The military used, among other weapons, chemicals such as napalm, Agent Orange, and depleted uranium in and around the waters of Vieques
Source: Orlando Sentinel
Rep. Alan Grayson, a Democrat from Orlando, spoke today before a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Health and Environment, advocating for a full environmental cleanup of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.
The island served as a bombing range and military exercise ground for the Navy until the base was shut down in 2003, following protests from Puerto Ricans and their supporters on the island and the mainland.
Speaking to the HispanoSphere today, Rep. Grayson said he took it upon himself to bring up the subject of Vieques in that agency’s hearing because he wants to keep a spotlight on the issue. Many Puerto Ricans live in his Orlando district, Grayson said, and because the island does not have voting members in Congress he feels he should speak for those U.S. territory citizens as well. “In a sense, I am the Congressman for Puerto Rico,” Grayson said.
Grayson said the federal government has a responsibility to make sure that the cleanup of the island goes faster and that it is extended, because he said the government has yet to acknowledge that the resulting pollution from those military exercises has caused any health problems.
“There have been many independent tests and these tests consistently show that people there have been poisoned,” Grayson said. “There is a tremendous exposure to heavy metals and to toxic elements and to carcinogens. And, frankly, there is no other explanation for what we see. The death rate in Vieques, even among younger people, is higher than anywhere else in Puerto Rico.”
Here’s the full transcript of Grayson’s statement at the hearing:
Thank you for coming before this committee to talk about an important subject. Vieques is a beautiful island in Puerto Rico, and its economy is based on fishing and tourism. It is also an island which for 62 years served as a military testing ground for the Navy. The military used, among other weapons, chemicals such as napalm, Agent Orange, and depleted uranium in and around the waters of Vieques. In 2003, the Navy ceased military testing, and the area became a superfund site because of the high presence of heavy metals and toxins. It’s being cleaned up, but much chemical residue remains. Dangerous levels of these heavy metals and toxins have shown up in the crabs, in the fish, in the goats, in the horses, in the vegetation, and in the people who live there.
The health statistics in Vieques show the consequences of these toxins. Compared to normal residents of Puerto Rico, residents of Vieques have a 269% increased chance of cancer, a 73% increased chance of heart problems, a 64% increased chance of hypertension, and a 58% increased chance of diabetes. Infant mortality in most of Puerto Rico is decreasing; in Vieques, it is increasing, and has been since 1980. A May 2001 study looking at the hair of residents in Vieques found that 73% of subjects were contaminated with aluminum and 30% of children under ten showed toxic levels of mercury. Other heavy metals such as lead and cadmium were also found in high proportions.
One of my constituents, Rubén Ojeda, a former fisherman in the area, told me that “Almost every person I know in Vieques has cancer or a family member who has cancer or other serious illnesses.” Ruben fished while the Navy dropped bombs around him, and suffers from heart and respiratory diseases, as well as deafness. His mother has anemia, high blood pressure and diabetes, his uncle died of cancer, and several of his fellow fishermen friends also died of cance, at young ages.
In other words, in Vieques, heavy metals poison the land and water. And the population carries this poison in its bloodstream. None of this is in dispute.
And yet, somehow, when the government tested the area, it stated that the poisons in the fish, crabs, and vegetation posed no danger to the residents. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which is supposed to protect our children from poisons at superfund sites, actually wrote that “it is safe to eat seafood from the coastal waters and near-shore lands”, and that “residents… have not been exposed to harmful levels of chemicals resulting from Navy training activities…” These remarkable statements should not be a surprise for anyone who has followed the life of the ATSDR. This agency, of course, is famous for ignoring the dangers of formaldehyde in the trailers used by Katrina victims. For that, the agency was publicly chided by its own chief toxicologist, who had been cut out of the loop after raising concerns about the scientific basis for the agency’s analysis.
In case after case, documented in the excellent report put together by the Science and Technology Oversight and Investigations subcommittee, the ATSDR has trivialized health concerns and failed to stop the ingestion of poisons and the spreading of cancer. In other words, Vieques is not an isolated incident. This is a problem of leadership, structure, and agency culture. From its inception in the early 1980s, the ATSDR has fought with its bureaucratic rivals, short-changed science and public health, and as a result, has let children be poisoned. This too should not be a surprise. The Reagan administration, which oversaw the creation of the ATSDR, never found an environmental protection it did not try to dismantle. Despite these origins, there are good and conscientious employees within the ATSDR, and I am hopeful that we can work to restructure the agency so that its leadership is committed to protecting the public from harm. This should at the very least start with an acknowledgment that its work in Vieques is flawed, and a commitment to reassess the site, taking into account the various independent studies which show elevated health risks in the area.
One of the most important jobs that government has is to protect people. And here we have before us a clear case of failure. This must not stand. Thank you, and I look forward to this conversation.
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