Mossville's dioxin-free dreams

I wonder what health insurance costs are like in Mossville, Louisiana?

Sky high, I imagine. Residents of that community have three times as much dioxin in their bodies as the average U.S. population. Dioxins are the worst offenders when it comes to toxicity; these byproducts of chemical manufacture can cause cancer and harm to the reproductive system, and can be incredibly damaging to a developing fetus. The EPA assigns contaminants like dioxins a “maximum safe exposure level,” generally in parts per billion, but dioxin’s maximum safe level is set at zero – meaning no amount of exposure is safe. This stuff is just that dangerous.

The government has had its eye on Mossville since at least 1998, when the EPA and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR, a division of the CDC) began collecting data for an “Exposure Investigation.” But the EPA and ATSDR missed an important opportunity when they failed to investigate the source of residents’ dioxin exposure. Then again, maybe they just didn’t notice all the factories.

Mossville, you see, is surrounded on all sides by industrial facilities. There are 14 of them, and at least 6 of them regularly release dioxins into the air and water. The government’s Exposure Investigation never mentions these vinyl, chemical, and petrochemical production plants as possible sources of Mossville residents’ dioxin exposure. Now the Exposure Investigation data has been compiled and analyzed by Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, and they’re wondering why – with all this data in their pocket – the EPA and ATSDR have been sitting on their hands while the community is forced to deal with industrially produced health problems.

The government agencies involved, AEHR says, have ignored their duty:

“Allowing industrial facilities to release massive quantities of harmful chemicals, including dioxins, into the environment without regard to the long-term effects on human health and the environment completely contradicts the missions of both ATSDR and EPA.”

The organization’s recommendations for the government agencies [pdf] are about as straightforward as can be. They must make human health concerns a priority in their work, investigate contamination from dioxins and other toxins that persist in the environment and concentrate as they move up the food chain, and inform communities and test subjects of the results of their studies.

Sounds simple enough . . . so why haven’t the EPA and ATSDR been doing that all along?

Good question.