Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to arrive later this month. The Pringles treatment might sound farfetched, but it has worked in the past, albeit in a sample of one. Researchers gave him olestra-based chips for over two years and his condition improved, Jandacek said. Olestra is a blunt tool to reduce that exposure. It blocks a cycle in the body where substances that have absorbed into fat tissue move into the blood, then into other organs, and then back into fat tissue.
Olestra shoots right through the gut, intercepting organic compounds such as PCBs. Proctor and Gamble, maker of Pringles, had no involvement, though the study's lead author, Jandacek, worked there until 10 years ago. The National Institutes of Health funded it. The community might turn its nose up at such a low-budget treatment.
But the only thing that's been done for them in the past is to have their PCBs levels measured, Jandacek said. Help is much needed since exposure to PCBs doesn't end with an environmental cleanup, Birnbaum said. At the bottom of Montrose Street, just across from the American Legion, is the Miller Property named after the former property owner.
A rusty chain link fence is all that prevents the dumpsite from being used as a shortcut between the 12th Street housing projects and 10th Street. The grass-covered hills are actually soil tainted with PCBs at a concentration less than 10 parts per million.
Soil with PCBs greater than or equal to 50 parts per million must go to a hazardous waste landfill. Further south, older landfills blend in with the Appalachian foothills. Solutia owns these properties. The EPA does not monitor them, Scully said.
Scully said that all but a few of residential properties that the EPA has access to have been cleaned. The others are scheduled for cleanup this summer or fall. Scully said about 40 or 50 properties remain where the EPA hasn't been able to get access to clean them, either because the owners don't want their yards disturbed or for other reasons. They clean below that to whatever depth is required to get PCBs less than 10 ppm, Scully said.
Nevertheless, Scully said the PCBs levels remaining after cleanup in people's yards are not a health threat. I understand that people may have a fear of doing it but that's not our intent. To understand why the cleanup is taking so long, it requires an understanding of the convoluted system that bogs down every Superfund-caliber site, often for several decades. Consent decrees, records of decisions and operable zones are all part of the process. Ask the EPA about any ongoing part of the Anniston cleanup — Snow and Choccolocco Creeks, the plant itself — and you'll hear that negotiations with Solutia are still ongoing.
Tastes like dirt In some African American communities in the South, eating dirt is a cultural phenomenon, learned by one generation from the previous, especially among women.
Back long, long time ago, people used to always eat it, and just crave it. About five years ago, Kevin Grigsby of the Association of American Medical Colleges and an expert on pica, or the tendency to eat something other than normal food, got a call from the CDC saying they'd found several young, black women who had PCBs in their bodies, but the scientists didn't think it came from the water or from game or fish.
The CDC scientist, whose name Grigsby can't remember, asked if it was true that these young women could possibly be digging up the clay and eating it. Not only has the contamination compromised the health and character of the community, it has disrupted a cultural practice, albeit a risky one. A one-size-fits-all cleanup isn't good enough, Grigsby said. A cleanup should be culturally sensitive.
No one trusts that the soil is clean. Frazier, the real estate agent, is driving through West Anniston toward Montrose Avenue. He points out three PCBs landfills within a short walk of the street. Langer, P. Thyroid Res. High prevalence of anti-glutamic acid decarboxylase anti-GAD antibodies in employees at a polychlorinated biphenyl production factory.
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Health 4, Schecter, A. Behind some doors, the unemployed fight cancer, paralysis, memory loss, and a bewildering array of poorly characterized diseases. Subdued children play, eerily quiet, against a backdrop of toxic lawns, oily creeks, tainted vegetation, and sere trees.
Other neighborhoods are already dead. Vegetation has overtaken blocks of abandoned houses, with streetlights gone permanently dark, empty churches, and, always, the biohazard signs. Everywhere in Anniston, worried parents shoo children from parks and playgrounds. Many backyard creeks run blood red. Homeowners have forsaken their poisoned gardens to grow greens in sterile plastic buckets.
His daughter displays an assortment of behavior problems and has been relegated to special-education classes. For many Americans, a modern dread of contamination has been distilled into cathartic post apocalyptic film fare such as 28 Days Later, Right at Your Door , or Dawn of the Dead that feature poisoned lands and communities thronged with those so degraded by infection and environmental exposures that they have lost their intelligence and even their humanity.
But for Anniston, the apocalypse is all too real — and for most, inescapable. Once, from to , Anniston was a company town. Then Monsanto Industrial Chemicals took over the plant in Monsanto has produced synthetic fibers, plastics including polystyrenes, pesticides, and agrichemical products.
It has also acquired many chemical and electronics companies that make products as varied as aspirin and light-emitting diodes LEDs. Although the company and its apologists insisted that one can tolerate significant amounts without ill effects, this reassurance rang hollow in Anniston neighborhoods that found themselves suddenly battling a legion of ailments from cancers to memory loss, confusion, and a slew of other intellectual problems.
The news media often focus their outrage on cancer clusters and visibly crippling lung and mobility ailments caused by PCBs. In reality, extremely small amounts of PCBs harm the developing nervous systems of fetuses and children.
Even very low concentrations are harmful for immature brains during their critical windows of development. Institutions such as The International Agency for Research on Cancer IARC , a World Health Organisation WHO agency devoted to cancer research, conducted an investigation into the link between glyphosate- found in herbicides used by Monsanto- and cancer using urine samples from farmers.
Despite having evidence of the risks that Monsanto products pose, governments, policy-makers and other institutions still approve their use and consumption. Each region of the country creates and applies its own laws and rules regarding the use of agrochemicals and hence there are no standard regulations.
However, the people living in these areas have reported illnesses resulting from exposure to the chemicals. This situation is mirrored in Mexico where children from rural communities such as Jalisco have been found to have agrotoxics around 12 types in their urine samples.
The government has ignored these findings in favour of increased agricultural production. While the production of transgenics species that have been modified by introducing the DNA of a different species has been banned in Mexico, it is still legal to purchase them, which has resulted in the importation of corn, soybeans, potatoes, tomatoes, cotton alfalfa and canola.
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