Sandra Steingraber ("The Pirates of Illiopolis," pp. 268-283) is making an appearance at RCTC tonight, which prompted me to skip ahead in The Future of Nature to read her article.
Illiopolis is a small town between Decatur and Springfield, about 90 minutes from the town I grew up in. It's a pretty boring part of Illinois, actually, but it sure must have been a hoping place a few years back when the PVC plant blew up...
Is there more cancer in the community? Apparently no one has bothered to check. Is vinyl a dangerous product to make? Apparently so, but no one seems to care enough to do much about it.
The article mentioned the accident at Graniteville, South Carolina. This one killed a few people, and shut down the local community college for a week. I know, because I worked there at the time. Graniteville is South Carolina's version of Illiopolis: poor, run-down, and overlooked.
You know why no one cares about PVC and cancer and small town America? The short answer is money. Places that house chemical plants don't have any. The makers of chemicals have all the political pull.
And nobody ever bothers to think that the product they're walking on is dangerous.
1 comment:
I grew up less than a half mile from the PVC plant in Illiopolis and worry that the effects of it will hunt me when I am old. I am not sure if the cancer deaths are more than average for the area, but I do remember when someone close to my age was diagnosed with liver cancer shortly after high school graduation. He had worked in the warehouses sweeping and breathing in the toxins over the summers. It is hard to believe that his robust case of cancer was not related, but who takes the time to prove such? And when do they start? Is this something that I will be passing on to my children who will not grow up anywhere near Illiopolis?
Post a Comment