Workers at Stolthaven New Orleans LLC dumped almost half a million gallons of a chemical called fluorosilicic acid into the Mississippi River. Emergency personnel wore respirators and hazmat suits. The Coast Guard kept all vessels out of the contaminated area until midnight.

The Mississippi, grand olde river of yore and legend, is one of the most polluted toxic waste dumps in the world. Does that surprise you? If we had a real news media, it wouldn’t. But it’s a secret. The Mississippi River follows a winding path from Minnesota southward where it deposits millions of gallons of chemicals into the Gulf of Mexico to create a dead zone where nothing can live. In human health terms, this means something very bad, affecting the health of hormones, reproductive organs, livers, brains and colons.

This latest toxic dumping into the Mississippi is just one in a long string of such activities. Fluorosilicic acid is a corrosive acid that leaked from a storage facility at a chemical plant in Louisiana. The acid could have eaten through adjacent storage tanks to cause a “catastrophic” mix of toxic chemicals. . . The dangerously corrosive material can irritate or burn the skin, eyes, lungs and other mucous membranes. But just in the nick of time, it was poured into the Mississippi. Did this save lives or just transfer the damage? Fish live in the river and Gulf of Mexico. People eat fish. You do the math.

Environmental Working Group (ewg.org) tells us that fluorosilicic acid is better known as fluoride, the chemical your dentist, mouthwash and toothpaste manufacturer and local water company uses to poison you on a daily basis. Says ewg.org, “Set aside for a moment the mounting evidence that fluoride not only does little for dental health, but increases chances of a rare bone cancer in teenage boys who drank treated water as children. Set aside the assurance of Louisiana officials and MWD that there’s no harm if its diluted to parts per billion. Just think about whether you want a “dangerously corrosive” chemical that almost caused a “catastrophe” – one that is a waste product of manufacturing phosphate fertilizer – in your drinking water, where it affects not just your teeth but your whole body.”

This brings us back to the Mighty Mississippi, from legend to horror story. Says one writer, “At one time the meandering bayous of song and legend were all that interrupted the lush cypress and maple swamps of southern Louisiana. Today, it is a nightmare landscape of oil refineries, chemical plants, and plastics factories, a region with the highest cancer rate in the U.S. It is the main reason why Louisiana leads the nation in emissions of toxic chemicals, toxic industrial accidents, and childhood cancer.”1

In my book, Evil Genius in the Garden of Eden, I wrote about the Mississippi River and all the nasty poisons it swallows every year. You can’t really say one poison is better than another. You can’t really “choose your poison.” However, consider dioxin.

Dioxin is probably the single most toxic chemical consequence of all of Louisiana’s — and the world’s — industrial excess. First discovered as a byproduct of the manufacture of herbicides such as 2,4-D and Agent Orange, dioxins (actually a group of 75 similar compounds) are formed whenever certain common organic chemicals come into contact with chlorine at high temperatures. Waste incinerators are common sources of dioxins, which form when paper, wood, and vinyl-based plastics are burned together. So are pulp and paper mills, cement kilns, and many other industrial facilities. Dioxins have been found to cause cancer in laboratory animals at concentrations of only a few parts per trillion, a fact widely used by activists to press for more stringent regulation of incinerators and other industrial sources.

At doses already found in the fatty tissues of people all over the world, dioxins and related endocrine disrupters can alter levels of sex hormones, impair immune system function (“chemical AIDS” is a name given to dioxin in some quarters), reduce sperm counts, disturb fetal development — especially the proper development of sex organs — and increase the likelihood of learning disabilities. A wide range of behavioral abnormalities, including abnormal sexual behaviors, have been observed in laboratory animals exposed to minuscule doses of dioxin. People who live near pesticide plants and chemical waste sites report locally high rates of birth defects, infant cancers, and children showing signs of puberty before age five. Fish and wildlife in the Great Lakes and other areas impacted by chemical industries demonstrate thyroid dysfunction, decreased fertility, malformed and underdeveloped sex organs, metabolic and behavioral abnormalities and impaired immune systems, among other symptoms. Average sperm counts of men living in the U.S. have fallen 50 percent since 1975, and while the link to dioxin may not yet be certain, no other family of chemicals is nearly as damaging or as pervasive.1

The Mississippi River Basin Alliance tells us:

the Mississippi River ranks first in the nation as the most polluted river. Of the 1.5 billion pounds of toxics reported discharged directly to all U. S. waters between 1990 and 1994, close to half (702 million pounds), went directly into the Mississippi. This figure represents more than twice the amount of all other U. S. waters combined.

The report, Dishonorable Discharge, also uses EPA data to estimate, for the first time, untreated toxic discharges through sewage treatment plants (STPs). It assigns an additional 79 million pounds (1) of toxics entering the Mississippi River after going through STPs.

The report is the first waterway-by-waterway and toxin-by-toxin analysis of data from the federal Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). The TRI is an industry-generated estimate of facility discharges and only requires reporting for 5% of all chemicals (340 out of over 73,000 used commercially in the U. S.). The report was authored by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the U.S.Public Interest Research Group, two Washington-based environmental advocacy groups.

Despite the high levels of toxic pollution recorded by the TRI, over 90% of dischargers are exempt from reporting. Exempt facilities include sewage treatment plants, mines, utilities and municipal incinerators. Considering TRI’s limitations, the report’s authors believe that toxic chemical dumping over the last five years might be 20 times greater than that reported.2

Toxic Soup. Recently, after the Katrina hurricane disaster, the toxic condition of the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico has been revisited. While you still won’t hear it on the nightly news, the news is terrible just the same:

“Virtually anything could be in the water,” said Jim Elder, the EPA’s former National Director of Drinking Water and Groundwater. “I’m not sure that anywhere has ever seen all these chemicals put together in the same place. That’s why people are referring to this as a toxic soup. I think that’s a simple but apt description.”

Elder says the many heavy industries based in Louisiana have been leaching chemicals into the soil and groundwater for decades. But Katrina stirred up an even deadlier mix of waste: submerged automobiles are leaking oil, gasoline and other chemicals into the floodwater; asbestos that may have been contained in old buildings has been released by the flooding and the collapse of buildings; raw sewage, decaying body parts, offshore oil rigs and possibly ruptured pipelines all pave the way for a myriad of serious and potentially fatal medical conditions.4

The moral of the story? Keep your genitalia, and the rest of you out and away from the Mississippi!

Sources

1. Tokar, Brian, Campaigning Against Dioxin, May 1996
2. Mississippi River Basin Alliance, Mississippi River Ranks First as Nation’s Most Polluted River
3. Carlisle, Elizabeth, The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone and Red Tides, Tulane University, 2008
4. Makris, Nicole, Neck Deep in Toxic Gumbo, AlterNet. September 16, 2005
5. Link for environmental working group: http://www.enviroblog.org/2008/03/its-a-dangerous-industrial-che.htm

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