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Pollution, Poverty and People of Color: Dirty Soil and Diabetes
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Scientific American
Posted: July 17th, 2012
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=pollution-p...
For four decades, from 1929 until 1971, a Monsanto plant in West Anniston produced chemicals called PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls. Somehow even today no one is quite sure how the chemicals got into the soil and waterways. As the Environmental Protection Agency's oversight of the cleanup of this neighborhood stretches into its eighth year, new research has linked PCBs exposure to a high rate of diabetes in this community of about 4,000 people, nearly all African American and half living in poverty. It's the latest chapter in a saga that this poverty-stricken, powerless community feels has dragged on far too long. PCBs were one of the most widely used industrial substances on Earth until they were banned in the United States, and most other developed countries, in the late 1970s. PCBs are stubborn chemicals. They persist in soil and sediment for decades, perhaps centuries, and are locked away in the fatty tissues of animals, building up in food webs. Seventy percent of all the PCBs ever made are still in the environment. In Anniston, class action lawsuits were filed and settled. The national media came and went. Monsanto split up and left town. Some residents took buyouts and moved. Other houses were abandoned and with fenced off. In 2003, Solutia and Monsanto paid a $600 million settlement to more than 20,000 people based on their exposure to PCBs. An additional $100 million was to be spent on cleanup and other programs. Annistons PCBs contamination qualifies as a Superfund site, making it one of the most contaminated places in the country.
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