Friends, Readers:
I am posting this mainly to get it into the search engines, and to send up a “diver down” flag. I’m responding to several students who believe that they are facing serious illnesses related to the PCB and dioxin contamination at SUNY-New Paltz. Older Planet Waves readers have heard a lot about this; if you’re new, maybe this is the first time.
In December 1991, an electrical accident in New Paltz caused many PCB-laden electrical transformers to explode on the campus, including in four dormitories. This contaminated six buildings severely, and in the process, another 17 or so buildings were discovered to have contamination that spread from PCB equipment in years prior. Fortunately, students were on winter break at the time of the explosions, but were moved into dorms before the buildings were properly tested or renovated. We cover this incident on a separate website, called Dioxin Dorms. There you will find more than a decade of my writing on this issue.
More than 17 years have passed since the New Paltz explosions. Every one who lived in Bliss, Capen, Gage or Scudder halls after December 1992 is a potential exposure candidate; and I am figuring out that these transformers may have been leaking long before that time. There has been a lot of time for health effects to manifest, which will range from endocrine diseases (endometriosis, diabetes, reproductive issues) to cancer to anything that cannot be diagnosed. If you know any SUNY-New Paltz students who are not well, please send them to the Dioxin Dorms site and ask them to contact me.
Anyone who would like to help on this story — whether you can contribute money (I am raising $1,000 to test soil outside the buildings) do research or Facebook-type organizing — please contact me.
Many thanks.
Hi,
I’m a SUNY New Paltz student and i was considering moving into one of the contaminated halls because of its’ convenience. However, I am now beginning to see that it’s not worth the risk. I had heard rumors of PCB contamination but I had never tried to search for any information.
I have visited the dioxin dorm site as well and I just want to thank you for discussing this information. I don’t think that enough students are aware of the dangerous materials they are being exposed to. I will be bringing this up with my friends tonight…
Yeah, but here’s the thing… despite the unconscious material flowing all around us, You Be *Conscious.* The profligate use of these u/m’s gives you the opportunity to test out a different body/mind integrity.
A friend of mine just found out that her lover’s testosterone cream was shooting her hormones all over hell and back. She adjusted her mantra, and about 60% of the chaos went into abatement, cooled down.
And yesterday I noted that every time I worried –particularly about others– my temperature would *shoot* up. The heat would trigger my practice (see Tantra for Bobos) and –thanks to our activated Mercury/Uranus conjunction– a wave of vertigo signaled that the message had been re-routed.
Bottom line: Stay awake, and hook up a cascade so that concern (what our friend Husserl calls ‘sorge’ or care) triggers freedom.
You can do it! (Insert Rosie-the-Riveter image here)…
Can`t help being suspicious of these endocrine interruptors as also being one of the causes of the staggering rates of obesity we are experiencing in America —metabolic maladaptations to the crud, no doubt.
I live in the upper Fox River Valley. Everyday this summer 90 truckloads of PCBs will be travelling through the village to the dump site south of here.
The paper companies were good to us when we were growing up. Much monetary wealth was generated and working class fathers could make a good living. And now, well, the sins of the father are visited on the sons.
Thank you both, Eric and Mystes, I’ll be looking them up.
As to how much exposure I got, I’m sure it was higher than the ‘norm.’ The wood treatment plant used a lot of it back then, and the smell was always in the air. I was as young as five when I started tagging along with my older brothers when they went to play over near the plant. We certainly didn’t think much of it then, but now, it’s another thing altogether.
I would also recommend _Living Downstream_ by Sandra Steingraber. She has done research on the great waves of endocrine interrupters that flow across the Midwest. It is highly readable, besides being meticulously researched.
Read it right after the daughterest died of colon cancer at an improbable 20. The year she was born the FDA approved the use of endocrine antagonists in the food supply, so there is at least a circumstantial link between that policy shift and the rise of colon cancer in the US throughout the 1990s.
I suggest the website and the book OUR STOLEN FUTURE By Theodora Colborn, et al.
The problem is that testing your body burden is unlikely to reveal much, since there is no set level at which effects occur, and there is a background level in every mammal, bird, etc. (including us).
Eric,
What online sources do you know of for endocrine disruption information? I’ve never been tested but due to growing up near a Superfund site that is still rather ‘hot,’ I am very concerned about what may lurk within. I do have some non-critical medical issues that point to something not being right, and I’d like to learn more. My exposure would have been through contact with contaminated water bearing Penta preservative while playing in the neighborhood vacant areas 40+ years ago.
As an aside, this isn’t linked to New Paltz in any way.
Thanks for any and all information!