"The Indiana stretch of the Ohio River Valley is one of the most toxic environments on Earth."

[ensho]

http://counterpunch.com/higgs11302009.html


The Contaminated Kids of Southwestern Indiana

Growing Up Toxic


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The Indiana stretch of the Ohio River Valley is one of the most toxic environments on Earth. On Nov. 24, I took a road trip to Evansville and Mount Vernon to interview John Blair, president of the environmental group Valley Watch, and Marcella Piper-Terry, an autism care provider who has collected extensive background data on her clients' environmental exposures. This story is the first in a series on autism and the Southwest Indiana environment. - sh
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-snip-

"We have distinct problems down here with neurological diseases," he says during an interview in his Evansville office on a cloudy, crisp November day. "... And we are under assault from almost every kind of toxic chemical there is."

The first story Blair relates during an hourlong interview details an "epidemic" of multiple sclerosis (MS) he learned of a year-and-a-half ago in conversations with Perry County physicians and the Tri-State Multiple Sclerosis Association. Situated three counties upriver from Evansville, with a population of less than 20,000, Perry has an incidence rate for multiple sclerosis (MS) that is "off the charts," he says.

"It's not something that's been all along," he says, explaining that MS attacks the central nervous system. "It's something that's come in the past 10 or 12 years."

-snip-

The industries that release the most toxins are metals, coal-fired power plants and plastics, he says. And Southwest Indiana has large, barely regulated concentrations of them all.

"We get it from all sides," he says. "It doesn't matter which way the wind blows, it doesn't matter which way the water flows, we're getting it."

-snip-

Five Southwest Indiana counties -- Spencer, Posey, Pike, Warrick and Gibson -- released 57.6 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the Ohio River Valley environment in 2007, Blair says, "and I only counted the ones that were over 100,000 pounds."

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"That is a full third more than all the industries in New York City, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Indianapolis, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Diego combined," he says. "All those cities combined, representing 34 million people, put out 20 million pounds of toxic chemicals a year."

-snip-

For three decades or so, GE Plastics, one of the nation's worst polluters, was located in Mount Vernon, a hamlet of roughly 7,000 located about 20 miles west of Evansville. Blair and others had documented several cancer clusters in the town, and in 1995 he started a video documentary about GE Plastics' impact on the community.

Walking around the town square one day, he found citizens nervous and reluctant to talk. "I finally found this one barber, and he was scared out of his wits," Blair says. "He said, 'You know, I'm not so scared for myself, ... I'm so afraid for this community because all my customers are dying of cancer.'"

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Mercury is another of the neurotoxins linked to autism and developmental disabilities that find their ways into Southwest Indiana children's bodies on a daily basis.

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"It used to be a great fishing lake, used to be a great sailing lake," he says. "Well, they first said people couldn't be on it in sailboats anymore because they'd get splashed. Then they said people couldn't fish in it anymore. Now it's completely sealed off, and they won't allow anyone even near it because of selenium."

Selenium is a neurotoxin.

"Every coal-fired power plant around us puts out a million pounds, minimum, of toxic chemicals a year," Blair says.

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Citizens who drank and washed with water from the Hawesville, Tell City, Cannelton, Troy, Lewisport, East Daviess and Evansville water systems "have been exposed and may still be exposed to fluoride, manganese and arsenic through drinking water," the report authors continued.
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personally, I'd move. and sue. I sure wouldn't get pregnant until my body was cleaned of toxins, if that's possible.

the whole Valley should be surrounded with yellow HAZMAT tape and yellow crime scene tape.

[Vincardog]

1. The Ohio river does not stop in Indiana

[Irreverend IX]

2. That's the price...

Of having a manufacturing-based economy. It's kind of funny - lots of people here protest the exportation of manufacturing jobs and at the same time profess concern over the environment. Bringing the factory jobs back to the US will mean creating a lot more Superfund sites.

[hedgehog]

3. T'aint necessarily so. You can have manufacturing without pollution

if the political will is present. China has some of the worst manufacturing practices in the world, but the new plants going up right now are going up clean.

[LynzM]

4. So sad and disgusting...

Why does anyone ever think that it's ok, that there won't be consequences, of filling our living spaces up with toxic shit?! :banghead:

[ensho]

5. kicking for today's readers

nt