Tainted Earth: Smelters, Public Health, and the Environment

Acknowledgements

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many people who helped me on the path to completing this book. Foremost among them is my family. My husband, James, took our boys on numerous day trips and weekend-long outings to provide me with the quiet, child-free space necessary for writing. The fact that this project is now complete has much to do with those trips and outings, combined with gentle exhortations to “get it done.” My parents helped immensely by providing child care and moral support, and my English teacher mother provided some greatly appreciated editorial assistance. The idea for this book started in David Rosner’s “History of Public Health” seminar at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. His early support and intellectual guidance contributed significantly to the finished product. Gerald Markowitz has given freely of his time, providing constructive criticism, advice, and encouragement. Other faculty members at the Mailman School of Public Health also helped me to think through key problems. Just as smelters and their pollution shaped landscapes and communities, they also fundamentally shaped many of those who studied their environmental and public health toll—their convictions, careers, worldviews, and dedication to their professions in public health, medicine, environmental science and law, and environmental activism. This quickly became apparent to me when I contacted many of the people who were deeply engaged in these crises in the 1970s and 1980s and found that they could not have been more willing to share their knowledge, expertise, and experiences. Judy Alsos supported my work from the beginning and invited me into her North Tacoma home on numerous occasions to share her recollections of community organizing in the 1950s and 1960s in Tacoma. When I emailed Paul Whelan to ask some specific questions about Bunker Hill, even though he did not know me in the least, my phone rang not five minutes later and he talked openly with me about his experiences helping injured children get compensation . He also welcomed me into his Seattle law office to share his nonconfidential files from the case. Even though I did not meet them in person, I am grateful to the other members of the Yoss legal team, in particular Susan Lee and Larry Axtell, for the thoroughness of their background research while developing the case. Their dogged research and questioning in the late 1970s helped to establish the record of what happened at Bunker Hill. They were decades ahead of the public health community in confronting the role of industry, trade groups, xi xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS and public relations firms working together to shape the public discourse about risk from smelters. Greg Glass generously shared with me his encyclopedic knowledge of the Tacoma smelter and its pollution problems. Washington State residents owe him much thanks for helping to meticulously document the smelter’s soil contamination footprint, which led to a significant settlement for Washington State from the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) bankruptcy. Lin Nelson and Anne Fischel have been great friends and colleagues who also have been working on public health issues in smelting communities. We have shared materials and stories, and they have kept me connected to current issues in smelting communities, particularly worker health issues. Thank you to the numerous archivists and staff members at the National Archives and Records Administration in Seattle, the Washington State archives, the King County archives, the University of Washington Library’s Special Collections , the University of Idaho, EPA Region10 Superfund records, and the Tacoma Public Library who have helped me to access documents and photographs. Rutgers University Press has been extremely helpful in this book coming to fruition. Doreen Valentine initially gave critical feedback, and Peter Mickulas has helped immeasurably to shape and hone the final version. The reviewers provided significant critical feedback and helped to strengthen the manuscript considerably. Colleagues at Hofstra University and William Paterson University have been uniformly supportive of my preoccupation with completing this project. Small portions of chapters 5 and 6 were originally published as “Contested Science and Exposed Workers,” Public Health Reports 122 (July–August 2007), 541–547. Thank you to the editors of Public Health Reports for allowing republication here. Research on the Tacoma Smelter was supported by the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Graduate Fellowship Program. Tainted Earth ...