For Landon, Alesia, and Hazel

By Mickey Friedman
April 10, 2016

My friends Landon, Alesia, and Hazel live a short walk from GE’s planned PCB-dump off Van Deusenville Road in Housatonic, Massachusetts.

Depending on how much or little work GE is forced to do in the Housatonic River, GE’s Housatonic dump will occupy between four and forty-four acres of the one hundred and seven acres they own.

Landon, Alesia, and Hazel have been incredibly kind to me, allowing me to sit at their designated “sugar table” at Fuel Coffee Shop while I write my novels and newspaper columns. And all I have to do is munch the occasional donut and share the space with them. A more than fair trade.

I doubt they even know about PCBs. Few children do, although they are among the most vulnerable to these toxic chemicals.

GE knew from the very beginning how dangerous Monsanto’s PCBs were but their PCBs kept those very profitable electrical transformers from exploding. So it really made no sense/cents to find a safer alternative.

We learned from Drs. Joseph and Sandra Jacobson’s groundbreaking work with expectant mothers who unfortunately ate PCB-contaminated fish from Lake Michigan that in-utero exposure can cause serious neurological defects in children. The Jacobsons found that exposure to relatively small quantities of PCBs can result in low birth weight, smaller head circumference, reduced startle response, and impaired neurological functions. The Jacobsons followed these children as they grew older and found they had lower IQ scores, poor reading comprehension, deficits in paying attention and compromised memory.

While there still remains some controversy about PCBs and cancer in humans, there is no doubt that PCBs cause cancer in animals. And as Vincent James Cogliano of the EPA wrote in 1998: “New toxicity information from a 1996 cancer study of four commercial mixtures strengthen the case that all PCB mixtures can cause cancer, although different mixtures have different potencies.”

Landon, Alesia, and Hazel’s parents, and the parents of their friends and all of us, actually, who live within the Housatonic River corridor ought to be worrying about a PCB dump. Because as the World Health Organization wrote in 2000: “The universal distribution of PCBs throughout the world suggest that PCBs are transported in air.” Stating that “the ability of PCBs to co-distil, volatilize from landfills into the atmosphere … and resist degradation at low incinerating temperatures, makes atmospheric transport the primary mode of global distribution. In a study in the USA, 92% of the PCBs detected were in the vapour phase.”

This is a very scary message: PCBs volatilize from riverbank soil and river sediment and travel from landfills into the air. And a lot of PCBs are doing that kind of travelling. And we’re all vulnerable.

Recent studies have linked PCBs to increased rates of melanomas, liver cancer, gall bladder cancer, biliary tract cancer, gastrointestinal tract cancer, and brain cancer. PCBs may be linked to breast cancer

At the moment GE and EPA are negotiating in secret about the cleanup of ten miles of the Rest of River. While federal and state environmental officials insist that GE transport the PCB-contaminated river sediment and bank soil it removes from the River to an out of state landfill, GE is challenging that decision. And as the people in Pittsfield learned, EPA and the state have no problem compromising when it comes to PCB dumps.

Right now the folks in Housatonic and Great Barrington are organizing. And I hope those of you who live in Lenox and Lee will do the same.

Because GE has plans for you. And GE is hedging its PCB bets. There are possible dumps also planned for the Woods Pond area and on Forest Street in Lee. The Lenox landfill, depending on how many cubic yards of sediment and soil GE removes, will vary from six to eighteen acres on a seventy-five acre plot. The Forest Street landfill in Lee will vary from ten to thirty-four acres on a hundred and ninety-five acre plot. For those of you who grew up in a city, imagine each acre as a square city block.

Maybe some of you remember what happened in Pittsfield. The Pittsfield powers-that-be embraced the 2000 Consent Decree between Massachusetts, Connecticut, GE, and the EPA, the agreement that laid out how GE and EPA would clean the first two miles of the Housatonic. Allowing GE to dump contaminated soil and sediment at the unlined Hill 78 dump and the new landfill at Building 71. Across the street from the Allendale School. And, in return, GE gave the city a paltry million bucks every year for ten years. Don’t be surprised when some in Lee, Lenox, and GB start imagining what their GE money might buy.

Or maybe with passion and persistence we can convincingly insist “Don’t Dump PCBs. Treat Them.” Save Housatonic for Landon, Alesia, and Hazel. Save Lenox and Lee for their kids.

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NOTES:
Jacobson, J.L. and S. W. Jacobson. 1996. “Intellectual Impairment in Children Exposed to Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Utero.” New England Journal of Medicine 335(11):783-789.

Vincent James Cogliano, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Center for Environmental Assessment, “Assessing the Cancer Risk from Environmental PCBs,” Environmental Health Perspectives, Volume 106, Number 6, June 1998, Page 317.

“Air Quality Guidelines – Second Edition,” Chapter 5.10 Polychlorinated biphenyls. (PCBs), WHO Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2000, Page 2.
ATSDR (2000). Toxicological Profile for Polychlorinated Biphenyls. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.