Veronica Villafañe | Managing Editor
Intersections South LA

Councilwoman Jan Perry today joined local residents and members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) in a press conference to celebrate the imminent closure of Palace Plating, the chrome plating facility that City officials found responsible for releasing toxic chemicals into the environment surrounding 28th Street Elementary School.

“It’s an industrial use facility that was grandfathered in, that never should’ve been grandfathered in an area where people are actually living or going to school,” says Perry. “We had a cancer cluster here. They were putting people’s health at risk.”

Martha Sánchez, middle, with her children, Gonzalo and Catherine Romero.

That’s what Martha Sánchez set out to prove eight years ago, when her children, who were attending 28th Street Elementary School, right across the street from the plant, started getting sick. Parents complained to health officials, city inspectors and their elected officials. Finally, they took their case to court.

It was a lengthy and difficult battle, but now parents, teachers and students are relieved that a judge ordered Palace Plating, which has been in the area for over 40 years, to permanently shut down by December 31.

“We have to change the way companies like this one operate,” declares Martha. “About ten teachers have died from cancer in the past few years.” Among them she points out Adrian Guillén, who died from pancreatic and Leticia Herrera, from lung cancer.

“We should change the cancer awareness pink ribbon to green – so people start using green technology and not allow for companies to use cancer causing toxic chemicals.”

Two of Martha’s children, Gonzalo, 17 and Catherine, 12, were among the 28th Street Elementary students who suffered from the air and ground contamination.

“I would get sick really easily. My nose was bleeding every night and I would vomit almost every day,” remembers Catherine.

Her brother Gonzalo, who says he also experienced a series of health problems, beams with pride about his mom’s accomplishment. “She’s awesome. She’s my role model. She’s an example that if you fight for a cause, anything’s possible.”

Sánchez is relieved the plant’s closing, but she’s still concerned for her children’s health. “They’re healthy now, but I’m worried about their health in the future. After all, they were exposed to the chemicals.”

Among the hazardous chemicals being released by the plant: chromium, which was found in the City’s sanitary sewer system, tetrachloroethylene, a cleaning solvent that was impacting the air quality in and around the 28th Street Elementary School, and cadmium and chromic acid.

In a settlement with the City of L.A. earlier this month, Palace Plating agreed to remediate all contamination, cease its business operations by December 31, 2011, remove all on-site hazardous waste and pay $750,000 to LAUSD in restitution for costs associated with contamination at the 28th Street Elementary School.

Read full article and see photos.

Al Huang’s Blog, NRDC

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

– Frederick Douglass (1855)

After a nine-year struggle, today Sheila Holt-Orsted and her family can finally put to rest their long battle for environmental justice in Dickson, Tennessee as their environmental and civil rights lawsuits against the City and County of Dickson were settled (more information about the settlement here).*

In 2007, Dr. Robert Bullard – widely regarded as the father of environmental justice movement – called the Holts’ struggle the “poster child” of environmental racism and toxic dumping in his landmark report Toxic Waste and Race at 20. The report pointed out that although Dickson County covers more than 490 square miles – an equivalent of 313,600 acres – the only cluster of solid waste facilities in the county is located directly adjacent to a small mostly black community on Eno Road – a quiet enclave of black families, many of whose forebears were freed slaves. The report notes that blacks make up less than five percent of the county’s population and occupy less than one percent of the county’s land mass. Statistics only tell half of this story of environmental injustice.

In 2002, Sheila’s father, Harry Holt, discovered he had prostate cancer. Soon after, Sheila was diagnosed with breast cancer and her mother, Beatrice Holt, was diagnosed with cervical polyps. In 2007, Harry passed away. After Sheila found out that she had cancer, she learned that most of her friends and neighbors on Eno Road had at least one family member who was suffering from some form of cancer. Sheila also learned that the well her family had used for drinking water for decades had become contaminated by trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial solvent, at levels that exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) safety standards. The TCE came from a county landfill 500 feet from the Holts’ property that has also contaminated other area wells and springs once used for drinking water.

For at least three decades beginning in the 1960s, manufacturing companies near Nashville, Tennessee (40 miles east of Dickson), dumped industrial wastes containing TCE at the unlined landfill adjacent to the Holt family property. TCE is a known carcinogen and reproductive and neurological toxin. Yet, some two decades after TCE contamination was first detected, neither the companies that caused the pollution, nor the landfill’s owners and operators, nor state and federal regulators, had taken any steps to remove the TCE from the environment. Dickson County’s ground and surface waters had, in effect, been surrendered to the steady spread of an invisible and toxic chemical.

No one connected the dots for Sheila, she did it on her own. Working with Dr. Bullard, Sheila mounted a David vs. Goliath campaign demanding answers to what had happened in her community and who was responsible for it. The answers did not come easy. A former star athlete, bodybuilder, and fitness trainer, Sheila relentlessly and tenaciously searched for the truth. Her journey led her to local county commission meetings, the offices of state and federal environmental agencies, the halls Congress, and anywhere else there was someone willing to listen.

Read full blog post here

Written by Sheri Trusty,
Staff Correspondent,
The News-Messenger

CLYDE, Ohio — The Clyde Public Library hosted a viewing of the film “Fighting for Answers” on Monday night. The film detailed the struggles of three Clyde families who have fought unsuccessfully to find the causes of their children’s cancer.

The film’s director, Adan Garcia, a Fremont native now living in New Mexico, was on hand to answer questions and talk about the creation of the film. Garcia, who has worked in the television industry for more than 15 years, said he was inspired to make the film after his sister Linda Garcia died of gastric cancer in 2007 at the age of 40.

“I had been reading about this in the paper, and it caught my attention,” Garcia said. “My sister had cancer and passed away. I felt like this was something I had to do.”

The film’s title expresses well the plight of local families affected by childhood cancer. A sharp rise in invasive cancer cases was first noted in 1996, yet authorities are no closer to an answer today than they were at that time.

The film begins with the story of Kole Keller, who began to get seemingly common childhood illness symptoms at age 4. When his fevers and sinus infections wouldn’t subside, doctors looked deeper to their cause and found a tumor on the top of his brain stem.

Kole died at age 6.

Watching their child struggle through the pain of cancer and death was agonizing for his parents, Steve and Janni Keller.

“It was tough watching the whole death process,” Steve Keller said. “He took his last breath at 10:30 at night. He smiled and shed a large tear, which we felt was from joy, and went home to be with the Lord.”

The Dave and Donna Hisey family have been deeply affected by cancer; two of their children have been diagnosed with leukemia. Tyler Hisey was diagnosed in 2006, and her brother Tanner Hisey was diagnosed in 2008.

After watching the pain Tyler endured through two years of cancer treatments, Dave said it was unbearable having to tell his son that he had cancer, too.

“After seeing what my daughter went through, I had to go into the bedroom and tell my son, ‘You have cancer, too,’” Dave said.

“Now I walk in their bedrooms at night and think, ‘How many more times am I going to be able to do this?’” he said.

Garcia also interviewed the family of Alexa Brown for the film.

Brown was 8 years old when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2006. Less than 12 hours after her diagnosis, Brown underwent brain surgery to remove the tumor. The surgery left her unable to walk or talk, and relearning those skills was a difficult battle.

Brown died in 2009, the same year “Fighting for Answers” was made.

Alexa’s parents Warren and Wendy Brown attended Monday’s viewing of the film. They have felt much frustration in their search for causes to the Clyde cancer cluster.

The film details possible causes of the cluster, such as manufacturing businesses, dump sites and waste management locales. But Wendy Brown believes authorities aren’t doing enough, and maybe they aren’t doing anything worthwhile at all.

“From the beginning, Robert Indian of the Ohio Department of Health said we don’t ever find the cause, but we’ll do everything we can,” Wendy said.

Wendy doesn’t believe it.

“My feeling is that the way they test is done to not find results,” she said. “They tested for two years before they even looked at environmental factors, and we had to bring that up. If something was going on, they missed it.”

read the full article online

by Kellee Nolan and Melissa Iaria
The Sydney Morning Herald

Australian Associated Press (AAP)

The Victorian Country Fire Authority’s alleged failure to tell past workers they had been exposed to cancer-causing chemicals at a training base may have cost lives, says a former CFA chief officer who has cancer.

Brian Potter, 68, has suffered ill-health and cancer for 15 years. He says many of his former colleagues have also had diverse cancers.

He initially drew no link between the illnesses and their work at a CFA training base in Fiskville, western Victoria, where firefighters used to burn a range of waste oils, potentially containing chemicals such as benzene, toluene, xylene and phenol.

But after September 11, firefighters in New York City began to be diagnosed with a range of similar cancers. When new Australian legislation this year listed the types of cancers he and his colleagues were battling as being a specific risk of firefighting, Mr Potter suspected a link.

He said he was disappointed after reports accused the CFA of knowing its workers had been exposed to potentially cancer-causing chemicals since 1990, but failing to tell its employees.

“I, like everyone else who had anything to do with Fiskville, would very much like to have been aware in 1992 that these products had been found,” Mr Potter told reporters on Tuesday.

“I think if we’d been able to take that list [of chemicals] along to our specialists at that time, who’s to say how many more might have survived or how much earlier some of their illnesses might have been treated?”

A Herald Sun report on Tuesday published an extract of a 1990 CFA letter stating that in May 1988, soil and water tests at the Fiskville site had shown the main contaminant was in resins or solvents that may have included benzine, toluene, xylene and phenol.

Maurice Blackburn lawyer Victoria Keays said an investigation was under way into what chemicals were burnt at Fiskville and the associated risks.

She said it was unknown whether the CFA was liable, but it was concerning if the CFA knew of the risks in 1990 and didn’t pass the information on.

Emergency Services Minister Peter Ryan said the claims needed to be taken seriously.

“The CFA has advised the coalition government it was not aware of the allegations until contacted by the media and that it is now thoroughly investigating the matter,” a spokesperson for Mr Ryan said.

CFA chief executive officer Mick Bourke told reporters he first learnt of concerns about the Fiskville facility on Monday.

“This is a very serious matter for the CFA. I’ve spoken to the board chairman this morning who’s advised me to take whatever steps are necessary to get the investigation under way,” he said.

Mr Bourke hoped obtaining the historical records needed to reconstruct what had been known and when would be done within several months.

Read the full article