Erin Brockovich

"Just the facts ma'am." ;
Why this book, and many others of the ilk, are important reads.

What do Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, E. O. Wilson, Elizabeth Kolbert, and many others have in common?

They all wrote factual, logical, (mostly) easy to read books on aspects of environmental degradation relative to human sustainability that were/are widely applauded. And with each humanity continues business as usual, painting ourselves ever more perilously in a corner.

Why? We are, like all creatures, subjective beings, and the consequences of our proclivities are inconvenient problems that too many deal with by ignoring. We learn by experiencing, by taking risks, which is essential to getting through life, but don't for the most part have enough foresight to recognize the degree of fatality in.

We are also in good part easily swayed, not necessarily recognizing the intent of those engaged in manipulation.

As our environmental problems escalate, we are seeing more literature addressing such in varying ways, and more readers developing an interest. Not so much though it seems, that we are seeing a meaningful dent in subjective literature.… (mais)

Erin Brockovich warns us that we the people are the only ones who can save us. Grass roots efforts by moms have stood up to power to save their children. Lois Gibbs, the Love Canal mom, and Leeann Walters of Flint, Michigan are two of the most recognized Water Warriors. For change to happen, more ordinary people need to become involved.

Superman's Not Coming describes the problem of providing clean water under a dysfunctional EPA and climate change. Brockovich also offers resources to empower Water Warrior wannabes.

I have spent a good deal of my life a few hours drive (or less) from one of the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater source in the world. I grew up boating on the Niagara River, and later vacationed at Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, and Lake Huron.

I also remember in the 1970s seeing yellow foam at the base of Niagara Falls, reading about how algae blooms poisoned Toledo's water, Love Canal and the Flint Water Crisis. I have lived near lakes made toxic by industrial waste.

Across the country, Americans--today--discover their water isn't safe to drink. They endure limits on water use because it is in short supply.

It's only going to get worse as temperatures rise.

Brockovich presents her information and argument with passion. The book is upsetting but it is also empowering. If we have the will, we can create change. It starts with people like us.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.… (mais)

Two thirds of Americans drink water contaminated by chromium-6, a highly toxic chemical that was the subject of Erin Brockovich, the film starring Julia Roberts that caused outrage 20 years ago. But Erin Brockovich herself claims in her new book Superman’s Not Coming that the movie ended far better than the reality. The water in Hinkley CA is still poison, and thousands of towns and cities across the country are similarly laced with the same chemical, and many others.

Brockovich cites a child who was shocked to see someone in a film drinking tapwater from the kitchen sink. She had grown up knowing with total certainty that kitchen sink water should never be consumed, and had never in her life seen anyone do it before. This sad state of affairs is the scandalous truth for 220 million Americans. Birth defects, brain defects, autoimmune diseases and particularly numerous kinds of unusual cancers result from drinking tapwater in the USA. Sometimes just showering is enough to cause skin rashes and other conditions.

Brockovich says if COVID19 could survive in water, the whole country would be using only bottled water. Yet, despite 2/3 of drinking water being contaminated with chromium-6, a long-known poison and carcinogen, Americans act as if nothing were wrong. There is no scandal, no jail sentences, no takeovers of water authorities.

She points out that there are still six million lead service lines providing water to households. And this same chromium-6, among others, causes the lead to leach into the water, adding lead poisoning to the list of illnesses at no extra cost. (Chromium-6 is a rust inhibitor, meant to save pipes, not people.) To save money, many jurisdictions pour ammonia into the water supply to help purify it, causing even more illness. Endless creativity, and no accountability keep American citizens guessing why their families are ravaged by cancers when they’ve had no prior history of it. Even the UN has had to admit 75% of cancers are environmental, not genetic. We do it to ourselves. Or rather, our companies do it to us.

The victims often come to realize their situation purely by accident. Brockovich tells of high school students who discovered several hundred of them secretly all had cancer. Teenagers.With cancer. What they had in common was simply drinking the water, which proved carcinogenic.

Brockovich has made her life in this miasma. She gets thousands of emails asking for help. She plots the complaints on a website and maps (communityhealthbook.com). She is the road warrior supreme, constantly visiting sites, challenging authorities and helping organize the victims to help themselves. And testing water.

She has watched countless local water authorities denigrate taxpayers who dare challenge them, by asking if they have degrees in chemical engineering. When they take positions like that, Brockovich knows they are actively hiding the truth. Why aren’t they co-operative and collaborative? They are supposed to be the good guys, so why do they deflect, obfuscate and deny? She says advocates should turn the tables, and demand to see peer-reviewed studies that show the water is actually safe.

Killer water is an American tradition. The biggest single polluter in the world is the US military. The toxic mess it poisons its own soldiers with is scandal enough, but the mess it leaves behind when it moves out poisons unwary citizens for decades more. And it never gives it a second thought. The military gets its own chapter in the book, with stories of retired soldiers coming back to fight it for future generations.

How is it that the water authorities of the United States find it their job to hide the toxicity of the water it is their job to provide? Same goes for mayors, and in cases like Flint, Michigan, even the governor. They all take the position the yellow, brown or green water is perfectly safe, and drink a glass to “prove” it. It is always an absurd scene, flying in the face of a clearly provable truth. They all immediately become defensive, and fight off the intrusion of lab reports, unprecedented sickness, and worried taxpayers. It is them against their customers. How bizarre.

As I read, the overriding question identified itself: Why are firms even allowed to pollute the groundwater? How is it they get to dump endless tons of chemicals in the water and on the land without permission, inspection, or even a second thought? The local municipality itself should prevent this, but no. Even after Love Canal and Hinkley, there is nothing to stop the madness, which has only become demonstrably worse. Companies will get away with anything they can. Morality plays no role in American society. Only profit counts.

A lot of it has to do with the dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency. Constant whittling down of the staff has left it unable to verify pretty much anything any more. The Trump rollback of water quality laws and rules means the EPA won’t be around to help. Meanwhile, Americans die. As in so many other domains, there are sufficient laws on the books to deal with or even prevent this from happening. But government refuses to fund the agencies needed to keep the country honest. Or safe.Or legal.

One scientist Brockovich cites has shown that spending on cleaning up a water system brings a thousand times the benefit in dollars saved or generated through medical, productivity and growth improvements. Yet government fights its own citizens at every turn, wasting taxpayer money, killing more people and temporarily delaying the inevitable discovery and correction. It is Swiftian in its stupidity.

Back in Hinkley, the utility PG&E now says it has passed the halfway point in its cleanup, 20 years later. But the town is a shell. It has lost its school and its post office. The remaining residents drive 30 miles to purchase water. And PG&E is still out there trying to buy up every home to lessen the complaints. It is far from a happy Hollywood ending.

Brockovich wants readers to know a couple of things. First, everyone and anyone can do what she does, no training or degrees necessary. She says she herself “was a broke single mom with dyslexia, trying to make ends meet” when she stumbled onto the Hinkley disaster. And second, everyone must join in, because power is arrayed against them, and only popular efforts can succeed where mere laws are not enforced. It could be a Freedom of Information request for documents, suing, getting signatures for a ballot initiative, running for town council or escalating the issue to embarrassing levels. Anything and everything is on the table, and has worked somewhere already. But mostly, no one is going to do it for them: certainly not their elected representatives. And Erin Brockovich is just one person, where 220 million are needed for the job. Throughout the book, she continuously calls for readers to pick up the baton and run with it.

She says if a terrorist cell put poison in the water, the whole country would be up in arms, and it would be dealt with, quickly and harshly. But when PG&E, 3M, Tyson or an oil company does it, Americans let it go. Domestic terrorism is okay, it seems, because Americans let it be.

The book delves into numerous chemical compounds and what they do to people who drink water. Studies have shown some to be so toxic, the amounts allowed in the water are listed in parts per trillion. But water has been shown to contain ten thousand times as much as allowed. How much arsenic is it safe to drink? Daily?For decades?

She also examines fracking, and the famous secret 600 toxic chemicals no one is allowed to name by law, though they turn up in drinking water throughout the Midwest. In Pennsylvania, doctors are not allowed to claim illness has been caused by fracking – by law. But whole towns suddenly go sickly including pets, cattle and crops, when the frackers set up shop. (Where are all the conspiracy folks for this real, genuine conspiracy to poison everyone? Never mind the B-52 contrails. This is nationwide and fatal right now, and provably so.)

There should be some unique advantages to living in the richest country in the world, one where basic things like water are a given. Instead, Erin Brockovich has had to write a horrifying book detailing how much of a fight is necessary to avoid death by water.

David Wineberg… (mais)