Often I'm asked why I started the TCE Blog in the first place.

Part of the reason is that my former hometown had a TCE-contaminated public water supply. Since 80% of the town was served water from the TCE-contaminated public supply wells, tens of thousands of Cheshire citizens were exposed to dangerous levels of TCE via public water for decades. Residents and workers weren't warned at the time except for a handful of families who were given bottled water to drink because of contaminated private water supply wells. To this day, polluters have never been held accountable.

When a public health assessment in 2004 finally revealed the truth about contamination and cancer, officials not only tried to stifle more inquiry, they refused to share with residents what was known about TCE and cancer. They also didn't bother to mention the other VOC's (PCE, Benzene, TCA) still migrating under the town.

Without help from the town or the state, citizens like me were left to find information on our own. Though there was plenty to be found on the web, three things became abundantly clear after months of additional, independent research:

1. There appeared to be no central place for finding information about TCE, its health affects, and the impact it has on communities. Information was/is scattered about.

2. Other communities across the country were struggling to find the same information and answer the very same questions as Cheshire...also without help from their local and state officials. Very few of these communities knew about one another.

3. We were amassing so much information about TCE and its impact on communities nationwide, this information just had to be consolidated, preserved, and shared.

From this, the TCE Blog was born.

--

Now, evidence suggests there is still significant VOC contamination underground in Cheshire. Astonishingly, state and local leaders/officials have refused to act.

See, I don't just write about contaminated communities. I'm from one:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: neil fischbein [fischbein@...]
Date: May 31, 2006 9:36 PM
Subject: When are we going to meet?
To*: [Town Manager, Town Council member, State representative]
cc*: [Senator Dodd's office, Senator Lieberman's office, Governor Rell's office, Representative Amann's office, local press, etc.]

D, M, A -

For the past several years, and after having reviewed ~16,000 pages of Cheshire documents obtained via Freedom of Information Act request to the EPA, I have shared with town officials evidence of multiple plumes of cancer-causing toxins under Cheshire and the current risks they may pose to workers and residents. As you know, these cancer-causing toxins emanate from some of the 16 EPA-identified hazardous waste sites in Cheshire that have NEVER been fully cleaned-up. Some of these toxic underground plumes are over 25 years old and have been migrating all this time. As we've discussed many times, [state] officials have lost track of (or simply failed to map) these toxic plumes and have admitted to us they can't rule out the newly understood risks these toxins pose to human health. Now, as documented by state and federal officials in 2004, Cheshire suffers from nation-leading cancer rates.

These cancer-causing plumes must be found. Risks from them must be ruled out.

Do we need help from state representatives/legislators to move on this?
Do we need help from attorneys?
When are we going to finally meet to do something about this?

thanks, neil

* Actual names and email addresses have been removed to protect the innocent guilty innocent.

We've noticed over the past year that many people arrive at this blog while looking for maps of contamination areas and underground plumes within various TCE-contaminated communities. As such, we've added Maps as a topic category (see list of categories in LEFT-hand sidebar).

If you have any plume maps you'd like to make available, know where we can link to current contamination maps, or are looking for a specific map that you can't find, please don't hesitate to let us know.

I was toying with the blog layout a bit and by accident pressed a wrong button and installed a new visual theme/layout. Everything on the blog turned green. No joke. I quickly installed a different theme so that things look OK again (not too far from the old look), but some of the details have changed (or been removed). Though it started inadvertantly, over the next week or two, we'll be making some changes to the blog ease readability and useability.

Please bear with us. Thanks.

We're looking for a new site search tool. Currently we use Google's free site search and its just not getting the job done.

We want to enable quick and effective keyword search within this site. We're looking around for a simple, proven solution. Meantime, if you have any tools/programs you might recommend, please let us know (use comments feature below...or send email directly to tceblog AT gmail.com)

In the interim, sorry the site search is so ineffective. If you are looking for something but can't find it, please don't hesitate to contact us directly.

Since we're always open to fielding and sharing questions from readers, we have just added a new topic filter over to the right ----->

It's called...get this...Reader Questions (yes, creativity abounds on a Thursday afternoon).

If you are struggling to find information that readers (or we) can possibly assist with, please don't hesitate to contact us. With permission, we'll be glad to post any questions (and responses) that may be relevant for our readers.

Download here (9K PDF). Please feel free to print and share.

We're back from an unexpected break. Please bear with us as we jump back in with current news and do our best to catch you up on things we missed.

For Immediate Release
June 9, 2005
Contact: Amanda Evans: (626) 399-1049 (cell)

PEOPLE DESERVE PROTECTION FROM TOXIN, TCE, SAY COMMUNITY MEMBERS & PHYSICIANS

Irvine, CA — June 9, 2005 — Citizen activists, physicians, exposure victims, and cancer survivors will testify before the National Academy of Sciences today about the groundwater contaminant, Trichloroethylene (TCE). Neil Fischbein, who runs the TCE Blog, explains “The NAS Committee will have a choice: protect people or save polluters money.” Representatives of an informal national community coalition are asking that the EPA be allowed to implement recommendations from its 2001 health risk assessment for TCE wherein EPA declared TCE was as much as 65 times more toxic than previously known and is highly likely to cause cancer in humans.

The Department of Defense and the Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance (HSIA), a TCE manufacturers’ representative, have challenged the more protective regulations recommended by EPA. Their challenge led to a TCE health risk review project by NAS, of which today's meeting and citizen testimony are a part.

In 1997 the Air Force used its cost of clean-up as an excuse to recommend the EPA raise safety limits for TCE, potentially exposing people to levels of TCE deemed unsafe by federal law. “Because the current remediation level is extremely difficult to achieve,” it wrote, “remediation costs are very sensitive to even small changes in this level. Re-evaluation of TCE...can reasonably be assumed to result in a remediation level significantly greater than [the current safety standard].”

In 2003, after EPA proposed lower, more protective TCE safety levels, the Air Force calculated it would cost the Air Force $1.25 billion in extra clean-up costs and would cost DOD as a whole an extra $5 billion. This would raise DOD’s total cost for TCE clean-up to $10 billion.

Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), is not swayed by the DOD’s cost concerns. Sass told the Academy's Committee in April that TCE is likely to cause people neurological diseases, immune system problems and cancer. She emphasized that infants and children are at particular risk because of the potency of TCE in their small systems. “Leaving the public exposed to TCE at unacceptably high levels during this lengthy deliberative process is a failure of the regulatory agencies to carry out their mission to protect public health,” she said. “We continue to request that EPA implement its Draft 2001 Health Assessment immediately.”

Cheryl Buchanan, a former Cheshire, Connecticut resident whose hometown was exposed to high levels of TCE for two to three decades and now exhibits elevated cancer rates says, “TCE has had a devastating effect on my family, friends, and neighbors. And now polluters are trying to avoid the evidence in front of them because it is too expensive to clean up. The truth is scary. But I wasn't given the choice to ignore the realities of TCE exposure. They shouldn't be given that choice either.”

# # #

One of the main goals of this blog is to help individuals and communities connect. To help, we have placed links to community groups in the right-hand sidebar (--->).

If you belong to a community group, have a website, and would like others to be able to find it, please contact us with the name and URL or leave it in the comments.

The following passage comes from The Politics of Cancer Revisited, by Dr. Samuel Epstein *:

Our errors, however have seldom if ever been on the side of worker health. We have now identified, for instance, dozens of chemicals that probably are carcinogenic, but there is no regulation of their use, and hundreds of thousands of workers are being exposed to them daily.

Take trichloroethylene, for example. Congressmen don't even have to leave their offices to see workers using this chemical to clean carpets. It is also widely used in dry cleaning, and as an industrial solvent. We know it is similar to vinyl chloride in it's chemical structure, and that when fed to rats or mice they develop liver cancer. Most scientists would conclude from these data that the odds are good that this chemical also causes cancer in humans. Yet our response to finding out more about trichloroethylene has been to wait for "conclusive evidence" that human beings would die from this exposure. Regulations have not been issued, and workers have not been warned about the danger. The majority of those working with trichloroethylene are as ignorant today of the potential danger of this chemical as the shipyard workers were decades ago of the potential hazards of asbestos.

Congressman David Obey
September, 1979
Pg. 4, The Politics of Cancer Revisited, Dr. Samuel Epstein.

Boy, 1979 was quite some time ago. Has anything really changed since then?

* This originally appeared in the 1979 book and the revisited-version's predecessor, The Politics of Cancer, as part of the foreward. Thanks, A, for the tip.

Resident Action Group of Endicott (R.A.G.E.) has been nominated for an EPA Environmental Quality Award. In the letter to R.A.G.E. announcing the nomination, Congressman Maurice D. Hinchey wrote:

I am very pleased and proud of what your organization has been able to accomplish on behalf of all whose lives have been altered by toxic contamination in Endicott and elsewhere. I find you most deserving of this special EPA recognition.

Congratulations R.A.G.E..

I'm stuck on this topic somehow. How many unsuspecting TCE-contaminated showers have you taken?

Me? I estimate about 7,000. Minimum.

Given our liberal citation of material from other sources on this blog, we're experimenting with a formatting change:

We've made the quoted text slightly smaller. If this causes any significant readability issues, please let us know.

And in case that was too small to read: If this causes any significant readability issues, please let us know.

We've noticed that Google has indexed enough of our pages that their site search tool may now function effectively. So we've added it over to the right. We removed the Technorati searchlet to avoid confusion.

As before, this will enable you to search the TCE Blog using key words. If you have any trouble finding what you are looking for, please contact us directly.

As you'll notice, we're experimenting with a site search tool (------->) from Technorati. It will allow you to search the whole blog using keywords. As always, feedback is welcomed.

As mentioned previously, we are collecting, publishing, and summarizing Public Health and Risk Assessment documents that have resulted from studies or assessments in various TCE-contaminated communities around the country. This is for research and comparison purposes.

To help you find these easily, we have added this category (Documents - Health/Risk Assessments) to the filters on the right (----->).

FYI: Since it seems appropriate, we will also file all major TCE research documents under this new category (while continuing to cross-file them under any applicable headings like Science, Vapor Intrusion, etc...).

If this confuses, please let us know.

Update: If you have a document to share, please contact us.

Been working through kinks in the presentation/layout of the blog. If anyone has any difficulties reading due to layout, fonts, etc, please let us know (and please include the browser version you are using).

Thank you.

We are now live at http://www.tceblog.com

Some of the most basic and useful information on TCE was clearly developed/published prior to the founding of this blog. Since we can't possibly determine what you'll already know vs. what you'll find useful, from time to time, we may pepper in some of these not-quite-oldies, but definitely goodies. Please forgive us if this distracts (but please do let us know if it does). And please let us know if you have any requests (no guarantees, but we'll do our best).

Our goal is to provide a consolidated online resource for individuals and communities to learn more about TCE, TCE contamination, and the apparent potential obvious relationship between TCE exposure and adverse health affects. The site/blog will include up-to-the-minute news and resources re: TCE contamination, exposures, health effects, affected communities, science, legislation, regulations/policies, and related topics (like the potential for synergistic affects of TCE + PCE contamination/exposure, for example).

With the national TCE debate heating up over the next several years, we hope that the TCE Blog can play an important role by helping its readers learn, connect, and affect change.

As always, feedback, input, suggestions are welcomed. You can reach us through the "Contact" link on the right (---->) or email the site's founder, Neil Fischbein, at fischbein@gmail.com

Update:

Remember, you can also post your comments for the world to see (and respond to) by using the comments feature. For those readers that aren't as blogtastik as the rest, the comments link is located just next to the time-stamp permalink above each post at the lower right of each blog entry.

Update:

For those that are really new to Blogs:

This web log, or Blog, functions as a repository of information in journal format. New posts/entries are added as new information becomes available (or as we see fit). They are posted here in chronological order, most-recent first. You'll generally scroll down (using your mouse or arrow keys) to read previous entries.

The Categories list in the right left-hand margin (<----)functions like a filter. It filters out everything BUT the posts related to the topic you select. For instance, if you're looking for news related to New York, you'll find it in the News - NY Category. If an article relates to multiple categories, it will be filed under multiple categories.

The home page = the Main category. It will provide all the posts from all the categories up to the minute in the order they are posted. This is what you will see when you initially enter www.tceblog.com.

Below to the right are Subscription options (you can sign up to have posts sent to you), Archives, and Resources (links to pages away from the TCE Blog that we thought you might find useful).