[CPEO-BIF] "Tracking the Toxic Storm"

[Lenny Siegel]

Tracking the Toxic Storm

By Sue Sturgis
Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch
September 5, 2006

Wilma Subra has been studying the environmental health of the U.S. Gulf 
Coast for decades. An environmental chemist and CEO of the Subra Co. in 
New Iberia, La., Subra has served as a technical advisor to citizens' 
groups and government agencies, and she currently chairs the Gulf Coast 
Hurricanes Workgroup of the Environmental Protection Agency's National 
Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which will soon release final 
recommendations on environmental justice issues related to hurricanes 
Katrina and Rita.

Subra has extensively investigated "Cancer Alley," the 85-mile corridor 
along the Mississippi from Baton Rouge to New Orleans where chemical 
plants and petroleum refineries ooze millions of pounds of pollution 
into the air and river every year. Much of that pollution washes out to 
the Gulf of Mexico, where it settles to the bottom as sediment. When 
Katrina and Rita hit last year, their powerful storm surge picked up 
that sludge and spread it over everything in their path - a ubiquitous 
layer that Subra has likened to cake batter. Soon after the storms, 
Subra began testing the sediment for toxics. What she found alarms her.

Of the numerous samples she's analyzed from Alabama, Mississippi, 
Louisiana and Texas, 90 percent have exceeded the EPA's allowable limits 
for arsenic - a known carcinogen that's been linked to skin cancer as 
well as cancer of the lungs, bladder, liver, kidney and prostate. 
Inhaling or ingesting arsenic can injure pregnant women or developing 
fetuses, and a mother can pass the chemical to her child through breast 
milk. There's also evidence that long-term exposure to arsenic may lower 
children's IQ.

With the anniversary of the storms approaching, Sue Sturgis interviewed 
Subra about her work, her findings and her concerns about the current 
and future health of Gulf Coast residents.


...

For the entire article/interview, see
http://www.reconstructionwatch.org/index.php?s=30&n=73

-- 
Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org