Toxic Chemicals Are Maiming Thousands Around the World

[Guest guest]

Reposted with permission from Steve Tvedten

 

Toxic Chemicals Are Maiming Thousands Around the World

By Aquene Freechild, Environmental Health Fund

- Posted on May 16, 2008, Printed on May 17, 2008 -

_http://www.alternet.org/story/85630/_

(http://www.alternet.org/story/85630/)

 

Over time, our bodies lose their ability to cope with toxic chemicals, and

each exposure has a more severe effect.

 

I don't know how anyone survives there.

 

My first visit to the SIPCOT Chemicals Hub in Cuddalore, India could have

appeared deceptively pleasant to outside eyes. It's a beautiful day and there's

a good breeze as we drive past the welcome sign for SIPCOT. The air in some

places seems far cleaner than the air in nearby Chennai. In some spots it

smells sweet, in others, like opening a bottle of ibuprofen -- an antiseptic,

medicinal smell.

 

That is until my throat gets sore, I feel a bit nauseated and my guide

starts retching. My guide, a local community environmental monitor finally

recovers with bloodshot eyes. A headache follows and I begin to wonder how

anyone

manages to work in these facilities. SIPCOT Chemical Hub sandwiches its

picturesque fishing villages in between rusting hulks of chemical factories.

The

court ordered waste channels are overflowing with an eerily pale blue green

liquid, cattle graze not far away.

 

I visited the Cuddalore chemical hub, 2.5 hours south of Chennai on my most

recent trip to India this January. I was in India to meet with the survivors

of the world's worst industrial disaster, in which more than 8,000 people

were gassed to death nearly overnight in 1984 by a Union Carbide chemical leak.

Water contamination and long term effects of the toxic gas have killed 15,000

more since that December night. Cuddalore is a case study of how growing

chemicals manufacture in the Global South for western and local markets is

setting the stage for future Bhopals. While major consumer markets from New

Delhi

to New York rely on chemical manufacturing from impoverished communities in

the Global South, toxics come back concentrated in products and food produced

in the same impoverished communities.

 

The SIPCOT Chemicals Hub is currently an 8km stretch of pharmaceutical,

explosive, dye and pesticide manufacturers. If it is completed as planned, it

will stretch more than 38 kilometers, possibly trapping thousands of people on

a

strip of land between the Kaveri River and the sea that is less than 1km

wide. One of my guides, Center for Environmental Monitoring organizer Shweta

Narayan, works to keep this already toxic hotspot from reaching the boiling

point and to help protect the local population from further egregious harm.

 

What might be a one-time chemical exposure for a healthy visitor, is a daily

sensitization to highly toxic pollutants for the people living nearby. The

villagers fish the polluted waters, and breathe belches of black and yellow

smoke that smell like pickled cabbage, rotting carcass, sulfur gas or

pesticides depending on the factory.

 

Victory Chemicals is making its toxic and likely radioactive sludge into

bricks to give to villagers. But they doesn't find many takers. The bricks now

lie dumped near the riverbank, crumbling into the water and from there into

the body of a plant, a fish, a human being. Factory workers come out and stand

close to the car, arms crossed, hoping harsh stares will generate enough

force to push our concern out of the way. The District Environmental Engineer

is

called. He tries to blow off the claim that the waste is toxic. When that

fails, he shrilly professes total impotence to address contamination

complaints,

before issuing a command for clean up; which all present know is destined to

be ignored.

 

Over time, the body loses its ability to cope with these chemicals designed

to confound our natural systems, and each exposure gives a more and more

severe effect.

 

A chemical that will have no visible effect on an adult, can have

catastrophic effects on the developing fetus and the young child -- dulling the

mind,

triggering birth defects, and setting the stage for autism, asthma, allergies

and cancer. What may only make an adult nauseated, will cripple the dreams of

a child and of a family for a healthy future; a whole and better life.

 

In the U.S., epidemics of cancer, autism, asthma, and reproductive birth

defects in baby boys are sky high. Yet the air quality is far better in the

U.S.

than in most Indian cities. In India garbage piles are burnt spewing whole

incinerator's worth of dioxin into the common air. Americans benefit from

better environmental standards and enforcement for vehicle and factory

emissions.

Both India and U.S. have addressed the air quality problems of their cities

-- particularly the places where the well-to-do live -- by exporting the

sources of pollution -- Texas; Louisiana; Gary, Indiana; and the Port of Los

Angeles are cases in point. The urban poor in either country would recognize

these lit up refineries, chemical factories and power plants through the

stinging

fog.

 

Childhood cancer increased .6% a year from 1975-2002 according to the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control. One in almost 7 women will suffer from breast

cancer in their lifetimes; hormonally active toxins may be determining cancer

outcomes for our children before they are even born.

 

We are just starting to see public discussion of the science of how certain

chemicals attach to our DNA and are passed down from generation to

generation. No longer is our chemical inheritance limited to in utero exposure

and

breast milk -- fathers are now known to contribute the effects of their

chemical

exposures as well. This widespread low level toxic contamination has been

building its biological trap for more than four generations. In the U.S. and

U.K., one in 250 boys is born with a malformed penis; one in 200 with autism.

 

In a U.K. city the size of Chennai, that would be 208 little boys that will

need corrective surgery shortly after birth. But in Chennai, many would never

be able to afford it. It would be about 250 little autistic boys who will

appear normal at birth, but may never learn to speak, to read, or to use the

toilet.

 

SIPCOT's pollution could well affect your children and grandchildren. Who

eats this fish caught in Cuddalore? I would guess that Chennai is one of the

markets, and the best fish likely end up in markets in Delhi and London. The

chemicals SIPCOT is choking on, or the chemicals from hubs just like it around

the world, find their way to you -- though your food, settling on crops and

concentrating in the dark tissue in fish.

 

This horror of low-level maiming is the cause for my wonderment, " How will

my friends in the villages surrounding SIPCOT survive? " An enthusiastic

community activist Arul Selvam informed us that SIPCOT was founded in 1984.

Only 2

generations have been exposed to this growing stench so far. The teachers

report that the children are far slower than in other schools; many chemicals

used here are known to stunt mental growth, including those emited from a

factory adjacent to the school. How can the grassroots organize when their very

minds are being altered? There is no other option.

 

We, those who consume the products from the chemical hubs, must fight the

polluters in solidarity with those most affected. We can change our own habits

to cut off the market for toxic products at the ankles. But even after

undertaking this, we cannot simply abandon the children in chemical hubs like

SIPCOT -- our future leaders -- to the excruciating pain of cancer death, the

stabbing humiliation from learning disabilities and the resulting teasing, the

grief of being deprived the opportunity to become a mother or father.

 

The idea of detox medicine and facilities for SIPCOT's poisoned residents

could be called a pipe dream. Industrial poisoning is an abandoned step child

of modern medicine. Those who strive to treat poisoning with environmental

medicine, ayurveda, Chinese traditional medicine, yoga, nutritional changes and

support are scorned by the medical establishment. Treatment for basic

poisoning is denied in this way to the wealthiest clients of the American

medical

system. Those who are poisoned are too frequently sacrificed at the altar of

medical ego. Worse, basic medical care is beyond the reach of so many around

SIPCOT, and around the world. Access to medical care declines along with income

for the poisoned fisherfolk. What can we hope to offer?

 

The Sambhanva Clinic in Bhopal, India has found yoga positions and organic

herb growing at home, offer relief to Bhopal gas and water poisoning victims.

One of the reasons these techniques are threatening to conventional

physicians is their very accessibility for all, their inexpensive and therefore

unprofitable nature. Integrated medical treatment of industrial poisoning? There

are many such good ideas, many shoulds, woulds and coulds that can turn one

poisoned person's hell into a renewed hope for life. Those who chose to take the

first step and act in support of the SIPCOT communities -- like the members

of Youth for Social Change in Madras, are working an invisible magic, setting

the stage for larger changes.

 

I dream not only of stopping the expansion of SIPCOT and its current

polluters, but also of seeing effective treatment for those already poisoned

there.

Like any other daunting challenge, it can be simplified to the happiness you

are creating in one other person's life and also your own. The beneficiary of

this work I imagine, is a child who can smile without a cleft lip, a mother

who can breathe enough to complete her daily work, a father who is proudly

able to conceive. When I speak about other Bhopals and the ongoing chemical

experiment we are all part of, I will describe this perfectly normal child -- a

dream, a vision, and decreasing probability.

 

Currently exposure to extremely common chemicals, like 2,4 D -- found in

Scott's Weed n' Feed, has no long term treatment protocol in the U.S. Those

suffering from long term effects of toxic exposure must plow through a

revolving

door of specialists and disparate alternative medical practicioners spending

thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours chasing relief. If environmental

physicians coordinated with integrative medicine practitioners to share knowled

ge and treatment protocols internationally perhaps simple detox practices

could be made available in SIPCOT and hundreds of communities like it.

 

It may take 20 years for such a vision to materialize. I hope it will take

less time to see real pollution control implemented in Cuddalore. In standing

up against toxic trespass, the imposition of unwanted chemicals unto our

bodies, local organizers are working for the fundamental right to health and

for

the smile of a perfectly normal, healthy child.

 

 

© 2008 Environmental Health Fund All rights reserved.

 

View this story online at: _http://www.alternet.org/story/85630/_

(http://www.alternet.org/story/85630/)

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