Athens, GA - Home to Toxic Chemicals that Will Be Around Forever

Agencies Deny Equal Protection Granted Under Law to Environmental Justice Communities



Micah's Mission (Ministry to Improve Childhood & Adolescent Health) met with Governor Sonny Perdue and requested a commissioned study on high volume chemicals in Georgia to determine their impact on the state's children. Micah's Mission proposed to the Governor that funding for this study be obtained through tobacco settlement money which would be at his discretion to award. [Rural Roads Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, Summer 2004, pg 12] Governor Perdue chose however to award the tobacco settlement money to a top air polluter in Athens, Georgia to build a public warehouse road for a proposed expansion.[http://gov.georgia.gov/00/press/detail/0,2668,78006749_79688147_93278236,00.html]

The proposed expansion was met with fierce opposition from the community concerned about the continuing deterioration of Athens' airshed, and the health impacts associated with increases in air toxic emissions on children. [http://onlineathens.com/stories/040605/new_20050406055.shtml]
Combined with the economic downturn of 2008, the expansion permit was withdrawn by the industry.[http://www.cleanairathens.org/certainteed.php] It was not reported whether or not the tobacco settlement money awarded to this company by Governor Perdue was indeed utilized to build their warehouse road after the proposed expansion failed.

In his denial to commission a study on the high volume chemicals impacting Georgia children, Governor Perdue overlooked a group of chemicals known as perfluorochemicals (PFCs) which have been prevalent in the manufacturing of carpets and textiles, food wrappers, teflon cookware, and other consumer goods. [http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/99/2/366?ck=nck]

Known in the 1970's to be toxic, ubiquitous, bioaccumulative, and resistant to biodegradation, the title Georgia holds as Carpet Capital of the World has come with a high price. In essence, PFCs behave like no other persistent man-made chemicals before them, and continued to be used for decades knowing damage was occurring to human health and the environment. [http://www.ewg.org/node/21716]

Micah's Mission, after a confidential consultation with a top environmental health official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, petitioned the state of Georgia to investigate the exposures of local poisoned communities in Athens. These two neighborhoods are well defined as environmental justice communities according to the EPA definition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_justice] The following information has been thoroughly documented, and any records will be made available upon request:

Pittard Road is bordered by an industrial facility that for two decades knowingly manufactured perfluorochemicals in spite of its knowledge of detrimental health and ecosystem impacts emanating from its operations worldwide. The facility was shielded from the public health investigation of Pittard Road from 2003-2006 although it was in violation of local, state, and federal laws at the time of the public health investigation. Residents were not disclosed any information about the violations or chemical releases of this facility to air, soil, surface, or groundwater. The list of agencies which withheld information about historical perfluorochemical use of the owners of this facility include:

U.S. EPA Headquarters - Washington, DC
U.S. Department of Justice
EPA Region IV - Atlanta, Georgia
EPA, National Exposure Research Laboratory, Ecosystems Research Division
U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry
Georgia Environmental Protection Division
Georgia Chemical Hazards Program
Northeast Georgia Health District
Athens-Clarke County Health Department

Air testing from a Canadian pilot project in 2004-2005, while the public health investigation of Pittard Road was underway, revealed levels in Athens, Georgia of volatile perfluorochemical precursors. Scientific interpretation of these results attributed perfluorochemical levels in Athens to a local manufacturing facility. Pittard Road is due a comprehensive and truthful evaluation with no more protection of this industry. While we hope it is not true, was Pittard Road a sacrificial lamb for EPA to negotiate cooperation with this industry on the harm of perfluorochemicals? It is now clear that all residents of Athens, including University of Georgia students, should rightfully be informed of just how contaminated Athens Clarke County is with perfluorochemicals, and what is being done to mitigate this exposure.

Additionally, our Dunlap Road community, is currently saddled with a landfill expansion which was promised in an agreement with government in 1992 never to occur. This treaty has been willfully and defiantly broken by current elected leaders. A permit application to continue to unethically dump toxic consumer products laden with perfluorochemicals (which will never biodegrade) awaits approval by Georgia Environmental Protection Division. What quantity of perfluorochemicals have already made its way into the landfill from three decades of operations? To what degree has it contaminated the groundwater? Has our infamous Poop on the Loop wastewater treatment facility near the University of Georgia been tested for perfluorochemicals which are hauled constantly to the landfill in sewage sludge? Has this historically problematic wastewater treatment facility which receives numerous complaints of odors been tested for perfluorochemicals that can attach themselves to airborne biological contaminants? Are perfluorochemicals lurking in local compost material? Now that air testing has identified Athens, GA as a perfluorochemical hotspot, what are the exposures to students, landfill residents, Pittard Road, and the population at large? How have these persistent chemicals entered into our food chain and impacted organic farmers in Athens?

Will our environmental justice communities be given equal protection under the law? Or will EPA continue to deny that a perfluorochemical problem even exists in Athens?

We hope to hear promptly from our elected leaders given the urgency of this issue.

The Morphing of Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue

Dear Governor & First Lady Perdue:

We met during your first term to discuss children's environmental health goals for the state of Georgia. See photo.

It was pouring down rain that day in Monroe with the Confederate Flag protesters not afraid to get wet.

I remember wondering: why are they so mad with the Governor? Surely he is a man of his word.

I came to find out those feelings of anger may have well been justified.

Requesting at our meeting that upcoming tobacco settlement money be rightfully designated to environmental health issues for children; shortly thereafter, you awarded CertainTeed Fiberglass Insulation that money for a warehouse road.

Traveling down the loop around Athens, you can visibly spot CertainTeed for they resemble a huge cigarette huffing and puffing tons of poisonous combustion into our deteriorating airshed.

CertainTeed is the largest air tox polluter in our area, who not long ago, had dollar signs in their eyes to increase their unfiltered dangerous emissions in spite of our high asthma and poverty rates.

Yet, recently they withdrew their controversial expansion plan permit not being spared by these economic hard times.

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/030709/new_406188738.shtml

Your irreverence after our meeting also hurt me because I had opened up and shared with you both the painful chemical trespassing of industry responsible for my 4 year old son's leukemia whom you met that day.

Maybe you recall that I framed and brought to you as a gift a recent wedding photo of your son Jim and his bride taken at their wedding by my brother, Jim. I had hoped to appeal to your heart.

Now five years later, I am not naive enough to believe anymore a heart appeal in politics is anything more than a waste of time.

So I will appeal now in a more familiar language----picked up from these years of investigating my son's case since our meeting in Monroe:

1. The former GA Hazardous Waste site in Athens (#10728) where we lived and he was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer was:

a. Wrongly delisted by GA EPD last week in a postdated letter sent to me by Mr. Mark Smith
b. Has been mistakenly approved for residential living

2. Dr. Carol Couch and EPD are being charged by me for:

a. Unsound science
b. Manipulation of data
c. Violation of hazardous waste disposal laws
d. Destroying evidence
e. Ignoring a requested moratorium on delisting #10728

3. This site can be proven that it remains:

a. A hazard to pregnant women, children, the elderly, and immune compromised

b. Increases the risk of genetic alterations associated with childhood leukemia

c. Contaminated with site related chemicals known to be genotoxic, carcinogenic, and
immune disabling

4. A Congressional hearing on Capitol Hill last week charged The Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR) with "jackleg science" recognizing this GA Hazardous Waste Site #10728 by ranking House member, Dr. Paul Broun:

a. As relevant in this ongoing Congressional broad investigation sparked by the FEMA/formaldehyde public health failure, and being potentially comparable given dangerous exposures of fugitive benzene emissions

b. Acknowledging the state of GA with ATSDR in a multi-agency culture generating slipshod science

c. "Deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate health concerns" from hazardous waste that compromises public environmental health, safety and welfare

d. Refused to act on significantly known childhood leukemia risks withholding critical public health data from the exposed and medical personnel inquiry

e. http://science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2376


5. President Barack Obama issued an internal memo to EPA last week before the postdated
delisting of this site. The President stressed:

a. The agency is to give priority to scientific integrity


6. EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, has given an agency outline which includes:

a. priority of hazardous waste sites and residents living under chemical trespassing from these operations

7. EPA Region IV, in an external/internal review group with GA EPD, of which I was denied representation, made a list of egregious errors in an attempt to quash any legal entanglements similar to the FEMA/formaldehyde exposures

8. You are being asked to reverse the delisting of this site #10728 based upon these serious charges.

9. You are being asked to reflect from that Saturday with Sonny.

10. You are being asked to respond.


Politically yours,

Micah's Mom