But no one’s had it as bad as the 1,200 residents of the West Calumet Housing Project in East Chicago, Indiana — whose homes are actually located within the boundaries of the USS Lead Superfund site — and who have been told to relocate their households on short notice, due to critically unsafe levels of lead in neighborhood soil.

It’s been reported that two-thirds of those residents are children. Many of them are now lead-poisoned children. Nearly all of them have brown skin. I scroll through article after article, photos of black kids sitting on front steps, next to big EPA yard signs warning, “DO NOT play in the dirt or around the mulch.” With an illustration of a brightly-colored ball on fresh green grass, just to make the message clear.

What is it, exactly, that I want to say about all this?

My first impulse, just an echo of what has already been said: This never should have happened. Of course it shouldn’t have happened. We (they) should have known better.

Except that the West Calumet neighborhood was developed in the 1960s and 1970s, when the EPA was in its infancy, and before Superfund even existed. And I can tell you from personal experience in environmental remediation that stupidity was a pervasive problem in historic land use decisions. (Who builds a residential neighborhood on a former lead smelting site? The same type of planners who build a school and residential neighborhood over a filled, toxic canal that has been purchased for a dollar.)

But there’s more to this case than just the 20-20 hindsight of spackling over industrial blight. What I’m trying to say, is that when I read about 29 children with blood lead concentrations significantly over the CDC’s level of concern, all because they are living and playing in yards with lead levels containing as much as 227 times the lead limit allowed by the EPA, and then I think about how long this hazard has resided in the soils of this community, and how long that soil has been kicked up into dust by Goodwill-purchased sneakers, and tracked into hallways and wiped onto hand-me-down shirts tossed onto the backs of kitchen chairs before those children rifle through the pantry for something good to eat — when I think about what has happened here, and how long it’s really been happening, it triggers the same visceral anger I felt when I first started learning about PFOA.

Here’s why: Because both public health catastrophes reveal the same dysfunctional premise upon which our environmental health practices seem to rely (especially in low-income areas). Which is to say: Action need not be taken until harm has already been caused.

The EPA is quick to mention that action has, in fact, been taken. And yes, approximately 90 of 1,200 properties in the neighborhood were sampled during a three-year investigation started in 2003. Roughly half of the sampled properties contained lead-contaminated soil above the EPA’s standards, and 15 of those were contaminated enough to require time-critical removal action by the agency in 2008. These data were used to justify the neighborhood’s designation as a Superfund site in 2009, and an additional time-critical removal action was taken in 2011 for 16 additional properties. So yes, action was taken for some properties… sporadically, over a long period of time. My oldest daughter was born in 2003. A lot of childhood development happens during a 12-year period.

So one wonders what action was taken for those whose properties weren’t tested, or whose soil was tested but didn’t meet the threshold for emergency removal. A flimsy pamphlet on how to reduce your lead exposure? A recommendation that you wash your children’s hands and toys when they come inside from play? And one wonders how much action was taken to educate new residents of the neighborhood and housing project over that 10+ year period. A public notice for a public meeting?

Widespread testing to determine which soils needed removal was not initiated until 2014. In response to the shock and outrage recently expressed by residents of the West Calumet Housing Project over the sudden urgency of lead contamination in their neighborhood, Robert Kaplan, acting administrator for the EPA’s Great Lakes Region, told The New York Times that EPA “had in fact warned West Calumet residents for at least a decade to avoid the soil with public notices and community meetings.” Clearly a statement in the agency’s defense, but one which also implies that not only should residents have known about the lead, but that their ignorance about the matter may have played a role in their family’s health effects.

I can think of no greater insult beyond the trespassing of an industrial contaminant across the boundaries of my own cells and those of my children, than the suggestion that its preventable harm was solely my responsibility.

Kaplan’s remarks stink of a patriarchal you-should-have-known-better mentality, a scorn typically reserved for a scantily-clad sexual assault victim found in her pitiful shredded clothes.  What did you expect, living in the projects? You knew that there was lead.

Let us be clear. They were warned for at least a decade to avoid the soil. Not “We regret that it has taken this long to take full action on this issue.” Or simply, “We’re sorry, we didn’t know it was this bad. We are working on fixing the problem.” The sad irony of Kaplan’s subtle judgment is this: Even if West Calumet residents had been scientifically knowledgable enough to deduce the hazards in which they lived, or civically savvy enough to be fully engaged in the Superfund public process, what could they have done? Where would they have gone? The state and federal government certainly wouldn’t have footed any bills on the possibility that they might be harmed. They would have certainly wanted some proof.

Proof which requires routine blood lead testing and consistent funding of such programs — an issue in Indiana, I suspect, considering its less-than-stellar commitment to public health funding. It’s quite the lesson in environmental injustice, on the interconnectedness of environmental degradation, public health, race, politics, and urban American culture. An ugly, despicable lesson, but one that must be dragged into the light.

Photo credit: nbcnews.com

Works consulted: Final Feasibility Study Report, U.S. Smelter and Lead Refinery (USS Lead) Superfund Site

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PFCs have been the subject of intense debate for many years, after research confirmed the persistence of long-chain PFCs both in the environment and in people’s bodies, potentially increasing the risk of cancer and other health issues.  As a result, and under pressure from regulatory agencies, DuPont removed one of these chemicals, perfluorooctanoic acid (or PFOA, also known as “C8”), from its Teflon product line, and has since replaced C8 with other chemicals.

Now the spotlight is on these replacement PFCs, known in the chemical industry as poly- or perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs).  At issue is whether manufacturers should be allowed to use these second-generation PFCs in consumer products, without knowing the full-scale environmental health effects of this “new crop.”  While the American Chemistry Council argues that the new generation of PFCs are safer alternatives to the chemicals they have replaced, many toxicologists anticipate negative effects from these alternative compounds, on the basis that they reside in the same family, and exhibit many of the same properties as the original toxic compounds.

The rush to replace one class of harmful substances with another “less harmful” alternative is nothing new to the American marketplace.  Exhibit A: the replacement of environmentally persistent organochloride pesticides (such as DDT, aldrin, and dieldrin) with a new class of pesticides called organophosphate chemicals.  Exhibit B: the replacement of tetra-ethyl lead in gasoline with methyl-tertiary-butyl-ether, or MTBE.  And most recently, the phasing out of bisphenol A (BPA), in favor of bisphenol S (BPS) in common plastic goods.

But the extent to which “less harmful” is known before unleashing substitute chemicals on the American public has been, and continues to be an unfocused concept.  Consider: years after their pervasive use on American food crops, organophosphate chemicals (which were derived from military nerve agents used in chemical warfare) — the supposed “safer” class of pesticides — are now being implicated in the increased incidence of neurodevelopmental conditions, as well as the increasing incidence of childhood brain cancers.

And MTBE — once hailed as the “environmentally friendly” gasoline additive used to reduce emissions of smog-producing air pollutants — turned out to be a rogue replacement as well, a compound so soluble and mobile in the subsurface that it quietly knocked out 70% of Santa Monica, California’s drinking water wells before its toxicologic properties were really even known (see the original “60 Minutes” feature on MTBE here.)   In fact, the health effects from exposure to MTBE are still being investigated, and though the EPA has identified the chemical as a possible human carcinogen, the agency has yet to establish a Maximum Contaminant Level for MTBE in drinking water.

In my own environmental remediation days, MTBE was known as a “runner” — a chemical that traveled so quickly in soil and water that its addition to gasoline pumps in the 1990s significantly lengthened the geographic footprint of gasoline plumes from leaky underground storage tanks.  Perhaps the most frustrating aspect was the predictability of the scenario we saw playing out in the field.  Anyone who understood the chemical properties of MTBE should have anticipated what could happen when you put a chemical like that into an underground storage tank located above a drinking water aquifer…

We have yet to understand the impacts of BPS, currently standing in for the BPA that recently leached from our baby bottles and plastic food containers, let alone the environmental health consequences of this new generation of PFCs.  But we can make some educated guesses.  Based upon our current modus operandi, we can be sure that we will find them in our environment, our food, and our bodies before we really know.

It’s all too easy to look at the presence of these chemicals in our environment, in ourselves, as some kind of cosmic event over which we had no control, like Pandora’s Box. But in so doing, we conveniently excuse ourselves from acknowledging the active role we are taking in our own self-destruction.  By blaming Pandora, we abstain from the responsibility we have as intelligent human beings to anticipate these outcomes based upon 1) documented history, and 2) scientifically possible outcomes.  We know damn well what can happen because we have already seen what can happen.  By turning a blind eye and allowing replacement chemicals to enter the market without sufficient study, all we are doing is continuing a legacy of non-consensual experimentation.  On ourselves, on future generations.

The post The Myth of Blaming Pandora appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

I know a thing or two about doubt.  I know the feeling, as an environmental scientist, of second-guessing my calculations, the nagging paranoia that I’ve based important regulatory decisions on incorrect assumptions.  And as a writer, I am well-acquainted with the metallic taste of self-doubt — of sharing too much, or not enough, or misjudging my aesthetic.  To a certain degree, I think it’s healthy to second-guess.  Keeps one from settling too comfortably on their haunches, so to speak.  But sometimes, the tendency to be uncertain can be hijacked by others with thinly veiled agendas.

In February of this year, right before I was to deliver a reading of an essay from Creative Nonfiction’s The Human Face of Sustainability contest, I was alerted by CNF editor Lee Gutkind and someone from the marketing staff of Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability that there was some controversy regarding my piece.  Not to worry, they said, discussion is good.  But they wanted me to know in case something came up during my reading.  Then they shared what others had said.

For those who haven’t read the piece, “Acts of Courage” explores the increasing incidence of childhood cancers juxtaposed against our increased use of toxic chemicals — the evidence of which is documented by the presence of chemicals in our water, soil, food, and other consumer products (listen to the podcast reading of the essay here).  Many of these chemicals are known and suspected carcinogens, others have been released into the marketplace and environment without sufficient testing.  In the piece, I make no specific accusations about cause and effect; rather, I simply weave the facts together, shine a light into a dark corner and ask, “Shouldn’t we be looking here?”

The news of my essay winning The Human Face of Sustainability contest ruffled some feathers — a few scientists and scholars (whose identities I choose not to reveal in the interest of professional dignity) who read the blurb about my piece in ASU’s press release and responded with surprising disdain.  I will spare you the details, but here are some of the phrases that were being kicked around: “Of course this is junk… I don’t know of any science that supports this scare mongering.”  “We don’t need science becoming magic. Traces of this and that will kill you.”  And my favorite: “It would seem that any prize for creative non-fiction should be for something that is actually non-fiction.”

Ouch.  I was certain I was about to be ambushed.

The threat of attack sent me into a manic state of self-doubt, and I scoured my research to double-check the statistics and prepare for my reading as if it were a thesis defense.  These were scholars, after all, people with a helluva lot more academic credentialing than me.  At some point though, late in the night before my reading, when my anxiety had reached critical mass, I decided to focus my research on my attackers instead.

Sure enough, the special interests began to emerge — representatives of, and affiliations with institutes and organizations against chemical regulation, funded by petroleum, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries.  I had just experienced firsthand the strategic employment of doubt, the attack-via-uncertainty.  The defensive offensive.

This is a card frequently played in the environment-verses-industry game, the latest round evident in Steven E. Koonin’s “Climate Science is Not Settled” piece — which is, of course, being applauded by fossil fuel lobbyists (for more discussion, see Andrew Revkin’s blog post “Certainties, Uncertainties, and Choices with Global Warming” at Dot Earth).  Better not do anything about climate change… the science is still uncertain.  Score one for the status quo.

But here’s the thing we need to understand: while scientific uncertainty is a valid topic to wrestle and discuss, it is currently being (ab)used as a ploy to distract from the real issue at hand — by which I mean the ethics behind our culture’s approach to things like chemical regulation and climate change.  Ethical questions such as: Is it morally acceptable to burden future generations with providing the evidence of harm?  Or as Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael Nelson have asked in their co-edited book, Moral Ground: Do we have a moral obligation to leave future generations with a world as rich in possibility as the one that was left to us?  These are the questions that should drive our actions, and they are exactly the ones environmental opponents seek to avoid.  Why? Because their answers are less susceptible to doubt.

Despite the uncertainty, I do believe that the scientific evidence of human-caused global climate change is solid, as is the scientific argument for using the precautionary principle in chemical regulation.  The data glare at us like a mid-day sun, and the doubt cast by climate deniers and other industry loyalists is a tactic — just a moment in time when the sun is obscured by the moon.  There was a time when people were afraid of the solar eclipse.  Today we should know better than that.

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