By
Dominique Otiepka
An African American community in West Calumet,
Indiana, has been told to leave their homes due to the toxic soils they are
living on, The Guardian reports. The
apartments in which they live are being torn down, because city officials feel
that remediation of the soil will cause too much air pollution. Residents have been given housing vouchers to
relocate, though the number of property owners who accept such vouchers is limited.
There are 357 families who live in this housing
project that must be evacuated to another area.
The soil is contaminated with lead and
arsenic, which the residents were informed about years after the initial hazardous
release from a lead smelting plant. Many residents claim that they
were unaware of this situation, and needed to be tested for contamination in
their blood levels. Some tests have showed high levels, which can cause a
variety of diseases. Health issues from
living in such areas include a variety of cancers and diseases such as
neuropathy and glaucoma.
This group of people have lost all trust in
their government, since there have been concerns about lead contamination since
at least 1985. Soil tests were not
released for years. By 2011, there were
a number of blood tests with a declining number of children with elevated lead
levels in their blood, and it was concluded that there was no longer a public
health concern.
The EPA did not take quicker action with
prioritizing remediation or testing the soil until an agreement was made with
the polluting companies, DuPont Chemical Company and Atlantic Richfield
Company. This issue was made public in
2016, which parallels what has been in the spotlight regarding the DuPont contamination
in Northern New Jersey.
The people in Indiana, like those in Pompton
Lakes, New Jersey, are enraged. It is
shocking that this chemical dumping has happened in a local area, and disturbing
that it occurred in yet another. Lead
and arsenic contamination can spread throughout the soil and make its way
through surface water locations, causing the spread of contamination and
increase in health concerns.
The impacts
that DuPont has had on a variety of communities is disheartening; it has
resulted in people losing loved ones due to diseases caused by such toxins. Pompton Lakes has been under investigation to bring awareness and prevent another catastrophe, which has been
occurring in this community for decades.
Knowing that a similar contamination occurred in Indiana deserves
further investigation, as well as other areas that have been contaminated that
have yet to be remediated.
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