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This is where I was the past week
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| DaveSaenz |
http://www.wpi.edu/News/TechNews/010123/pollution.shtml
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Scientists seek pollution link in border birth defects
Courtesy of the Associated Press
This living room is thick with the ghosts of Norma's days.
Here she's watched her three children squirm, snack and stretch on the rug in a bath of filtered sunlight. She listens to her neighbor's roosters squawk, hears loads of Mexican cargo rumble through town on the train tracks striping her street. When 2-month-old Jacob fusses in his crib, she pulls him into her lap and he slips back to sleep.
This house has seen hurtful days, too. Back in 1993, Norma and Gilbert Olvera's baby girl died 16 hours after birth. The child developed with a neural tube defect, and was born without a brain. Clustered within the sanitized hospital walls, the family snapped pictures and gave her a name. Amy Keiko means beloved and adored.
After her daughter died, Norma came home, sat in her living room and waited. First she waited for the numbness to thaw. Then she waited for the tears to stop. Finally, she waited for answers. They never came.
"At first that's all you can think, 'Why this?' and 'Why that?"' says Norma, 32. '"Why did God let this happen?"'
It's been 10 years since doctors first noticed the abnormally high number of babies born with neural tube defects in the Rio Grande Valley. During a 36-hour span in 1991, three babies were born in the same hospital. Different mothers, different homes. All victims of defective neural tubes.
The vicious defects are a direct strike to the nervous system, the brain and spine. The luckier babies suffer spinal deformities or protruding backbones. Anencephalic babies are born without brains or with underdeveloped brains, and die.
During the worst times, in 1991, babies in Cameron County were born with neural tube defects at a rate three times higher than the national average. That spike was followed by another in 1998.
Pollution is widely believed to have contributed to the birth defects. Was it poisoned water or chemicals in the air? Sinister dust that spilled from the cluster of Mexican factories? The clouds of pesticides billowing from the tails of crop dusters? Industrial waste surging to the Atlantic in the current of the Rio Grande?
After a decade of fear, suspicion and study, hundreds of mothers on both sides of the border still wait for answers. Science so far has been unable to tell them why their babies were fatally deformed.
And the heartbreak continues. In 1998-99, an average of 13 babies per every 10,000 live births in the 14 Texas border counties suffered neural tube defects, said Peter Langlois, senior epidemiologist with the Texas Birth Defect Monitoring Division. That's roughly double the estimated national average of 6.71 per 10,000 live births in 1995-97, the most recent available figure.
For seven years, Dr. Irina Cech has been poring over biological samples, straining to link pollution to the family tragedies. The University of Houston researcher's mission is clear: to bring closure to a decade of anguish.
"We need evidence. Not emotion or suspicion, but hard, factual evidence," Cech says firmly. "Right now there's very little to go on except anecdotes."
She depends on border obstetricians, who urge women with NTD fetuses to participate in her study. So far, more than 400 pregnant women have contributed biological samples to Cech's laboratory.
She examines fluids, snips hair from the mother, draws blood from the umbilical cord. The hair, she believes, is the most significant scrap of evidence, a single strand offers a lasting chemical record. She searches for viruses, for mercury and lead and arsenic. She screens for chlorine, organic metals and PCBs.
She's also interested in the mothers' houses and trailers. Cech has gathered chunks of soil, vials of water and tubes of gas from 160 homes on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border.
Aided by the Environmental Protection Agency, Cech inspects the homes for traces of fecal material, volatile organic chemicals, nitrates and uranium decay products _ clues that indicate hazardous dump sites, pesticides or sewage runoff.
She's hunting for a pattern, a trend. In the process, she's creating one of the largest environmental databases ever collected from Rio Grande Valley households. Until she finishes analyzing her data, Cech won't discuss her findings.
"There's reason for suspecting pollution in the area," Cech said, rattling off the environmental risks. "The region developed very fast, the infrastructure was behind. Maquilas came to the area with little environmental control of waste material disposal. Then there's the agricultural activity. ..."
This is not just the story of damaged fetuses and family anguish. It's the tale of chilling suspicion lingering in rural, poor towns along the nation's edge: That people are being silently, invisibly poisoned.
It's a terrifying notion, toxins seeping in the soil or dripping from the faucet, quiet and lethal, making babies sick in the womb.
In March 1993, grieving families sued General Motors and other American owners of about 40 factories operating in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville. The families blamed airborne poisons puffing from the maquiladoras for the birth defects.
In 1995, the companies paid $17 million to settle the suit. They didn't admit wrongdoing, but suspicion festered.
Brownsville lawyer David Olveira specializes in defending companies against environmental lawsuits. He has witnessed the distrust and vilification of industry in the courtrooms of South Texas, a farming pocket steadily morphing into a sprawl of factories and warehouses.
"There is a lot of suspicion among folks from all walks of life, and a lot of it, I think, is unsubstantiated," Olveira said. "But it makes it hard to go before a jury."
The birth defect rash coincided with dramatic years of change along the nation's southern border. In 1991, as doctors began to puzzle over the birth patterns, former President Bush was striking up negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico. The border's modern era was about to begin.
Harlingen obstetrician Miguel Cintron has been treating neural tube defects for years, but asked their cause, he hesitates.
"I think it may be environmental," he finally says.
"But," he adds quickly, "we have to be very careful when we say that. It gets very political when you start saying things like we're too close to Mexico, or when you blame business."
If you ask Norma, it was the pink pond behind her mother's house. That's where she was staying when Amy was conceived.
Nobody knew why it was pink, but there it was. Pink like a cartoon. In her family, it was almost a joke.
It didn't seem so funny after Amy died. Worse yet a few years later, when a neighbor lost her baby to an NTD.
"Just like you," Norma's mother said. "I knew it."
The family may soon get an answer. Water siphoned from the pond is among the samples being analyzed in Cech's laboratory.
Talk to researchers and mothers; doctors and neighbors. They aren't likely to agree on much. The quest for a cause splinters under the weight of defensiveness, grief and guilt.
EPA researcher Hal Zenick recalls the tearful public meetings of the 1990s, where shellshocked families demanded answers. He remembers their theories: the corn, the water, the factory pollution.
"Everybody in the community has a different speculation," he said. "You could deplete a federal budget trying to go after all of it."
In the early 1990s, the EPA examined household samples for industrial taint. But only nine homes were studied, all on the northern bank of the Rio Grande. The agency found elevated levels of pesticides, PCBs and arsenic, and recommended more studies be done.
The state health department stepped in, and the EPA contributed money to those tests. But cash ran low, and the state ended up storing urine and serum samples instead of finishing pollution laboratory work.
"Those tests are quite expensive. They're harder to do," Texas Department of Health neural tube investigator Kate Hendricks said. "We're still hoping to look at environmental exposure."
Since 1991, Texas has spent between $3 million and $4 million hunting for a cause to the NTDs, Langlois said.
Most daunting of all, researchers acknowledge they may never identify a chemical culprit. The mystery may never be solved.
"You've got environment and diet and most of these people live in low-income housing," Zenick said. "Tracing the clues is nearly impossible."
For the time being, doctors have turned their attention to teaching the benefits of folic acid, which appears to help prevent neural tube defects.
Norma has borne three healthy children. She and Gilbert found Jesus on a weekend camping trip, started filling their nights with prayer meetings.
They've faced down unemployment, childbirth, family upheavals.
Norma weeps sometimes for her lost girl, still stares at the cracked wall on what would have been Amy's birthday. But somewhere along the way, Norma stopped asking why.
"God let it happen and I've accepted that," she says. "All of my questions aren't going to bring that baby back." |
These are mostly American companies who do this. They have no priority but the bottom line. No conscience about what they do to those people. It makes me beyond angry. |
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| DaveSaenz |
http://www.amrivers.org/mostendange...ogrande1996.htm
| quote: | Rio Grande (1996)
Threat: Agricultural, Municipal, and Industrial Pollution, Water Withdrawals
Location: Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Mexico
The Rio Grande is plagued by water withdrawals for agricultural irrigation and municipal demands in its upper reaches, while the dangerous influx of pollutants - everything from untreated sewage to toxic chemicals - continues unabated in the lower reaches along the international border. Although the river is rich in history, and still contains some segments of great ecological significance and stunning beauty, the river continues to pose a threat to human health.
The River
>From its headwaters high in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado, the Rio Grande makes a historic journey of almost 2,000 miles to the Gulf of Mexico, traversing the length of New Mexico and serving as the boundary between Texas and Mexico. Once lined with gallery cottonwood-willow forests and home to an abundance of wildlife and a variety of native fishes, the Rio Grande has been severely degraded throughout its length.
The Risk
Many of the threats that caused the Rio Grande to be named the nation's Most Endangered River three years ago continue to assault the river system Agricultural withdrawals for irrigation suck large sections of the river dry during low water years. Urban development, water supply and drainage facilities, levees, channelization, and dam construction have taken their toll on the once-diverse riparian areas between Cochiti Reservoir and Elephant Butte, known as the Bosque. Disastrous mining projects, such as the Summitville Mine in Colorado and the MolyCorp Molybdenum Mine near Questa, New Mexico, have poisoned the river in many stretches. Runoff from farms sends pesticides and fertilizers into the river, and sewage _sometimes untreated - is dumped directly into the Rio Grande. Nuclear contamination from the bomb-making days at Los Alamos has found its way into the river, and tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen used to make bombs, has been found in drinking water.
As the Rio Grande leaves New Mexico and begins to trace the 1,250-mile length of the international border, the harm to the river increases dramatically. In addition to the discharge of untreated sewage and agricultural runoff, the lower Rio Grande is forced to absorb volumes of industrial effluent that is discharged from factories lining both sides of the border. Due in part to less stringent environmental laws and abundant cheap labor in Mexico, over 600 maquiladoras, or U.S. assembly plants, now dot t he cities and towns on the Mexican side of the river.
The poorer border communities, especially in Mexico, have suffered the most from the pollution of the river. In rural areas, where medical facilities are far apart, and where sewage and water treatment facilities are usually nonexistent, disease and birth defects occur on a scale far greater than in the United States. Such infectious diseases as hepatitis and such birth defects as spina bifida are sadly commonplace. In July 1994, a 13-year-old boy died of meningo-encephalitis caused by an amoeba that infected his brain after he swam in the Rio Grande near Laredo. As drought conditions plagued northern Mexico in the spring and summer of 1995, fears of widespread disease were heightened as a result of the concentration of pollutants in the diminished flows of the Rio Grande.
What Can Be Done
The problems of the Rio Grande will not be solved overnight. However, all over the basin, steps are being taken to nurse the Rio Grande back to health. In the upper Rio Grande, activists are exploring numerous ways to restore and protect streamflows. A plan is being drafted to recover the endangered silvery minnow. Along the middle Rio Grande, some attention is being given to better management of the Bosque. In the lower river, the Border Environmental Cooperation Commission (BECC), created by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), is reviewing for possible funding by the North American Development Bank a number of border projects that remedy a transboundary or health issue and are designed to be economically and environmentally sustainable. The BECC has already approved the Ciudad Juarez Wastewater Treatment Plant and the El Paso Wastewater Recycling Project. In addition, scientists are trying to pin down the source of toxic pollutants in the river and find ways to stop the contamination. |
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| St_Andrew |
| wow, that was a lot of text to read.... please sumerize it instead ;) |
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| Echo of Silence |
| quote: | Originally posted by St_Andrew
wow, that was a lot of text to read.... please sumerize it instead ;) |
Its really interesting! Don't be lazy! Go ahead and read it yourself.:D
Dave, I have heard similar though not quite as chilling reports about the changes in the Colorado River/Colorado River Delta (Baja, Mexico). When the US dammed the river initially, the agricultural regions south of the border were destroyed leaving those who had previously relied on the river for sustenance with nothing. The Mexican government protested. Finally, the US relented and allowed the river to flow into Mexico again but of course the water was runoff (toxic pollutants, pesticides from the Imperial Valley). The California River Delta was changed from rich agricultural to desert to marshland. Now, the only vegetation is vegetation that can tolerate the poisons.
I would like to study this one day because it is an example of how man has directly caused devestating change in the environment. Have you read or learned anything about this? I may not tell the story correctly. I have not personally researched it. |
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| St_Andrew |
Interesting, finally read it all :D
Find it quite disgusting that the world's biggest economy don't care more about such important issues as this. |
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| DaveSaenz |
| quote: | Originally posted by St_Andrew
Interesting, finally read it all :D
Find it quite disgusting that the world's biggest economy don't care more about such important issues as this. |
There are people who care. In fact I think it's around 84% of Americans who want strict regulation, enforcement of our environmental laws, and accountability for those who ruin our land and our people's health. I mean, there's no such thing as democratic health, or republican health, or partisan health. Everyone breathes the same air, everyone drinks the same water, and everyone eats the food grown on the same land.
The fact is most don't even know about all the corruption and abuses that plauge the current US political system, and thus the ostensible apathy Andrew. Before 9/11 when Bush and his cronies began the process of dismantling our environmental laws that our country has worked so hard to pass over decades, I remember there was much more coverage in the media and outrage by the public. Now the television media seemingly has its tail between its legs, and the Bush Administration has been able to rewrite almost all of our environmental laws rendering them useless and unenforcable. Since we have about 200 of them, it's really more of a tactical assault. What it means is essentially, polluters have carte blanche to do what ever they want without any accountability.
I'm writing an essay on our president's environmental record, and as they say in Texas, "it aint pretty." I'll post it soon.
David;) |
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| St_Andrew |
oh thanks for the info :)
also looking forward to your essay :D |
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| Gladius |
| quote: | Originally posted by St_Andrew
oh thanks for the info :)
also looking forward to your essay :D |
idd =) |
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| DaveSaenz |
| quote: | Originally posted by DaveSZ
There are people who care. In fact I think it's around 84% of Americans who want strict regulation, enforcement of our environmental laws, and accountability for those who ruin our land and our people's health. |
I must correct myself here, since I don't want to dispense any inaccurate information. I must have been thinking of this Nevada poll by Greenberg Quinlan Research Inc, when I mentioned the "84%" figure:
http://www.lcveducation.org/Program...cfm?ID=140&c=24
This is according to Gallup Polls:
| quote: | | The percentage of Americans holding a negative view of the nation's environmental conditions increased from 38 percent in 2002 to 47 percent this year. |
| quote: | | Compared to last year, the percentage of Americans who believe either "immediate, drastic action" or "some additional action" is needed to prevent major environmental disruptions fell from 84 percent to 79 percent. |
http://www.libertymatters.org/newss...4.22.03poll.htm
Hmm, perhaps I was also thinking of the previous year's gallup poll on environmental issues, since it was also an ?84%? number. :P
The fact that the number of people who felt that the issue needed action fell reflects the state of the economy, but it shows it's still an important issue to most Americans. The fact that more Americans than the previous year held a "negative view of the nation's environmental conditions" despite the fact it's not widely addressed by the mainstream television media is encouraging.
The media did somewhat cover the airborne mercury pollution problem from ancient power plants due to the recent Bush FDA advisory warning pregnant women and children to limit their consumption of fish, but the mainstream media did not adequately cover the Bush Administration's attempts, a mere week after making the announcement to limit fish consumption, to dismantle and render unenforceable key Clean Air Act statutes that would reduce airborne mercury pollution; the source of the mercury in the fish. Obviously, there?s not a single person, unless they have enough polluter money lining their pockets, who can say it's merely about saving rivers, lakes and fish from mercury pollution (a deadly neurotoxin) for their own sake; it's also about helping the people who eat the affected fish. It's a public health issue, and that's why you also see organizations concerned with human health like the American Lung Association standing shoulder to shoulder with environmental organizations like the Sierra Club in opposition to the Bush Administration?s harmful policies:
http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/1229-01.htm
| quote: | Originally posted by Echo of Silence
Its really interesting! Don't be lazy! Go ahead and read it yourself.:D
Dave, I have heard similar though not quite as chilling reports about the changes in the Colorado River/Colorado River Delta (Baja, Mexico). When the US dammed the river initially, the agricultural regions south of the border were destroyed leaving those who had previously relied on the river for sustenance with nothing. The Mexican government protested. Finally, the US relented and allowed the river to flow into Mexico again but of course the water was runoff (toxic pollutants, pesticides from the Imperial Valley). The California River Delta was changed from rich agricultural to desert to marshland. Now, the only vegetation is vegetation that can tolerate the poisons.
I would like to study this one day because it is an example of how man has directly caused devestating change in the environment. Have you read or learned anything about this? I may not tell the story correctly. I have not personally researched it. |
Chrissi,
I'm certainly no authority figure about all issues relating to the environment, but I can tell you that the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado did cause, and continues to cause, damage to the ecosystems downstream. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the people downstream were also adversely affected as well. In my opinion, the fact that the waters that created it are dammed does indeed detract from the majesty of the Grand Canyon. Many Native American tribes who live on the river also consider it an attack on the Great Spirit that sustains us all, to dam the Colorado.
More infos about Glen Canyon:
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Projects/Dams/glp02bac.html
Hah, it's funny. I remember when I was hiking on the Grand Canyon I almost fell to my death, but nooooo I'm still here for some reason!:stongue:
I'm going to make a career out of issue, but I don't know yet how I can make the most difference...perhaps as a writer, a photographer, or both. I have some beautiful pictures of the West that I've taken, and I wish I could share them with eveyone. I don't care about being rich, and if I were rich, I'd donate most of my money to buying land in order to save it. I guess being a millionaire or billionaire wouldn't be bad, but the money would be gone pretty quick hah. At least future generations would get a nice return on my investment. ;)
I've just seen too much in my short life to sit here and do nothing about it, and I'm tired of our country's health, air, water, land, and political system being despoiled and corrupted by ExxonMobil, Enron, Reliant Energy, Haliburton, Alcoa, electrical utility companies that poison our water with mercury from their ancient power plants, and many others. I truly believe that if people knew what I know about how the Bush Administration has lied and misled the American people about its true agenda for the environment (and therefore public health), if they knew how the Bush Administration allowed polluters such as Big Oil to write the recently proposed energy bill behind closed doors, a bill full of tax breaks, billion dollar subsidies, and legal exemptions from wrongdoing, they would send this pretend "Texan" back home to Crawford with his tail between his legs.
Actually he can go back to Connecticut where he was born, since we real Texans don't want him here. :P
Back to work. :)
P.S. His wife seems really nice, and I don?t think a former schoolteacher and librarian could possibly be at all dark-hearted, but it makes me wonder how someone like her can marry a man like that. The fact that she had Harry Potter on her Christmas tree, and she?s an advocate of women?s rights in Afghanistan shows she isn?t one of those crazy Christian fundamentalists that cling to the fringes of her husband?s political party and believe ?gay day? at Disney World will cause meteors to rain down on Florida. It?s true what they say I suppose, opposites attract! It?s too bad she?s not president, because I know how she?d feel about big industry putting the health of the nation?s children at risk. ;) |
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| DaveSaenz |
| quote: | Bush Wages War on Parks, Wilderness
by T. A. Barron
The following commentary was first published in the Boston Globe on August 17, 2003.
A war is raging.
It involves lands essential to our nation, and will dramatically affect future generations. No, I am not speaking of Iraq or Afghanistan. This war is right here: the Bush administration’s radical, all-out attack on America’s wilderness and public lands. To camouflage this campaign, the president’s political staff put together a series of August photo ops in our national parks and forests.
What is at stake? These are the lands whose scenery inspired the song "America the Beautiful." But they are much more than that.
Our national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, and other public lands total 623 million acres—14 times the size of all 6 New England states, or almost 6 times the size of California. They constitute a natural engine that cleans our drinking water, purifies the air we breathe, produces medicines, provides resources, and enhances our quality of life in countless other ways. Most important of all, these lands connect Americans directly with the miracle of God’s creation.
Moreover, these natural treasures are an important part of our heritage. The very idea of a national park was born in America: Yellowstone became the world’s first in 1872. However we define homeland security, our wilderness and public lands must be at the core of what we seek to defend.
Not for President Bush and his team, however. Fueled by zealous anti-environmentalism and corporate special interests, they have launched what amounts to a sustained and systematic attack on America’s public lands. Instead of honoring the public trust that requires protecting these national assets for our children and grandchildren, they have aggressively pushed exploitation by the mining, timber, oil and gas, and snowmobile industries. Well aware of the public outcry that such radical policy changes would provoke, they have pursued this war with stealth and deception.
While Americans look the other way, at more visible conflicts, this ground war advances. A few examples:
Right after the 2002 election, the Bush administration decided to allow a significant increase in the number of snowmobiles roaring through Yellowstone, despite overwhelming public opposition and serious air pollution. The Bush team is also trying to rip giant holes in a policy that prohibits road building and commercial logging across 58.5 million acres of roadless lands in our national forests. Recently, Interior Secretary Gale Norton summarily removed any portion of 262 million acres from possible wilderness protection, thereby paving the way—literally—for extractive industries. By renouncing all federal authority to study or protect wilderness values in these lands, this action removed even the possibility that future generations might ever choose to conserve them.
These are merely a few of the frontal assaults. Behind the scenes, Bush and company have forced sweeping changes in public lands management policies, abandoning decades-old bipartisan approaches in favor of immediate exploitation. They have encouraged Alaska, Utah, and other states to recognize abandoned trails, burro paths, and even dry washes as public rights of way across federal lands—thereby opening up the possibility that trucks could lay down pavement through national parks, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas.
They have removed protections from America’s wetlands and small waterways. They outright revoked the longstanding Wilderness Inventory handbook, which guides land managers in assessing appropriate uses of potential wilderness.
Aware of the radical extent of these changes, the Bush team has worked hard to hide them from public view. Norton’s action affecting 262 million acres, for example, came after no public hearings, no open debate, and no congressional oversight. It was not even announced on the Interior Department’s Web site. It was simply revealed in a legal settlement with Utah and released on a Friday night, after reporters’ 5 o’clock deadlines, just after Congress had left for spring recess.
Such stealth attacks have enabled Bush and company to radically alter environmental policies without changing the laws or risking negative public outcry. Their methods include inviting lawsuits that could weaken protections, then settling them out of court; simply burying potentially embarrassing information such as the files on Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy commission; and quietly dropping enforcement of key environmental policies.
And with a flair for public relations, they have cynically named new policies: the Healthy Forests initiative aggressively promotes logging in the national forests, and the Clear Skies program is really a major rollback of Clean Air Act protections.
As a nation, we are what we save. The value of America’s public lands cannot be measured in board feet, tons of coal, or sales of all-terrain vehicles. Once wilderness is lost, it is lost forever. And the biggest losers will be generations of Americans yet unborn.
Bush’s war on our public lands is unwise, unjustified, and unprecedented. It is tantamount to an assault on the national treasury. But defending our public lands does more than protect valuable physical assets: It protects our homeland security of the soul.
T. A. Barron is an author of novels for young people and nature books. A longtime Sierra Club activist and board member of The Wilderness Society, he lives in Boulder, Colorado. |
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