You Bet Your Life

My letter to the Boston Globe

In response to the "Sunday Globe" February 23 article "Mass. is easing rules for some pollutants" linked here or below when I first read this story I thought I must have read it wrong. Alas, no. Is this possible and possible with support of a Democratic Governor I supported in 2008 when Obama first ran for the presidency and there was so much hope? Yes, it is possible as money the corporate tyrant of politics rules. It reminds me of the tobacco wars when scientists were paid handsomely by tobacco companies to say that scientists believe the level of nicotine in their cigarettes is safe or scientists have not found a correlation between cancer and smoking until they did and millions world wide died and continue to this day.

So increase the amount of lead and arsenic that can be placed in soil as long as it is arbitrary feet deep and oh yes, we just know no construction will occur or soil will be dug up with that in it and tap into the extra lead and arsenic. I am stunned with incredulity of the utterly insane corporate driven new rules increasing the levels of arsenic and lead that this Democratic governor for whom I worked so hard now turns on the progressives who elected him and supports it. Why am I not surprised but sickened? Many more will be sickened literally. Sure, it will not happen right this minute but it will happen and the limited American attention span being what it is the electorate will never remember or know why their child got cancer while living in a new visibly pristine condo complex.

What I do NOT understand about the environmental immoral stands of most of political/corporate America is that these people have children too; do they not care about even them? This issue reminds me of the recent reporting of the fracking billionaire CEO who does not want fracking in his upper class neighborhood and has sued to prevent it but if it is in working class neighborhoods all over the country dug by his company it is AOK with him.

Are we an insane species? If we are we are doomed to evolutionary extinction. No one but no one's cells can withstand increases in lead and arsenic. You and your children will eventually die before their time and to add to that your kids, if they live, will be born with birth defects if their parents were contaminated by those poisons and transmit mutated genes from those contaminants to them. They and/or their parents will die if one parent was a construction worker who dug just a little too deep on that project for which he was hired and low and behold the arsenic and lead he could not see and his corporate employer ignored will be the invisible culprit.

But sure in the name of "progress" why not loosen environmental restrictions on corporate America? What could possibly go wrong and what have we got to lose --- everything even your life!


http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2014/02/23/environmentalists-worry-about-raising-arsenic-and-lead-levels-allowed-under-building-sites/JE8OA4eaEEtQgBPA6FtNUL/comments.html