COLLUSION PERHAPS? WOULD THE M.O.E. TRY AND DEFLECT OUR ATTENTION?

Saturday's posting was in regards to PCBs being both in the Canagagigue Creek and in the soil at Chemtura Canada. I asked several questions regarding whether they may have been intentionally kept on the downlow over the last three decades. One question I didn't ask last Saturday was what else is there in the creek from Uniroyal/Chemtura that we are not aware of?

Is the single most toxic contaminant, presumably dioxins, all we need to know about? Do they overrule or overshadow all other possible contaminants in and around the creek? The answer is no simply based upon the fact that PCBs also have Toxic Equivalency Factors (TEFs) similar to Dioxins and indeed to calculate the total Toxic Equivalency Quotient (TEQ) both PCBs and Dioxin/Furans need to be included. Also other contaminants may have either additive or antagonistic properties with Dioxins or PCBs. In other words science has not yet been able to determine either toxicity ratings or even health effects upon humans or wildlife in the case of exposure to multiple contaminants simultaneously. It does however make common sense when we know how toxic certain individual chemical compounds can be to confidently understand that more is not good. It is all the more unnatural disasters in the creek available to various life forms.

PCBs, Dioxins/Furans and DDT are all part of a group of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) known as the "dirty dozen". These twelve chemical compounds were initially identified at the Stockholm Convention many years ago. The other nine include a who's who of man made chemical compounds all supposedly made to better life for mankind. They have turned out to be environmental and human health disasters. "Better living through chemistry" has turned out to be nothing more than exactly what it is. A slogan. No more.

The dirty dozen consist of three categories of chemicals namely pesticides, industrial chemicals and by-products. The pesticides in this group include Aldrin, Chlordane, DDT, Dieldrin, Endrin, Heptachlor, Mirex, and Toxaphene. Hexachlorobenzene is both a fungicide as well as a by-product and impurity in other industrial chenmicals and pesticides. They are lipophilic (concentrate in fatty areas of bodies), bioaccumulative and have low solubility in water. All can and are readily mobilized by industrial solvents. Over time other chemical compounds have been added to the original dirty dozen requiring worldwide bans both of manufacturing and of distribution. Endosulfan or Endosulphan is but one of these.

We have evidence of the following pesticides either on the Uniroyal/Chemtura site or in the sediments or floodplain soils of the Canagagigue Creek. Please compare them to the list above. They are hexachlorobenzene, hexachlorcyclohexane, chlordane, DDT, Dieldrin, Endrin, lindane, heptachlorepoxide, endosulphan-1,-2 & sulphate. Perhaps it would be easier to simply list the chemicals of the 'dirty dozen" that aren't in and around Uniroyal/Chemtura.

Funny isn't it how Chemtura and the M.O.E. have our attention solely focused on DDT and Dioxins. Funny how they want to further focus our attention solely on human health risks via a Human Health Risk Assessment (HHRA). The last thing they want to admit is how willing they are to sacrifice the natural environment and other life forms.