The Housewife From Hell
by Mary Walsh
Famed Toxics activist Lois Gibbs will speak in Mendocino on May 17, 6:30PM. The event, which is sponsored by the Mendocino Coast Environmental Center and the Local Sierra Club chapter will be a potluck dinner. There will be, as well, a ten dollar charge. It will be held at Preston Hall in Mendocino, next door to the gas station. Gibbs, who founded the Citizens Clearinghouse on Hazardous Waste (CCHW) as a positive legacy of Love Canal, has written a new book, Dying Of Dioxin. The first part tells the story of this extremely toxic and ubiquitous substance - what it is, where it comes from, how it affects each of us... and the information is very, very disturbing, "You don't have to live next to Love Canal in New York or Mt. Dioxin in Pensacola, Florida to suffer the effects of dioxin. The average boy, girl, woman and man in the United States has enough or almost enough dioxin in his or her body to damage his or her health" (Dying Of Dioxin). It describes how dioxin is destroying the health of the American people, and that the risk of getting cancer from dioxin exposure is between one in 1,000 and one in 10,000. It states unequivocally that dioxin is the most potent carcinogen the EPA has ever studied.
The second half describes how to reclaim our health by stopping our exposure to dioxin. You'll find advice on how to build an activist group, create a coalition, shut down an incinerator, convince the local government to buy only dioxin-free products, and more. She suggests that we can't shut down the sources of dioxin without finding the courage to change the way government works, and that to begin this process of change, we have to create a national debate, community by community, on the nature of our government and our society....We have to discuss why our government protects the right to pollute more than it protects our health.
Lois Gibbs is sometimes called the Mother of the Superfund. The federal Superfund program, established in 1980 to clean up waste sites, was a direct outgrowth of Lois Gibbs' work with her neighbors at Love Canal. She and CCHW have assisted groups in developing and passing laws to protect health and the environment. These include "bad boy" laws which prohibit corporations with felony records from conducting business in a state; moratoriums on landfills and incinerators; and bans on the dumping of wastes produced in and transported from other states. They have as well focussed attention on the connection between race, class and waste by exposing studies that document the deliberate siting of unsafe facilities in which most residents are people of color, low-income, rural, Catholic, elderly, and/or without a college education. They produced the McToxics campaign, during which people nationwide organized efforts to stop the use of styrofoam in restaurants, schools, and public and private institutions. We owe her and her cohorts at CCHW a tremendous debt of gratitude and we have much to learn from them. Please mark your calenders for Friday night May 17 in Mendocino. We're having a potluck dinner at Preston Hall at 6:30 PM and the guest of honor will be Lois Gibbs. Seating is limited. Info, tix at 937-0709.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
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