley Minerals, responded with hundreds of pages of detailed answers.
Good for Susan Sward. Good for the Chronicle. And good for Rita Smith.
Comments
Oh great. I figured fireworks weren't actually good for the environment, but I actually didn't know about the perchlorate and heavy metals. Feh!
Posted by: Beth, aka Fake Plastic Fish | July 8, 2008 8:45 PM
The american media avoids chemical stories. Recently a man beat his child on the road and had to be shot. He was described as foaming at the mouth and dialated pupils. If he had taken drugs, etc, there would have been a followup story but he had no history of mental illness and lived in an agricultural community.
20 years ago, organophosphates were supposed to be banned because they do permanent brain damage. Back then there were three main types. Now there are over 20 different kinds of organophosphates. I taught at a school where there was at least 1 kid with seizures in each classroom. A little girl with cerebral palsy developed seizures a month before I did. The doctor just wanted to pump her with medicines but the mom insisted on knowing what was wrong and she showed lowered cholinsterase levels, but the doctor didn't tell her it was because of pesticides. The distict is now clean because I worked with the risk manager, but non of the doctors would touch the pesticide and chemical issue. Another school district was using Texas Markers (xylene solvent based permanent markers that have no saftey rating, and are sold only on line) When I informed the school district about the markers and their health and fire hazard and told the board that the custodians were spraying before school, 20 custodians were fired, and the cabinets the markers were stored in were torn out of the rooms. The doctors never contacted the health department. Seizures are not being reported, only treated with medicines that in my opinion, don't really help."
Posted by: Vivian | July 16, 2008 7:52 AM
i to worked at the plants in trona and have some of the same symptoms as steve smith
chronic exhaustion. the pain all over my body DXed as fibromyalgia
shortness of breath.
i cam up with a different but related
chemical compound.
Chlorophenol used in the LLX unit at the trona plant.
This chlorophenol also has 16 isomers of dioxin in the compound.
It took me months to find the EPA documents but i found them that show that these compounds were in the LLX unit where i worked,
DDE may be a breakdown product of the LLX unit chlorophenol or a contaminant like dioxin that was unwittingly formed during manufacture
Posted by: anned | July 17, 2008 3:31 AM