M3.1: Biomonitoring

I found this video to be both very interesting and very jarring.  It’s obvious that we’re exposed to chemicals every single day in the air we breathe, water we drink, foods we eat and so on, but to think there are potentially hundreds of chemicals still in our bodies from decades ago is absolutely frightening. 

On a personal note, I grew up in upstate New York right near where General Electric was founded.  Upon its founding in the late 1800s and well into the early 1990s, General Electric dominated most of upstate New York.  Everyone knew someone, and often several people, who worked for GE.  Now they still have a pretty significant presence in the area, but nothing like “the good old days.”  Anyway, as was alluded to in the video, PCBs were dumped in the Hudson River for many decades regularly.  Of course that stopped (legally) in the 1980s and many lawsuits were filed on behalf of many parties.  GE’s defense was always that their dumping of PCBs was government sanctioned, and it was.  Both the federal government and the State of New York allowed GE to dump PCBs in the river.  Though GE denies it, many people say they continued to dump well after the government ended permission to do so.  So GE did eventually lose multiple lawsuits, and they’ve spent millions of dollars to clean PCBs from the riverbed.  I’d say that started about ten years ago, and in areas, it’s still ongoing.  As a personal anecdote, which is terrifying to think about now, but I remember boating and fishing in the Hudson River as a child.  Occasionally we’d catch fish that were deformed – two heads, two tails.  As a child it was interesting, but that is how my parents kept us from swimming in the water.  As they knew it was dirty, but of course didn’t know it was dangerously toxic, they’d say “if you go in there, you’ll grow another head like those fish!”  It was enough to keep me out of the water, or at least from actually swimming in the water.  Despite that, many people still swam then and continue to do so now.  Finally, in regards to the video, I'd be very intrigued but also very scared to be tested!