Military Waste In Our Drinking Water

[donsu]

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/39723/



The U.S. military is poisoning the very citizens it is supposed to protect in the name of national security.


In 1982 our family was living on the southside of Tucson, Ariz., in a primarily working class and Latino neighborhood not far from the airport. That year Sunaura was born with a congenital birth defect known as arthrogryposis, a condition that severely impedes muscle growth and requires her to use an electric wheelchair. On nearby blocks, women were giving birth to babies with physical disabilities and neighbors were dying of cancer at worrisome rates. Over time, we learned that our groundwater was contaminated.

Most of us are vaguely aware that war devastates the environment abroad. The Vietnamese Red Cross counts 150,000 children whose birth defects were caused by their parents' exposure to Agent Orange. Cancer rates in Iraq are soaring as a result of depleted uranium left from the Gulf War. But what about closer to home?

Today the U.S. military generates over one-third of our nation's toxic waste, which it disposes of very poorly. The military is one of the most widespread violators of environmental laws. People made ill by this toxic waste are, in effect, victims of war. But they are rarely acknowledged as such.

-snip-

Our family knows of something much more dangerous than arsenic in the public aquifers: trichloroethylene, or TCE, a known carcinogen in laboratory animals and the most widespread industrial contaminant in American drinking water.

-snip-

We didn't know it when we lived there, but our Tucson neighborhood's public water supply was one of thousands nationwide contaminated with TCE (along with a medley of other toxic chemicals including, ironically, arsenic). It wasn't terrorists who laced our cups and bathtubs with these poisons -- it was private contractors employed by the Air Force.

-snip-

But people who have lived on the southside of Tucson don't need experts to verify that TCE is deadly. Some estimate that up to 20,000 individuals have died, become ill, or been born with birth defects. Providing further proof, the Tucson International Airport area is one of the EPA's top Superfund sites. Arizona state guidelines also assert that TCE is toxic; they say one gallon of TCE is enough to render undrinkable the amount of water used by 3,800 people over an entire year. Over 4,000 gallons drained into Tucson aquifers. As a result of this week's report, Arizona's environmental quality chief says the state is independently and immediately going to adopt stricter TCE soil standards.

-snip-
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how much military toxins are in your sperm; coming out of your womb?

shouldn't men and women be tested before becoming pregnant? isn't that a reasonable, logical thing to do?

the article also tells how the bushmilhousegang has relaxed regulations on military bases, etc.

[Captain Hilts]

1. Birth control pills in our drinking water. All sorts of stuff is in it.

[gully]

3. No wonder so many are suffering from obesity.

Man, I'm glad my water is filtered, but I wonder if they can remove estrogen?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/11/001107065552.htm

"Estrogen A Possible Factor In Obesity For Both Sexes, Researchers Say"

[MadHound]

2. Rather than the onus being on a couple to get tested

Why not force the military and corporate America to clean up their goddamn mess, rather than letting it contaminate the water we drink and the air we breathe? Besides, since a great deal of pregnancies are unplanned, it is doubtful that those parents would be tested anyway.

[donsu]

6. until it's cleaned up, wouldn't you rather know before pregnancy?

nt

[patrice]

4. Have you ever read "The Sheep Look Up" by John Brunner.

He was a Hugo Award winner for "Stand on Zanzibar" more than a couple of decades ago. He predicted all of this and more besides.

We lead toxic lives. That's why "we" are in love with Death.

[porphyrian]

5. They'll deny it until enough of us are dead from it.

Then, they'll settle out of court with the survivors, if any.

[dogday]

7. I wish this were new news!

this is the same old shit, excuse the pun, that they have been serving to our soldiers...Just another example of how well they support our troops....

[Igel]

8. TCE's carefully regulated and monitored. Now.

When I was a kid we always had a gallon or two of the stuff sitting around the laundry room. It was like water where my parents worked, and it was darned handy for removing some kinds of stains in clothes, like the inevitable ball-point pen rupture. My mother dabbled in oil paints, and she used it for cleaning and soaking her brushes. We soaked grease-caked parts with it, and when we cleaned a lawnmower engine, TCE was the solvent of choice.

We even washed our hands in it if we had oil paint or grease on them. Once I got some gunk in my hair, and had my hair washed with TCE. It did an ok job with some kinds of chewing gum, I think. Or maybe my parents just hoped it would.

If we used it indoors, the TCE went down the drain or into the air. If we used it outdoors, we dumped it on the ground or into the storm drain (after we got sidewalks on our street). The storm drains didn't go into the sewer system directly--they drained into a ditch that ran a mile or so through woods before going into a sewer drain.

Things changed in the mid- to late-70s, IIRC.