Why Are We Sick?

Jul 6, '08 10:08 AM by Cal for everyone

Why Are We Sick - Natick’s Superfund Site (Orignially Posted on Infomania World)

Apr 9, 2008 Author: ellen | Filed under: Family, General, Health

My brother Ed put together this map showing the address we grew up at in Natick and the proximity and our activity around the Natick Laboratories, a superfund site.

According to an article, Natick’s Superfund Site, the following has been found.

• Over the years a substantial amount of dry cleaning fluid (also called perchloroethylene or PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), benzene, pesticides, polynuclear aromatic compounds, and mercury has escaped into the local environment.
• The Natick Labs also operates a medical waste incinerator. The incinerator is used to destroy about 1500 pounds of pathological wastes each year. The US EPA has identified these incinerators as America’s third largest source of dioxins. Medical waste incinerators produce more dioxins than all paper mill boilers, industrial furnaces and boilers, cars and trucks, hazardous waste incinerators, and coal and oil burning power plants combined.
• The sediments surrounding the Army labs’ T-25 stormwater outfall near Lakewood Avenue are heavily contaminated with DDT, other pesticides, arsenic, PAHs, toxic metals, and possibly dioxins.
• The Natick Labs have released toxic air pollutants from open pit test burns, burning of wastes, including burning of clothing contaminated with small amounts of chemical weapons like Mustard (HD or di(chloroethyl) sulfide). Solvents have contaminated town drinking water wells (which are usually treated before use), and can be found in lake water at low levels. Residents are exposed to contaminants by eating lake fish or ingesting lake water containing stirred-up sediments from the T-25 outfall area.

The scary thing is that we went swimming and fishing in the water around the Natick Labs. Our house was downwind from the incinerator exposing us to dioxins in the air. I come from a large family and there are a few of us that have idiopathic-type illnesses that may be caused by our close proximity to this superfund site. I have fibromyalgia and one of my sisters and my brother Ed have it as well. Another sister has an autoimmune disorder that could be caused by environmental factors. My brother Ed as well as my mother have/had neurological problems and my mother died from ALS which again could be caused by exposure to dioxins or other environmental contaiminants.

All of this is supposition, nothing can be proved or disproved. Is it coincidental that half my family has illnesses that were not present in previous generations? Are we reading too much into this? Do you have any experience living near a superfund or brownfield site where there is a higher incidence of cancer or other environmental illnesses?

---

spaceeagle wrote today at 10:47 AM
BP waste water "treatment" plant:



spaceeagle wrote today at 10:44 AM
Like the "old timers" at the plant used to say, "This stuff will eat through concrete and metal, but it won't hurt you." ;)

spaceeagle wrote today at 10:43 AM
Toxic waste at a school location in Houston:

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2451


spaceeagle wrote today at 10:40 AM
Radioactive waste dumping... You can see one facility on the way to The Strand in Galveston, TX:

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2646

spaceeagle wrote today at 10:35 AM
Harris County Superfund Sites (in and near Houston, TX):

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2608

spaceeagle wrote today at 10:32 AM
Problems and Bush coverups of another Texas waste facility:

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=1766


spaceeagle wrote today at 10:27 AM
If I had the money, I would subscribe to this page where I could get more detailed legal information:

http://productliability.law360.com/Public/Subscribe.aspx


spaceeagle wrote today at 10:24 AM
Some information on what made the Texas City Superfund site go bad:

http://www.epa.gov/oerrpage/superfund/programs/recycle_old/reuse/

The Superfund Site was designed to burn specific greatly degraded waste material. It was not designed to burn hot enough to safely burn the fresh waste chemicals that BP and the other refineries and chemical plants wanted to dump there. The refineries were advised of this, but they dumped on the site and encouraged them to burn their waste anyway. Many people who were downwind of the site became very ill when they started this burning. I was one of them.

I discussed the problem with a couple of the engineers at AMOCO (now BP) where I worked. They agreed that site didn't burn hot enough to be burning the fresh waste there, but said the refineries and chemical plants were unwilling to upgrade the burner.