PCBs AND COUNTRY LIFE

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NO PLACE TO HIDE

Naturally, after hearing this—and after reading through the huge stack of magazine articles, journal reprints, news paper clippings, and other material we'd gathered over a two-month period—Sara and I became quite concerned about how our health might be affected by our exposure to PCB-contaminated milk and food. Thus, we got in touch with a doctor who had been testing tissue samples taken from people who'd eaten Lake Michigan fish (which are—in some cases—highly contaminated with PCB's) and arranged to have ourselves tested. Tissue samples were taken. The results haven't yet come back.

People have asked us if we've experienced any symptoms that might be attributable to PCB poisoning. As Sara says, we can only answer "severe depression". It's difficult for us to relate to the possibility that our bodies may—in some way—be damaged or to the idea that we might be healthy for the next 20 or 30 years and then — in middle or old age—start to suffer symptoms. (PCB's-like DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons-accumulate in fatty tissues and are not metabolized by the body ... until the fatty tissues themselves break down.)

We have experienced a few unexplained "symptoms" . . . if they can be called that. The problem is, PCB poisoning wears many masks: headache, fatigue, dizziness, blurred vision, nausea, numbness of extremities, skin discoloration, and skin lesions, to name a few. So it's hard for us to know whether or not the temporary discomforts we've felt were PCB-related.

I do wonder about those "symptoms" now and then, of course ... and I sometimes ask myself if I really want to know anything more about them.

A LASTING REMINDER

Sara, Rachel, and I have tried to reclaim our land as much as possible. We've scraped the sludge off our half-acre garden—along with several inches of topsoil—and had the city come and truck the 80-odd tons of earth and wastes back to the sewage plant (which they did, free of charge). Still, tests show that the remaining subsoil contains 2.5 to 4.0 ppm of PCB's ... which means that that particular plot is still too contaminated to grow food on. (We've made no attempt to scrape the sludge and topsoil off our remaining acreage.)

Thus, although our land looks healthy enough, it will very likely be ruined—as far as food production is concerned—for up to 100 years.

The contamination of our little farm by PCB's, of course, has meant hardship for us. It has greatly reduced our income by preventing us—as long as we live here—from ever again raising the food that we once ate, bartered with, and sold. It has also ruined our cow—and her milk—for food use (and may have damaged the calf she is carrying as well).

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