Women, Children Most At Risk from Toxins in New Orleans' Water

[Guest guest]

http://www.msmagazine.com/news/uswirestory.asp?ID=9273

A whistleblower with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has

said that water is being pumped out of the flooded city in a way that

increases the danger to human health. Hugh Kaufman, a 35-year EPA

veteran and an expert on toxic waste and responses to environmental

disasters †" and a longtime whistleblower on EPA’s shortcomings †" told

London’s The Independent that the Bush administration was playing down

the need for a cleanup, and that the EPA has been kept out of the core

White House group tackling the problem. Said Kaufman of the agency,

“Its budget has been cut and political hacks have been put in key

positions,†The Independent reports.

The water being pumped from the city is not being tested for

pollution, according to Kaufman, and will damage Lake Pontchartrain

and the Mississippi river and endanger people downstream. Plus, no one

knows how much pollution has escaped through damaged chemical plants,

refineries and petroleum storage deports in New Orleans †" and no one,

says Kaufman, is trying to find out. The cleanup, Kaufman says, “will

take 10 years to get everything up and running and safe,†according to

The Independent.

" We don't yet know everything we need to know about the potential

health effects of population-wide exposure to the chemical mix in the

floodwaters, but we do know that women of reproductive age, infants

and girls undergoing puberty have special vulnerabilities to the kinds

of chemicals so far identified,†says Steingraber, Ph.D., a

biologist, author and distinguished visiting scholar at Ithaca College

in Ithaca, New York, in an inter

view with Ms. magazine. Those chemicals include mercury (a brain

poison whose potency is concentrated as it moves across the placenta)

and lead (which accumulates in women’s bones only to be released into

her body again during pregnancy).

The floodwaters also contain pesticides, polycyclic aromatic

hydrocarbons and volatile organic chemicals. “These are substances

variously associated with birth defects, asthma, learning

disabilities, infertility, miscarriage, breast cancer and endocrine

disruption,†says Steingraber. “When it comes to environmental harm,

the old adage grimly applies: it's women and children first. "