SLUDGE VICTIMS

May 2001 update - compiled by Helane Shields - prepared for WWW by ESRA

STATEMENT OF DONNA POIROUX, 11880 OLD PASCAGOULA, GRAND BAY, AL 36541
tel. 334-865-6491

I just found out that you not only get pathogens when you get the sewage sludge spread nearby, you get lead too. Everybody around here is staying sick all the time.

We're about 1/2 mile south of where they are spreading the sludge. The wind often blows this way. We can smell it, see it, and feel it.

There were headlines in the Mobile paper about this fellow spreading so much sludge in Grand Bay. A local EPA person tried to stop the spreading of so much sludge but he didn't get very far. We think he was stopped higher up.

I spoke to a university researcher recently and he said he has talked to people all over the country and in Canada and they are experiencing the same symptoms -- headaches, fatigue and upper respiratory problems.

Outside this black soot settles on all the lawns. I wear a mask when I'm outside because I have such a bad reaction to the sludge. I was sick all winter and I was getting better until I mowed my lawn. I had my mask on but I got sick anyway. I have bronchitis and I'm so tired I can hardly move. My husband and I are young people, we're in our early 50s. If we go outside to work we have no energy. He said to me that we shouldn't be this tired all the time.

Last year I had trouble swallowing. The doctors thought it might be reflux and they gave me medicine. I kept coughing and coughing and when it came up it was black, just like the soot on the lawns.

My scalp is red all the time. I go to the best dermatologist in Mobile, he's been practicing for 30 years and he says he doesn't know what it is. He says, it's the environment.

My daughter has asthma and allergies and terrible migraines that started about eight years ago when they began spreading the sludge. My husband gets headaches. My mother has trouble breathing and skin problems as well. I've lived here 20 years so I know what I'm talking about, my mother has lived here for 40 years.

p.18a

BRONCHITIS, FATIGUE, COUGHING, DIFFICULTY SWALLOWING, ASTHMA, ALLERGIES, MIGRAINE HEADACHES, SKIN PROBLEMS, DEAD GOATS -- MORE SLUDGE TO BE SPREAD NEAR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL


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