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Why Were
Chemicals Leaked into Willits?
From a news story by
San Francisco KPIX CBS 5 News Reporter Roz Plater
February 2004
Emergency rooms are supposed to heal people but Dr. John Sterngold wonders
if working in an ER in Willits made him sick.
"When I'd first walk in the hospital, within about a minute I'd
had the feeling that it was like Freon was being poured down my airway,
and then it felt like a bottle-brush," said Sterngold. "Then
I would cough and cough."
The ER was downwind of the Remco chrome-plating plant. "I used
to sit facing that window and kind of daydream out the window, looking
at Remco, looking at the fog coming out of there," Sterngold said.
What Dr. Sterngold didn't know was that Remco was spewing Chromium VI
into the air -- a chemical known to cause cancer and respiratory problems
in humans. A recent state health department study found that people
who were in Willits when Remco was in operation from 1964 to 1995 are
at higher risk for cancer and asthma because of Chromium VI exposure.
Today Dr. Sterngold has lots of time to play his guitar. It turns out
he has a form of asthma. Hospital chemicals trigger coughing so brutal
that he's broken ribs and it's cost him his career. Others in this town
believe the Chromium has made them sick, too, and their families.
"My mother died of cancer when she was 59. She never smoked, she
never drank."
"I have watched my children grow up, they have tumors, I had tumors."
Chromium VI was classified a carcinogen 30 years ago. Twenty years ago,
a state scientific panel found no exposure level below which carcinogenic
effects would not have some probability of occurring. No safe level.
Still, Remco was allowed to spew Chromium VI into the air. How does
this happen? In the battle to balance public health and a healthy economy,
laws often favor business.
Alan Ramo is a professor of law at Golden Gate University. "There
is a real drive to prosper, to have employment. When there's a real
job that's available and abstract risk or a theoretical risk of a chemical,
jobs win out, business wins out."
And chemicals are allowed to flood the marketplace. When it comes to
pharmaceuticals, the federal government requires rigorous testing before
any drugs can be sold.
But if you think the same
is true of industrial chemicals, think again. The vast majority [of
industrial chemicals] are put into use with little testing of any kind.
A thousand new chemicals hit the market each year and only 6% have any
kind of toxicity testing at all. Chemicals that people like us, you
and me might be exposed to.
Marilyn Underwood is with the [California] state health department.
"You need to have a weight of evidence that something is bad to
then start regulating it."
So in most cases, chemicals are not tested until someone notices a problem.
Take asbestos, which was used in products like floor and ceiling tiles.
As early as 1963, scientists were concerned that it might cause lung
cancer. It turns out they were right, but the Environmental Protection
Agency didn't restrict asbestos until 1989.
"I think that if people really knew what really goes on with environmental
protection I think they would be outraged and they should be outraged."
says Professor Ramo.
In the meantime, people like John Sterngold wonder if the unregulated
chemical market is playing Russian roulette with their health.
"It might be valuable for other people to know what has happened
to me, not for me but for them," [he said] "because they might
be in an analogous situation because of where they work."
With 80,000 largely unregulated chemicals in use today that may be more
likely than you think.
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