The Akwesasne Mohawk Nation lies adjacent to the St. Lawrence River at the terminus of the Great Lakes. The St. Lawrence River drains Lake Ontario and connects the fresh waters of the Great Lakes to the sea providing shipping access to the United States and Canada to international markets throughout the world. The waters that drain from Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence River carry a myriad of wastes discharged from U.S. and Canadian industries and municipalities located within the Great Lakes drainage basin including airborne contaminants transported and deposited into the basin from throughout the world. These waste materials have contaminated the waters and aquatic organisms traditionally used by the Native Americans for food and ceremonial purposes forcing changes in life styles and traditions. These changes have occurred within a relatively short period and can be directly related to the rapid industrialization that occurred during the post-war period of the 1940s.
During the 1950s, segments of the St. Lawrence River were dredged and a vast network of locks and dams were created to provide international shipping access to the Great Lakes. As a part of the modifications that took place during that time, hydro-generating power plants were constructed which attracted energy intensive industries including the three aluminum manufacturing facilities located on the United States side of the river near Massena, NY. During a period of about 25 years, the Alcoa, Reynolds and General Motors manufacturing facilities used a variety of organic and inorganic compounds which were discharged to the local air and water including a host of halogenated aromatic compounds. These fat soluble substances readily accumulated in the local fish and wildlife as well as in the members of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation including young women of child bearing age. Since many of the compounds discharged to the local waters and air are fat soluble, the breast milk of nursing mothers who ate locally caught fish became elevated posing a threat to nursing infants.
During the mid-1980s, the concerns about local industrial contamination were brought to the attention of a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation wildlife pathologist, Ward Stone, by an Akwesasne midwife, Mrs. Katsi Cook. Ward Stone collected and analyzed local fish and wildlife and determined that they were highly contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other organic contaminants used by the local industries. During subsequent health investigations conducted during the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s research programs funded by General Motors and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), determined that young Mohawk mother's breast milk contained elevated concentrations of PCBs and that these compounds were being transferred to their nursing infants. Based on subsequent research conducted by NIEHS researchers and by the three local industries required to remediate the broadly contaminated area, it was determined that contamination was widespread throughout the area contaminating onsite and offsite soils and the bottom sediments and waters and aquatic resources of the St. Lawrence River and large tributaries including miles of the Grasse, St. Regis and other rivers.
PCB concentrations in onsite soils and sediments have been found to be in excess of 2500 parts per million and a proposal made by General Motors (GM) to the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 1995 to remediate the National Priority List (NPL) site sought to treat only those materials that were in excess of 500 ppm; material less than that concentration would be contained in an on-site, unlined disposal facility situated along the banks of the St. Lawrence River. Because the General Motors site is a federal Superfund site, Reynolds and Alcoa were are very much interested in the GM proposal because it would also have direct impact on the remediation of their state Superfund sites. The debate over what levels of exposure to compounds such as PCBs is safe, has been an ongoing since it was discovered that these compounds impact human health. It is becoming increasing clear that very low exposure to organic compounds including PCBs, PAHs, dioxins and a wide host of others, has perhaps far more of an impact on humans than previously recognized and that long term chronic impacts may be just as important as those from acute exposure. It is also evident that this class of compounds are far more mobile than was formally recognized. Because substances like PCBs represent a class of more than 200 individual compounds, each with their own mobilities and impacts to human health and wildlife, it is important to consider how each of the individual compounds move through the environment and impact wildlife and human health.
Research conducted as a part of this NIEHS Basic Research program has recently demonstrated that PCBs readily volatilize from wet sediments as the sediments dry and as much as 70% of the total PCBs can be lost to the atmosphere during the drying process. Dredging of contaminated sediments from the St. Lawrence River and tributaries may therefore result in the release of large quantities of PCBs exposing area residents to these compounds as they breathe the air. In addition, as the stockpiled sediments dry on the shores of the dredged rivers, additional PCBs will be released providing a long term exposure pathway to area humans and wildlife.
It is now evident that substances like PCBs should not only be evaluated on the risk of causing cancers, but other human health and wildlife impacts need to be considered as well. PCBs and other similar substances, appear to disrupt hormones which may affect the sexuality and behavior of humans and wildlife and that these potential impacts can occur in utero as well of during the early stages of development. PCBs for instance have been found to cause very similar effects to lead on animals. These compounds impact brain neurotransmitters thereby reducing the animal's short term memory and effecting the learning process. Recent studies on animals and humans indicate that PCBs do alter important brain compounds and effect behavior and that exposure during the developmental stages of the organism have the most profound impacts.
During recent years there has been increasing pressure to relax cleanup standards in order to reduce the remediation costs of federal and state Superfund sites. At the same time that this growing pressure to relax cleanup standards is being pressed by industries and politicians who believe less regulatory control is needed to ensure a healthy economy, there is growing evidence that long term chronic effects to persistent contaminants at very low concentrations may be just as important if not more important to the health and well being of the residents and wildlife resources living in proximity to contaminated areas. What is clear is that as more research is focused on this broad class of synthetic organic compounds, impacts at increasing lower exposure concentrations are being recognized. Although subtle, these impacts erode at the basic fiber of the human population by impairing the physical and mental health of future generations.
