I was starting to compile a list of things that could happen in Dimmock: water trouble, health problems, hazardous explosive conditions inside the house, destruction of land ... A total loss of normal life. ibid.
There was no-one for them to complain to. ibid.
[lights drinking water from tap] Jesus Christ! ibid.
The Whistleblower: Weston Wilson – In 2004 the EPA was investigating water contamination incidents due to hydraulic fracturing across the country, but a panel rejected the Inquiry stating that although hazardous materials were being injected underground the EPA did not need to investigate. Weston Wilson, a twenty-year veteran of the EPA, wrote a letter to Congress objecting. ibid.
Energy Police Act of 2005: The Halliburton Loophole to the Safe Water Act. ibid.
Glycol Ethers eat the membrane inside the filters. ibid.
Of all the [chemical] water that goes down only about half of it comes back up. ibid.
Evaporation Sprayers ... In flow-back pits the water is sprayed into the air ... They create ozone hazardous air pollutants and they fall down in the form of chemical or acid rains on the grasslands. ibid.
Theo [Dr Colborn] has identified 596 different chemicals in 900 chemical products. ibid.
I tried to keep anger and sorrow at bay. ibid.
I wanted to get out of Gasland as fast as I could. But there was nowhere to go ... Everywhere I went it was the same story. ibid.
I’d seen these condensation tanks everywhere all across the United States. ibid.
Industry has leased hundreds of thousands of acres within the New York City watershed and the Delaware basin. ibid.
There were hours and hours of hearings at city hall. But no-one from the State’s department of environmental conservation came to the city’s hearings. ibid.
It’s possible the Gasland might stretch a little bit further from my backyard into yours. ibid.
The problem is that everywhere the gas drilling industry goes, a trail of water contamination, air pollution, health concerns and betrayal of basic American civic and community values follows. Josh Fox
Secrecy is the Word to Remember. Atomic Homefront, sign over entrance, Sky Documentaries 2022
North St Louis County, Missouri: Elevated levels of radioactivity. ibid.
In 1942 the US Government chose St Louis, Missouri, as a processing centre of uranium for the first atomic bombs. Over the next 25 years, the radioactive waste from this processing was moved to sites throughout the northern suburbs of St Louis. The radioactive waste was then dumped into a landfill in Northern St Louis County. ibid. captions
It’s stinking. That’s how it is down here. ibid. resident
The Bridgeton side of the landfill contains an underground fire known as a Subsurface Smouldering Event or SSE. ibid. caption
The West Lake side of the landfill contains 47,000 tons of radioactive waste including Uranium 238, Thorium 230 and Radium 226. ibid.
In 1990 the West Lake landfill was designated as a Superfund site. ibid.
Proposed site of isolation barrier north quarry area chart. ibid.
‘We’re just mums and we’re scared.’ ibid.
Louis Gibbs founded the Lake Canal Homeowners Association to fight dioxine poisoning in the community. ibid. caption 1980
We had all of those cancers. Every single one. ibid. resident
Water pollution – who’s to blame? What effect is it having on our rivers and lakes? Is enough being done to stop the polluters? And how do we have to put a solution in place? Tonight: Who’s Pollution Our Water? ITV 2022
‘There is not a single river in England that isn’t currently listed as being in good overall environmental health.’ ibid. Fergal Sharkey
Water companies are allowed to discharge untreated sewage into rivers and the sea but they need a permit and it has to be in exceptional circumstances … The privatized water companies have been allowed to self monitor. ibid.
February 2023: ‘The town is under a state of emergency after fifty train cars derailed causing a massive fire half a mile long.’ How Corporate Greed Destroyed East Palestine ***** news, Second Thoughts 2023
‘Well over 115,000 gallons of vinyl chloride.’ ibid. news conference
‘Breathing issues, tightness in our chests, severe headaches …’ ibid. victim
East Palestine Residents Report Health Problems After Train Derailment. ibid. Newsweek
These amounts are nothing. They are worse than nothing. They are an insult to the people [Norfolk Southern] they just poisoned. ibid. commentary
Between 2012 and 2014 North America was hit with a string of devastating trail derailments … labelled ‘bomb trains’. ibid.
Unions were sounding the alarm … [about] cutting costs and reducing the operating ratios for rail companies. ibid.
Safety is a cost that needs to be minimised. ibid.
Five major rail unions have stood in common sense opposition to this attempt to make railways even less safe … Rail companies use the piles of money they made by caring less about safety to influence policy and make sure that safety is even further reduced, and as a result, we suffer preventable catastrophic accidents. ibid.
This train derailment wasn’t being talked about much … a media matter. ibid.
So long as the profit motive remains the driving factor, nothing will meaningfully change. It’s time to nationalise the railways. ibid.
Bhopal, central India, 1984: City residents wake choking and unable to breathe. Stampeding in panic, thousands die, poisoned by the very air about them. An American-owned factory, Union Carbide, supposedly rigged with safety systems. It triggers the world’s worst industrial accident. Seconds from Disaster s4e6: Bhopal
Minor gas leaks are a regular occurrence and the workers have had to learn to live with the choking effects. ibid.
In minutes the pressure in the chemical storage tanks has shot off the scale … Operators are powerless to stop toxic gas pumping into the night sky. ibid.
‘We had no antidote and no information from Union Carbide.’ ibid. local hospital doctor