In 1997, Monsanto Corp. spun off its chemical business to Solutia, leaving the chemical industry behind. Monsanto's toxic gift to Anniston, however, still remains and is likely to loom darkly over the community for a long time to come. As revealed in The Anniston Star, PCB leftovers from Monsanto's heyday in the
Anniston area pollute waterways and contaminate soils in the county - contamination so intense that Superfund designation, with all its costs and stigma, is a real possibility, if not a necessity. Anniston residents should be worried about more than the cleanup costs and perceptions. It's not only that the links between PCBs and cancer have grown stronger, and they have: One striking study titled A nested case-control study of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and serum organochlorine residues published in 1997 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the National Cancer Institute revealed a dramatic link between PCBs and non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a cancer that has increased steadily in the United States over the past several decades.
But these cancer risks are just the tip of the iceberg. We know that exposure to PCBs, even at low levels, can cause many other health problems. The good news is most research shows that human exposure to PCBs comes today not from breathing the air but from contamination of the food chain. That is why fish advisories are crucial weapons in the effort to limit the health impacts of PCBs. They must be promoted aggressively and heeded faithfully in places, like Anniston, where waterways bear heavy PCB burdens.
But the potential exists for accidental exposures via other foods, as occurred in Belgium last year when PCB-contaminated food was fed to chickens. Also people working unknowingly in areas that have been heavily contaminated may inadvertently track PCB-laden dust back into homes, creating exposures for children. However, direct airborne exposures are unlikely to be significant.
When exposure does occur, however, the results can be devastating. We now know, for example, that low levels of PCBs in the womb have detrimental effects on the growth of the fetus and on life after birth, perhaps all the way through adulthood and old age. The effects include consequences for intellect, the ability to reproduce and disease resistance.
To begin, kids can have diminished intellectual abilities if they are exposed in the womb to PCBs. The research establishing this comes from a series of studies in the United States and Europe, which have examined the consequence of relatively low level contamination by PCBs, exposures well within the range, if not below, what might result from exposure around Anniston's potential Superfund sites.
These studies are complicated by the reality that no one is exposed only to PCBs, so the effects are difficult to disentangle from impacts of exposure to other contaminants. But because numerous effects of PCBs have been demonstrated in experimental animals, and these effects resemble impacts observed in people, PCBs are strongly implicated.
The most striking of these, a long-term study by Joseph and Sandra Jacobsen at Wayne State University, has focused on the consequence of eating PCB-contaminated fish caught in the polluted waters of the Great Lakes.
The Jacobsens found that by age 11 the more exposed kids are three times as likely to have lower average IQ scores. They are also twice as likely to be two years behind in reading skills as their peers. None of the exposures these children experienced in the womb was very high. Exposures were simply somewhat higher than background levels.
The impacts on cognitive development, moreover, go beyond reading skills and IQ level. Several of the studies suggest links between PCB exposure and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), concerns reinforced by studies of the impact of PCBs on animals. When infant chimpanzees are exposed to very low levels of PCBs,,they develop behavior patterns reminiscent of ADHD in children.
Exposure in the womb can result in reproductive problems. Some of our best information on these effects come from individuals exposed in accidents, particularly a long-term study of children born to women in Taiwan who, in 1979, consumed cooking oil accidentally contaminated with high levels of PCBs.
Within four years of birth, 21 percent of children exposed in the womb had died. Those living had delayed and inhibited growth, permanent intellectual impairment and behavioral problems. As some of these children approached puberty, researchers discovered abnormal sexual development in the boys. And a recent follow-up to this work revealed sperm deformities and weakened sperm in the boys who had reached sexual maturity.
And perhaps most insidiously, low level contamination of the fetus can diminish, later in life, a child's ability to resist disease. The Taiwanese children (above) were far more likely to develop infections. Strong scientific results from Europe, looking at infants exposed in the womb to only slightly elevated PCB levels now document greater susceptibility to childhood illnesses like chicken pox and ear infections.
What we don't know, because the studies are complicated and long-term, is how many other diseases become more deadly because PCBs have reduced the efficiency of the immune system, making children vulnerable to disease agents like bacteria and viruses they normally would be able to resist with a healthy immune system unaffected by PCB contamination.
None of these results should be surprising to Monsanto, scientists at universities in government, or to regulators responsible for protecting public health. These results have been accumulating in the scientific literature for at least two decades.
Some people may disclaim knowledge - in which place they are confessing ignorance of the scientific literature - or they may take refuge in scientific uncertainty, the type of claim that shielded tobacco companies for decades.
It is true that there is not absolute scientific certainty in these difficult public health issues - there never is - but enough has been known for a long time to justify taking steps to limit human exposures to PCBs and to control their slow leakage into the environment.
The cancer risks have been bad enough. But these other health effects, emerging as research continues to explore the impacts of PCBs, are likely to affect a much larger number of people, because they take place at much lower exposure levels. In other words, the story from science is becoming more troubling, not less.
And the damage reaches far beyond Anniston. Because these contaminants evaporate when warmed by the sun, they enter the atmosphere and travel, quite literally, to the ends of the earth. They get caught in prevailing wind currents which take them, on average, toward the north. What Anniston loses, so to speak, to this evaporation process, others gain.
The region with the largest build-up is the Arctic, far away from the deposits that Monsanto left along Snow Creek, and similar deposits left by other corporations in other places such as Rome, Ga., and the Hudson River. The arctic build-up, which also takes place in high mountains, occurs because it rarely warms enough in these cold regions for PCBs to evaporate and move on.
PCB accumulation in the Arctic is becoming so extreme that it is already affecting the health of Inuit children, polar bears and whales. But this build-up in the Arctic is slow. It will take thousands of years to complete.
And in the meantime, Anniston's and America's soils and water remain highly polluted. Local health risks won't abate in the lifetime of anyone living in Calhoun County or anywhere unless the EPA takes active steps to remove the contamination.
Ironically, just as The Anniston Star was covering the latest round of debate over the Superfund cleanup in early December, 122 nations were gathered in South Africa to complete negotiations on an international treaty to eliminate production, use and stockpiling of the world's worst chemicals. PCBs were included among the 12 to be targeted for early action. Monsanto was nowhere to be seen in this process, having since moved on to selling bioengineered crops to the world's farmers.
Did Monsanto profit significantly from its PCB business in Anniston? That is an important question that should be answered, in detail, through a careful examination of Monsanto's corporate records for the entire period it was producing PCBs in the area.
However much money the company made by manufacturing PCBs, it has imposed a health tax on Anniston's future, one that has been paid up to now by local citizens who have borne the health burdens created by Monsanto's carelessness. That shouldn't have happened before. It shouldn't be tolerated now.
What does this mean for Anniston, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, the EPA and Monsanto? They must stop the legal maneuvers that leave the PCBs in place and put Anniston's children's health at risk. They must quit fooling around. Clean it up. Bring Monsanto executives back, in a wheelbarrow if necessary, and have them restore what they stole from Anniston's future.
John Peterson Myers is director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia, and co-author of Our Stolen Future, a book about contamination threats to children's health. Visit www.OurStolenFuture.org for scientific information about PCBs and other contaminants.
Abstracts for references:
Parallelsbetween Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Behavioral DeficitsProduced by Neurotoxic Exposure in Monkeys, Deborah C. Rice, U.S. EnvironmentalProtection Agency, Office of Research and Development, National Centerfor Environmental Assessment, Washington, D.C.; Environmental Health Perspectives108.
IntellectualImpairment in Children Exposed to Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Utero,Joseph L. Jacobson, Sandra W. Jacobson; New England Journal of Medicine,Sept. 12, 1996.
Anested case-control study of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and serum organochlorineresidues, Rothman N, Cantor KP, Blair A, Bush D, Brock JW, HelzlsouerK, Zahm SH, Needham LL, Pearson GR, Hoover RN, Comstock GW, StricklandPT, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute,Bethesda, Maryland; The Lancet, July 26, 1997.
Effectsof polychlorinated biphenyl/dioxin exposure and feeding type on infants'mental and psychomotor development, Koopman-Esseboom C, Weisglas-KuperusN, de Ridder MA, Van der Paauw CG, Tuinstra LG, Sauer PJ; Pediatrics, May1996.
Assessmentof prenatal exposure to PCBs from maternal consumption of Great Lakes fish:an analysis of PCB pattern and concentration, Stewart P, Darvill T,Lonky E, Reihman J, Pagano J, Bush B, Center for Neurobehavioral Effectsof Environmental Toxics and Department of Psychology, State Universityof New York at Oswego; Environmental Research, February 1999. Follow linkfrom abstract to full text in PDF format.
Growthabnormalities in the population exposed in utero and early postnatallyto polychlorinated biphenyls and dibenzofurans, Guo YL, Lambert GH,Hsu CC, Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, National ChengKung University Medical College, Tainan, Taiwan; Environmental Health Perspectives103.
Semenquality after prenatal exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls and dibenzofurans,Guo YL, Hsu PC, Hsu CC, Lambert GH; Lancet, Oct. 7, 2000.
Immunologiceffects of background exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxinsin Dutch preschool children, Weisglas-Kuperus N, Patandin S, BerbersGA, Sas TC, Mulder PG, Sauer PJ, Hooijkaas H, Department of Paediatrics,Division of Neonatology, Erasmus University and University Hospital/SophiaChildren's Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Environmental Health Perspectives108.
