[EnvironmentalHealthConnections] Fwd: A good article on our toxic environment and macrocosm/microcosm/dioxins

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vitamail <vitamail@...> wrote: Environmental Connections

<EnvironmentalHealthConnections >

From: vitamail <vitamail@...>

Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 12:28:47 -0600

Subject: [EnvironmentalHealthConnections] Fwd: A good article on our toxic

environment and macrocosm/microcosm/dioxins

> By Francis

>

> IT MUST BE terrifying finding out you live in a dormitory

> contaminated with dioxins. Imagine: you're 18 years old and you're

> having a great time at college. Then one day at the end of the year,

> you find out that your building had an electrical fire so long ago

> that nobody remembers, but not so long ago that the toxins are any

> better than the day of the event. Nobody told you. You feel betrayed.

> You learn that the chemicals involved will affect you for life; that

> your children and even your grandchildren may be affected; that you

> were lied to; and that there is nothing you can do about it except

> prevent future exposures, if you can.

>

> We always talk about life on a college campus being a microcosm of

> the " real " world, and New Paltz, with its inconvenient toxic truth --

> four contaminated residence halls -- surely qualifies. When I get

> back to town, sometimes after many months away, I inevitably get

> involved in this issue again, 16 years after the toxic fires that

> spread contamination through Bliss, Capen, Gage and Scudder halls,

> Theater and the Coykendall Sciences Building. Writing about

> this issue has not made me Grisham. More accurately, I sometimes

> feel like the Grim Reaper himself paying a friendly little visit,

> reminding people of the inevitable.

>

> This has always been a tense relationship for me. Most of you know me

> as an astrologer who helps light up the inner human world of growth

> and the personal choices we face. In this role, I can be a bit

> circumspect and less conclusive. When I slip into my role as a dioxins

> journalist and community organizer, I need to shift into

> higher-contrast language and ideology. I must apply my talent for

> confrontation, and bring up a subject that most people would rather

> forget about. Yet that Grim Reaper thing has another side, which is

> by raising these issues, we push people to confront their personal

> issues and to grow.

>

> As I continue with this work, not entirely voluntarily, it becomes

> ever easier to see why so much goes unaddressed in the world.

> Initiating the discussion takes so much energy, and the messenger is

> often blamed for the message.

>

> Nobody really wants to have that role. Those of us who take it on

> usually do so grudgingly, often as a matter of survival, and at least

> as a painful matter of ethics. We are never prepared for it, when the

> time arrives. Nobody who becomes a community antitoxins activist is a

> scientist, a politician or a lawyer. It's more often people like

> housewives (Lois Gibbs of Love Canal comes to mind) or in the case of

> Brockovich, a secretary.

>

> My life is often thrust into chaos as a result of getting

> re-involved. My business typically suffers, my energy runs low, and

> along the way, I have to face my own fears and inner demons. I have

> to be honest with myself about what it means to be alive at this time

> in history, particularly in the human environment, which rarely seems

> willing to stand for too much reality. I have to be willing to have

> many conversations that people would rather not have, when there are

> plenty of things I would rather be doing.

>

> When we ask why the global environmental crisis (and the associated

> corporate responsibility crisis) is not being addressed more directly

> or more quickly, I think we really need to look at these

> personal-level issues. With the situation in New Paltz, we have a

> fairly typical community crisis in our world, but one that is at

> least workable. Shutting down four buildings is possible, and it's

> probably going to be easier than stopping Greenland from melting. Yet

> the task is daunting enough: challenging a massive, inhuman and

> deceptive state bureaucracy to care about people.

>

> One thing that's different about the contamination issue as it exists

> in the spring of 2007 is that there are both students and local

> political leaders involved in taking action. Interestingly, they are

> almost all women, and the leadership is entirely composed of women.

> In wonder if this has something to do with their taking the

> reproductive issues associated with dioxin-like compounds more

> seriously. I have no other way to explain it.

>

> One aspect of my work has been as a teacher, passing the torch,

> passing along information, and also carrying forward an environmental

> tradition that has its roots in the anti-pesticide movement of the

> 1970s in the Pacific Northwest, which has provided 90% of my

> education in these matters. In this role, I convey history,

> knowledge, information about key players and perpetrators, documents,

> contacts and a general sense of awareness. I bring people into a

> larger tradition.

>

> That other part of me who is the astrologer, the student of

> relationships, the observer and the participant in synchronicity, is

> watching myself and others as I do this. I am watching my connections

> with people and how they evolve, and also noticing the themes that

> emerge in the discussions. Participating with others who are new to

> these issues, I have a chance to see what it's like to encounter them

> for the first time.

>

> I don't feel ready to write about the people who are involved. I am

> ready to say I've been truly impressed by what I've seen (they

> probably don't know this, because I push people pretty hard to know

> their stuff and be firm in their actions, and I probably give the

> impression that I'm impossible to impress), but that is the truth. I

> do feel ready to talk about some of the growth issues involved in

> taking action on the environment.

>

> Fear

> To take action means to fully admit to the reality of a situation.

> When it comes to dioxins and their chemical cousins, the first thing

> you learn is that we are constantly exposed. According to Dr.

> Farland, who supervised the reassessment of the toxicity of dioxins

> for the EPA in the 1990s, the current body burden of seven parts per

> trillion is, by itself, enough to cause serious disease in one out of

> 100 people. Learning about dioxin-like compounds is terrifying.

>

> Yet students who are organizing have another layer, which is the

> necessity to explain this to other people. There is always that fine

> line to walk between being alarmist and being straightforward. Denial

> runs thick; you can be laughed at, your friends can give you a hard

> time and you run the risk of being kicked off campus.

>

> There is also fear of surveillance by government agencies, who seem

> to be back in the mode of their 1970s actions against the Black

> Panthers. Yes, it's possible to get an FBI file doing this work;

> people may mess with you; we know the stories of activists who have

> had their houses burned down and their cars blown up. Nobody that I

> know of is obsessing over these things, but they are lurking around

> in the back of our minds.

>

> Confrontation Issues

> This is closely related to fear. To do environmental work involves a

> confrontation. Many people feel that they have to avoid confrontation

> at all costs. This is just not possible in a situation where you have

> public officials participating in poisoning students, or any similar

> issue. To confront someone, you need to get in touch with your power

> on some level: your anger, your sense of entitlement to be alive,

> your sense of justice -- something.

>

> Feeling powerful, even for a moment, tends to evoke fear and guilt.

> This can manifest as being afraid to make people angry, which is an

> essential thing to get over. You don't need to proceed with the

> intent to piss people off, but if you're scared of doing so, you're

> going to get crushed.

>

> All of this involves what we typically call parental issues. Taking

> on authority is a metaphor for challenging one's parents. College

> administrators are in loco parentis, which means they are in the role

> of parent. Usually, people are much older than 19 or 20 when they do

> this. Often, people allow their parents to run their lives long after

> their parents have made their bodily exit from this lifetime.

>

> Toxic Emotions

> I am indebted to Lorna Tychostup for first making this astute

> observation. Students who are put in toxic dormitories sometimes come

> from toxic home environments, including those who have a history of

> being abused. Because their homes were toxic, a few things are

> possible. They may not notice the state of their building being

> contaminated, or may not care; or, even a contaminated place feels

> great, because it is less toxic than where they came from. Their

> attackers are not there. They can live in relative peace. But they

> may still carry the fear of rising up against the people who hurt

> them or who held them down. In addition, they may be afraid to get

> out of their dormitories, fearing that they will be sent someplace

> worse. There is indeed a close relationship between emotional

> toxicity and physical poisoning, and both work on the body in similar

> ways. As we attempt to clean up our world, we need to start with our

> mental and emotional environment s first, which will help us make

> room for the attention we need to give our planet.

>

> Reproductive Issues

> Most environmental issues involve reproduction. dioxin-like compounds

> (which include dioxins, dibenzofurans, PCBs, many pesticides and

> herbicides, and many heavy metals) mimic estrogen. In other words,

> they act like extremely durable, synthetic estrogen. Basically, they

> wreak hormone chaos, causing or being associated with a large array

> of issues from endometriosis to birth defects. Men are affected by

> being feminized; their sperm counts go down, boys born to PCB

> exposure victims are known to have smaller penises, and there may be

> many other effects caused by living in an environment of extremely

> durable female sex hormones.

>

> To find out about this, and to learn that you may have been exposed,

> is to be confronted with reproductive issues, including negative (as

> in terrifying) ones, a lot younger than it would normally happen. The

> entire subject is sensitive. Though people may have been sexually

> active for a while, that is different than being sexually aware.

> However, learning that your dormitory is contaminated with dioxins is

> a truly unfortunate way to become sexually aware.

>

> But it's an issue that we need to face. PCBs, dioxins and heavy

> metals are ubiquitous. They are in everyone's blood; it's a matter of

> at what level, and what level in an individual causes a response. The

> only way to control this, in the long run, is by diet, and as a young

> adult you still have a lot of eating ahead of you. It's actually not

> a bad time to find out about these issues.

>

> Death

> I've heard people say that young adults feel immortal. I never had

> that feeling, so I'm not sure I can relate, but I believe all the

> people who tell me it's true. Encountering this issue of the deadly

> quality of toxins, or pushing others to do so, is a kind of meeting

> with death: the idea of death, and a shared reality that we all face

> collectively. Most people don't want to do this at all, much less

> between the ages of 18 and 22, when they are in college.

>

> All of this makes a good case for offering extra counseling services

> to New Paltz students, as well as for closing down Bliss, Capen, Gage

> and Scudder halls. The students need a therapist on their team. Are

> there any volunteers?

>

>

> Recent Articles in This Series (reverse chrono order)

>

> Dear Readers,

>

> Lately I've been on one of my periodic campaigns to raise the issues

> associated with chlorine and dioxin, which I started covering with

> devotion after the New Paltz electrical disaster of 1991. A short

> resource of my older articles is posted here. The newer articles are

> listed below, with three additional pieces that cover the larger

> theme of scientific fraud and dioxin in general. We have typed many

> additional articles by other writers from the 1970s and 1980s that

> will gradually be built into a full-scale dioxin and scientific fraud

> resource area. - e.f.

>

> There's Nothing You Can Do That Can't be Done

>

> PCB Clarification and Follow Up

>

> From Blacksburg to New Paltz

>

> The Kemner Brief by Francis

>

> White Wash: The Dioxin Coverup by von Stackelberg

>

> Faking It: The Case Against IBT Labs by Schneider

>

> More articles are located at this resource area.

>

>

> by Judith Gayle

>

> WE LIVE IN interesting times -- some say that's a Chinese curse (I

> wonder if the Chinese say it's the American curse, or German or

> Japanese.) The times are so extraordinary, so exhausting, we

> sometimes fail to see that there is ebb and flow and moments of

> progress; 21st-century life seems more like one long bone-crunching

> gauntlet to run, a daily dash to get wherever we have to be and do

> whatever has to be done. The challenges come at us at breakneck

> speed. Our neighbors are " snappish, " work demanding, children

> restless. Our world is in chaos, our government unresponsive and our

> bills due on time lest we court financial ruin. And we seem to be

> doing all this with less resource than we used to enjoy and,

> certainly, less peace of mind.

>

> I don't remember ever feeling that there was so little time and so

> much that needed my attention, or feeling stretched so thin. As we

> attempt to balance this heaviness, it's difficult to get our heads up

> above the fog to see where we are, to see how much we've changed in

> the last years -- or remained the same. To see where we've come from.

> To see where we're going.

>

> As the year 2000 rolled around, I was wagging my tail. Technology and

> prosperity were leaping along, hand in hand, and we were considering

> how best we could hit the 21st century running towards creativity,

> international collaboration, environmental responsibility and the end

> of poverty. When the Y2K problem didn't occur, with all its projected

> angst and hoopla, it seemed like pretty smooth sailing ahead. True, we

> had a new Republican president who had taken power directly from the

> hands of the Supreme Court, an unsettling affair. Some of us were

> concerned about that, but we saw it as a wrinkle in the fabric, not a

> rip. Ahhhh -- those last sweet days of innocence.

>

> Continued at this link...