[CPEO-BIF] CTS Asheville (NC) "leaked chemicals near my home"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

I was diagnosed with cancer at age 11. A factory leaked chemicals near my home
The Environmental Protection Agency panders to polluters and lacks the political wherewithal to hold them to account

by Gabriel Dunsmith
Guardian (UK)
September 15, 2015
 
When an MRI of my spine revealed an enlarged thyroid instead of the scoliosis the doctors had feared, they whisked me away for a biopsy. I lay awake as the surgeon stuck a needle into my neck and wiped away the blood. The next day, my mom told me the test result when I got home from school: thyroid cancer. I was eleven years old.

As the surgeons put me under for an operation that would remove my thyroid, I hoped I would still be able to run around outside with my brother, to clamber through the groves and streams that surrounded my home in the mountains of North Carolina.

While I lay on the operating table, an abandoned factory a mile from my house silently seeped toxic chemicals into the creeks and valleys.

Yet no warnings were posted outside the gates. The polluted streams were not fenced off. Like the other neighborhood kids, I had no idea of the toxins lurking in our midst.

…

For the entire column, see
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/15/i-was-diagnosed-with-cancer-at-age-11-a-factory-leaked-chemicals-near-my-home

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650-961-8918 or 650-969-1545
Fax: 650-961-8918
LSiegel@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org

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