Cancer-causing pesticide polluted local rivers for decades, D.C. alleges

[Wicked Blue]

Washington Post
By Kyle Swenson
Updated October 13, 2022 at 6:29 p.m. EDT|Published October 13, 2022 at 2:20 p.m. EDT

D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine announced a lawsuit against a chemical manufacturer on Thursday, alleging that its pesticide contaminated the Potomac and the Anacostia rivers for decades with chemicals it knew were linked to cancer.

Flanked by environmentalists and representatives of the local NAACP, Racine (D) said at a news conference that the effects of Velsicol Chemical’s alleged contamination particularly hit “low-income Black and Brown” residents, in a case that bridges environmental and racial justice.

“The history of our country is such that whenever there is trash that needs to be disposed of or there are things that could hurt people, it always went to where people had less power,” Racine said. “And, yes, that means Black and Brown communities.”

Beginning in 1945, Illinois-based Velsicol was the sole maker of chlordane as a pesticide for killing insects, Racine said. Although the company was aware the product could cause cancer by 1959, he alleged, Velsicol opted for a campaign of “misinformation and deception” and continued to sell the product until 1988.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/13/dc-anacostia-potomac-river-pollution-lawsuit/

Chlordane was banned by the federal government in 1988, but persists in the environment

[dweller]

1. It's not just Camp Lejeune

Mississippi… Flint Michigan… where on Earth is water safe ?

Rainwater no longer safe to drink anywhere

https://www.discovery.com/science/unsafe-drinking-levels-in-rainwater

😐

✌🏻

[Kid Berwyn]

2. Velsicol Chemical polluted Michigan in 1973...

Biggest Superfund Clean-up in the state. Cancer causing PCBs in the Pine River — one of the beautiful stretches of water in the northern LP.

Cleanup of Michigan’s largest Superfund site, begun in 1998, could take 7 more years

by Chris Ehrmann
Saginaw and Bay City News, Updated: May. 21, 2019,

Excerpt…

The Velsicol plant not only was the site of Michigan’s infamous 1973 mix-up that resulted in the chemical PBB making its way into Michigan’s food supply, but extremely high levels of the chemical DDT were found in the Pine River after the plant closed in the late 1970s.

The Pine River cleanup — which started in 1998 and ended in 2006 — alone has cost over $100 million. Workers removed over 750,000 tons of DDT-laced sediment from the river.

In addition to the river cleanup, many chemicals were found in the soil at the plant site after it was demolished. Workers are removing the materials through a process called in-situ thermal treatment.

The process works by inserting metal rods into the ground that heat up the chemicals to boiling. They are then siphoned off and destroyed.

Rachel Bassler, press officer for the EPA Region 5, wrote in an email to The Saginaw News-MLive that total cost for cleaning up the St. Louis site could be in excess of $350 million.

Continues…

https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw-bay-city/2019/05/cleanup-of-michigans-largest-superfund-site-begun-in-1998-could-take-7-more-years.html

This company must have owners, perhaps?

[Samrob]

3. The one pesticide that actually worked was banned but all the other pollutant pesticides remained

and did as much damage to the environment as the chlordane that was banned without being effective. I still believe that chlordane was banned because it was effective. We had an infestation of termites and roaches from the home next door in 1978. A friend of my mother who was an exterminator gave her some white powder and told her to dilute it 20:1 or use an eye dropper and put a thin thread of the powder along our baseboards. He pumped the liquid stuff in the ground and in our basement floor. Never had any more termites and the roaches only appeared as they came out their nesting places to die. Within two weeks all the sick and dying roaches were gone and we never saw another one for over the 20 years I remained at home. My mother's exterminator friend gave are a small pouch of the powder around 1988 or 89 because he said it was going to be banned and we would not be able to get it again. But we never needed it again. Our friend from India told me that he could buy it in India and how it was the only pesticide that was affective for his family there.

i was no more cancer-causing or toxic than the shit they use now. It just was so effective you only needed the exterminator once.