Two Hundred People Attend February 23rd People's Hearing on Dioxin, Health and Environmental Justice in Oakland, California

Solutions

Communities fighting for their families' health can hold industry and public officials accountable for actions to stop this pollution. In 1997, the Zero Dioxin Alliance united people who live and work near dioxin sources in Bay Area and California communities, environmental justice groups, people with cancer, women with endometriosis, health care workers, people who fish for food and others in an effort to stop dioxin exposure. Since then the new people power movement has made history in the Bay Area.

The new Alliance supported independent science to expose state agencies' cover-up of angler dioxin threats that EPA now ranks among the highest priority problems in San Francisco Bay. Alliance members proposed, and with the support of progressive labor leaders, won the first zero dioxin policies adopted by a U.S. City, County, and region in 1999. Community campaigns won zero dioxin solutions in controversies regarding the Chevron Chemical plant in Richmond and a vinyl chloride clean-up site in West Oakland, defeated a plan that would increase dioxin at the Kaiser Cement plant in Cupertino, and won an agreement of the community, workers and plant owners to zero out dioxin without job loss at a small business in Bayview/Hunters Point.

A Call to Action

The event comes as the new policy consensus for zero dioxin, the recent victories, and strategies growing from grassroots struggles signal a new phase in the move to eliminate the toxic health threat, and as communities sharpen demands that industry and government be accountable for environmental justice for all people. New strategies to be advanced include:

• At the IES incineration facility in Oakland the community and elected officials have called on the company to shut down the incinerators and replace them with alternative treatment technologies that will better protect public health and the environment - and protect the jobs at the plant.
• At Gonzalez Drum in Bayview/Hunters Point the community and plant owners and workers have agreed on a plan to develop specific methods for zero dioxin with zero job loss. Elected officials who have said they will help fund such efforts in this area, and USEPA - who says it funds environmental justice work - should fund it now.
• Chevron discharges dioxin to the Bay and should find ways to refine oil without using chlorine. The Regional Water Board has acknowledged any dioxin discharge to the Bay is harmful and that Chevron's discharge permit is years overdue. The Water Board should require zero dioxin now as a condition of any continued permit to discharge.
• Chevron's neighbors in Richmond who ask to be tested have a right to know about toxics accumulated their own bodies. Health officials should commit to pay for these tests.

These and other specific demands of action for health and against dioxin and environmental injustice were voiced to a "Listening Panel" of senior regional, state and federal public health officials at the hearing.

For more information, contact:

Bradley Angel Greenaction

(415) 248-5010

Speakout Highlights Public Health Threat, Industry Responsibilities for Zero Dioxin

Oakland City Hall - Two hundred people including local residents and labor, environmental justice and health advocates packed the Oakland City Council Chambers to join together to demand zero dioxin, healthy communities and environmental justice. The community based alliance that exposed severe Bay Area dioxin health threats convened the "People's Hearing", sharpening the focus of a growing campaign to hold industry and government accountable for actions to zero out dioxin pollution. People living in disproportionately polluted communities near industrial dioxin sources testified to a Listening Panel of government officials, and shared local strategies in the regional health campaign. The event was convened by the California Zero Dioxin Exposure Alliance, a broad community-led coalition that has won policies making the Bay Area the first region in the nation where all levels of government call for elimination of the toxic industrial by-products.

"We are coming together to hold government agencies and industry accountable and eliminate this deadly threat to our communities once and for all" said Renee Morrison, President of the Chester Street Block Club Association and a resident of West Oakland.

"Low-income communities are shouldering an extra burden of dioxin pollution and we demand that it stop now! If we had waited for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District or the Regional Water Quality Control Board to do their job and protect our health no one would be talking about dioxin pollution and what is happening to our families' health" said Hal Carroll of PUEBLO (People United for a Better Oakland), who lives near the Integrated Environmental Systems (IES) medical waste incinerators in East Oakland.

"Polluters and the government agencies have only done what we, the communities of color that are dumped on, have forced them to do. It is time that we finish the job of protecting our health and put local polluters like Chevron on notice - to clean up your act, the only acceptable amount of dioxin pollution is zero" said Henry Clark, Executive Director of the West County Toxics Coalition and a North Richmond resident living near Chevron's oil refinery.

The event brought communities, workers, environmental and health advocates, and government officials together to examine a persistent pattern of environmental injustice with a focus on dioxin, the most notorious of the high-priority toxic pollution problems in the region, and one which public health officials agree should be eliminated, though the pollution continues.

"Dioxins" are industrial by-products and are among the most toxic synthetic chemicals known. Dioxin exposure is associated with cancer, diabetes, endometriosis, testicular atrophy, lower sperm count, immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, developmental toxicity, birth defects and other effects in humans and other animals. Even in the general population, dioxin has already reached concentrations that may cause effects. Bay anglers and industrial workers and neighbors are disproportionately exposed and at even more serious risk of toxic effects. Some industrial plants have eliminated dioxin cost effectively by eliminating chlorine use and altering production processes. In the Bay Area, however, dozens of industrial sources continue to generate dioxin pollution, and most of them are in communities of color or low income.

Industry managers have threatened communities and workers with plant shutdowns and layoffs if zero dioxin policies are followed. Public health officials have allowed IES - the state's only commercial medical waste facility that has not switched to zero dioxin methods - to operate in a low income Oakland community; allowed the Chevron Richmond Refinery to avoid public review of its ongoing dioxin pollution three years beyond a 1997 permit review deadline; and upheld water quality standards calculated so that subsistence anglers are excluded from the level of health protection offered to the general population.