Posted on 03/20/2009 5:34:37 AM PDT by carolgr
I began to notice an unusually large number of people dying of cancer at a young age. I began to collect death certificates of our members and began my own study. Some had noticed rodents in the plant with large cancerous tumors protruding out of them. Hundreds of widows and family members came to the local union looking for answers. These family members were desperate. Do I have any rights? Who will provide for my family? One young widow with three children came to me asking if she and her children could receive her husband’s pension as survivors. Her husband in his mid-40’s died of lung cancer. He never smoked and only lived a few months once diagnosed. He had 27 years service and his wife only received his life insurance and the “bridging benefit”. In this area many people had wells. Behind the plant there were huge settling ponds where plating fluids, die cast waste water and chemicals full of toxic poisonous waste and heavy metal contaminants were pumped. The material certainly leeched into the ground. I called for health studies for the area but the state never followed up that I know of. In addition to these chemical lakes of toxic material, the plant emitted tons of toxic material from the furnaces and exhausts stacks in the plant. The prevailing winds carried that material into the homes of everyone in the area. Again, I know of nothing being done to see if it affected people’s lives. The plant is gone now and I understand that the huge chemical setting ponds are covered up. In my view the Coldwater Road site is a Love canal all over again. This toxic material eventually will reappear somewhere and the end result will be more human and environmental harm.
(Excerpt) Read more at michaelwestfall.tripod.com ...
You certainly don't hear of workers in non-union plants having the same problems.
Do the workers getting full pay sitting in a room all day doing nothing a few feet away have the same problem?
There were a lot of liver problems in Burbank, CA when Lockheed started working with Composites. Lockheed moved their manufacturing work to Palmdale, CA and Georgia. I don’t know what the result was of the lawsuits, and in California, lawsuit results are not a reliable indicator of truth.
It’s a given that those who work in the Paint Departments will have cancer.
Proof that cars cause cancer.
Collecting union dues to guarantee them democrat representatives who will confiscate 40% of their their paychecks? (It's a lose/lose situation).
This article makes it sound like the UAW helped bury the findings. I thought unions were the protector of the workers?
My dad used to work at the Pontiac plant in Pontiac, MI during the 70’s and 80’s. He was a skilled trades pipefitter and did most of his work at a place called the “mud farm.” Every once in a while he’d come home with a nasty rash or skin irritation.
One day he brought home a kitten that had been living in the shop. It was a sweet little grey thing with long fur we named Dusty. Nine weeks later Dusty died of cancer.
It’s a miracle my dad retired with nothing more than his pension (except now that’s in question).
Proof that carsUNIONS cause cancer.
much better!
Why is this a miracle? Millions of auto workers retired with a pension and no diseases.
Guess you never followed up either. If it was that big of a concern you would have followed up and even hired someone to conduct the studies.
But you didn't.
And now you posture, you self serving POS.
The UAW position is; ‘you must join and give us our money, or we can’t take care of you, and you won’t be employed, anyway’. So there, what else?
Examine this site There’s nothing conservative about it.
In the mid to late 70’s I personally worked as an environmental consultant in southeast Michigan and worked at hundreds of auto factories studying unlined waste lagoons at these plants. The state as well as the industry itself were identifying problem areas and cataloged every single waste lagoon associated with these plants. We would go in and put in monitoring wells and collect water and soil samples and do a complete evaluation of pollution potential. Fortunately some of the lagoons were protected by naturally occuring layers of impermeable clay which prevented migration. Also, most contaminants have a low taste threshold meaning that at very low concentrations, people could taste it. While I don’t doubt that many workers died as a result of chemical exposure over many years within in the plant, I don’t believe there is much to worry about with continual contamination in the area and that includes most of Michigan.
Are you a conservative?
Chromium ?
The “mud farm” consisted of huge vats where all the crud from the heating and cooling systems went to be processed. Particulates in the air — metal, chemicals, etc. — were mixed with water in the mud farm and turned into sludge.
Nasty stuff.
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