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Urgent Action Alert! Call City & County Officials to Protest the Plan to Burn Medical Waste, and Ask Them to Notify You of Opportunities For Public Comment, Public Meetings and Hearings on the Incinerator! Kevin
Williams Jocelyn
Reed See Also: 11/22 Urgent Action Alert! Turn Up the Heat to Shut the IES Incinerators in Oakland...And Stop Them From Moving to Stanislaus County! Tell the Bay Area Air District to Deny New Permits to the Incinerators! 11/1 Breaking News! In Response to Protest by Students, Greenaction and Allies, Stanford Medical Center to Move Away From Incineration of Medical Waste at IES Incinerators in Oakland, CA -- Victory for Health and Environmental Justice New Action Alert! Stop the IES Incinerators Now! Tell the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to Deny the Title V Clean Air Act Permit for the Incinerators! For more information, contact:
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Stop Proposed Incineration of Medical Waste in Stanislaus County! Ogden Martin Systems wants to burn medical waste from across California and other states at their "Stanislaus County Resource Recovery Facility" garbage incinerator in Crow's Landing. Stanislaus County and the City of Modesto will soon begin the process for Ogden to apply for permits to burn medical waste. The incinerator operates on county-owned land under agreement with the City and County. The proposal to burn medical waste would have to be approved by the County Board of Supervisors, Modesto City Council, and various state agencies. Under the new plan, a company called "Integrated Environmental Systems" (IES) would be contracted by the City and County to bring medical waste to the Ogden facility for incineration. IES currently burns medical waste at their incinerators in a low-income community of color in Oakland, an act of environmental racism and injustice. IES is the only commercial medical waste incineration facility in California, and has a long history of violations and excessive emissions. IES is the target of strong protest by a large coalition of community, health, labor and environmental organizations. In the face of the public opposition against the incinerators, IES is hoping to move their medical waste incineration business from Oakland to Stanislaus County. Ogden claims they are "state of the art" and that incineration is safe: but the truth is that incineration emits toxic pollution that threatens the health, environment and economy of Stanislaus County. Incineration cannot completely or safely destroy medical waste or garbage, and toxic pollutants are emitted. Medical waste contains mercury and large quantities of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) plastics which cannot be safely or completely burned. Incineration of medical waste results in emissions of many toxic pollutants including dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals known to science. Other toxic chemicals and toxic metals will also be emitted into the air. No amount of dioxin is safe. A new U.S. EPA study confirms that dioxin causes cancer in humans at even low levels of exposure. Dioxin also can cause other problems including birth defects, reproductive, immune and development illnesses. Dioxin emissions will also threaten the food supply including cows, poultry and crops in the area. |