July 19, 2016
By Mickey Friedman
Anyone who has watched the ducks paddle from one end of Woods Pond to the other, would be hard pressed to appreciate that the Housatonic is our very own toxic waste repository.
So very beautiful, yet such a clear and present danger.
Still there are some who claim we’re better off living with our poisoned river than forcing General Electric to dredge it.
I suspect they don’t know what Dr. David O Carpenter of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany knows. He has studied the health effects of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) for decades, working with the Mohawks in upstate New York, the poor, mostly black residents of Anniston, Alabama, once Monsanto’s home base for PCBs. and teachers and students in wealthy Malibu, California.
Unlike our regional Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Dr. Carpenter believes the most important route of exposure is breathing in PCBs. In its PCB Fact Sheet, EPA wrote “None of the levels of PCBs in air measured to date in residential and recreational areas would pose a short-or long-term health risk.”
You might be interested in what he has to say about the risks we face breathing and living near hazardous PCBs sites.
PCBs are a man-made molecule of 209 varieties of two phenyl rings and a combination of chlorine atoms built to resist high temperatures. They were used predominantly as insulating fluids for electrical transformers and capacitors, but also used in hydraulic fluid, caulk, and carbonless copy paper. Monsanto sold its Anniston PCBs to GE in Pittsfield.
Ed Bates, the Manager of Tests at GE Power Transformer, estimated that a million and a half pounds of PCBs went down its Pittsfield drains and into the Housatonic River.
While PCBs were banned in 1979, they still persist in the environment.
Unfortunately, the EPA has been slow to acknowledge what Dr. Carpenter and the World Health Organization now know: PCBs are a cause of cancer in humans.
For the longest time, we were told that we were exposed by eating fish or ducks with PCBs in their fatty tissue; or by absorption through the skin by touching PCB-contaminated oil or soil. Dr. Carpenter’s work reveals we’re predominantly exposed by breathing in PCBs that have volatilized.
PCBs with a few chlorines last from days to weeks in the body, and are gradually broken down in the liver. PCBs with more chlorines can remain for years. Dr. Carpenter’s research suggests that there’s no simple correlation between how long they last and the damage they can do. All PCBs cause cancer. And mimic and interfere with critically important hormones in the body.
New York State’s dataset of 2.5 million hospital visits provides a diagnosis for 15 diseases, age, gender, race, residential zip code and how patients paid their bills. Dr. Carpenter matched health problems with living near the 245 New York zip codes that contain sites with persistent organic pollutants (POPs), mostly PCBs.
A second study included a smaller population with direct measures of exposure and their personal medical and clinical chemistry history.
Surprisingly, they found a noticeable difference in hypertension (high blood pressure), a condition previously not thought to be related to PCB exposure. The lowest rates were from those living without a POPs waste site, the highest from those with a POPs site, and then equally surprising just a bit lower from those with higher incomes living near the Hudson River.
With the Center for Disease Control, Dr. Carpenter studied the correlation of PCB levels in the blood with hypertension in 772 adults who lived near Monsanto PCB plants in Anniston. They found the higher the PCB levels, the higher the blood pressure.
Studying the Akwesasne Mohawks living near former GM and Alcoa plants, he discovered that high POPs and PCB levels were a greater indicator of diabetes than obesity. That “for diabetes the PCB congeners showing strong associations are those with few chlorines, and these are the ones who are more volatile.” Concluding once again that “inhalation is likely the most important route of exposure.”
Dr. Carpenter took blood from Mohawk adolescents 10 to 16 years of age, then gave them four different cognitive function tests. And while these adolescents tested within the “normal” range, the higher the PCB blood level, the less well they did on the tests. Then they tested the adults, and those with higher PCB levels didn’t do as well with memory and IQ tests.
Sadly, the effects of toxics on the developing brain “is believed to be permanent and irreversible.” That “children who are heavily exposed to toxins won’t reach the same peak cognitive ability as those who have lower exposure.” That there is “no safe levels of toxins for children.” No safe levels.
Living and breathing near the Housatonic is hazardous to human health. Our clear and present danger. So let’s dredge and destroy as many PCBs as possible.
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Dr. David Carpenter’s PowerPoint Presentation about some of the latest research he’s conducting about the health effects of PCBs. You’ll need Microsoft PowerPoint to access it. Click here on this link.
You can find additional information about the health effects of PCBs and the issues surrounding the cleanup of the Housatonic River here: nopocbdumps.com/resources.
This column was first published on July 7, 2016 by The Berkshire Record.