The “PACE-EH” program the Center for Disease Control is giving to the Calhoun County Health Department is a very weak substitute for the comprehensive health and environmental baseline study I have been advocating for the past two years. The Anniston Star has also called for a thorough study of the environmental problems our community possesses and the affects these problems have on the health of our citizens. Unfortunately, the “PACE-EH” program will only offer the appearance of a comprehensive study rather than allowing our community to actually document the many environmental and health problems caused by Monsanto, Fort McClellan, Anniston Army Depot and other sources — known and unknown.Our community needs this comprehensive environmental and health study done now. We have already learned that Monsanto illegally dumped tons of PCBs into our waterways, our lands, and our air for more than three decades.
From the recent trial we learned that some of the citizens of West Anniston have the highest levels of PCBs in their bloodstream ever recorded anywhere.
There also were news reports two years ago that the level of lead in the blood of children in West Anniston was dangerously high. Recently, The Star reported that trichlorethylene was dumped in ditches and lagoons at AAD and is now appearing off-post in lakes and groundwater, including trace amounts in Coldwater Springs.
The city of Weaver and the Joint Powers Authority have recently expressed serious concerns about two landfills at Fort McClellan which contain heavy metals and compounds which are leaking underground and spreading west towards peoples homes.
Now we are on the verge of a 12 year process of burning 2,300 tons of deadly chemical and nerve agents in the incinerator at AAD. Everyone hopes and prays that this process will be carried out without any problems. But even if the incinerator works as planned, trace amounts of toxic compounds will come out of the smokestack.
Therefore, our community must have a comprehensive study conducted now in order to know what the long-term health affects of the PCB exposure and the other hazardous activities have created in our community, as well as what the long-term affects may be of the incineration process.
The CDC’s offer of a mere $141,000 to pay for “a group of 12 or more community leaders” to study this problem falls far short of our needs. Instead, our community must have scientific experts — epidemiologists, toxicologists and statisticians from leading universities — to conduct this study. It will cost a lot more than $141,000.
Some have suggested that Monsanto and Solutia should bear this cost, although they certainly should not be allowed to conduct the study.
Regardless of whether this study is conducted by the federal government or the private sector it will be a small price to pay for our community to finally learn what our environmental health problems currently are and what they may become in the years ahead as we undertake this decade-long process of destroying the chemical weapons stockpile.
Failure to complete this study now will only leave our community exposed and in the dark for many years to come.
James A. “Pappy” Dunn
Commissioner, District 1
