Do you want to know how to find out what you are breathing and if there is a link between pollution and health problems?
Join the CHEMICAL VALLEY “BUCKET BRIGADE”!
The “Bucket Brigade” is a simple, but effective, tool that dozens of communities are using to find out for themselves what chemicals are in the air. Armed with their own data and information about the health effects of chemicals, these communities are winning impressive reductions of pollution, safety improvements and increasing enforcement of environmental laws.
The “Bucket Brigade” is named for an EPA-approved, easy-to-use air sampling device housed inside a 5-gallon plastic bucket. Using specially designed buckets, citizens can measure everyday pollution levels or respond to accidental releases at a chemical facility.
The “Bucket Brigade” empowers communities to form a team, identify and verify environmental crimes in your area, and take back your right to clean air, water and land; reminding governments and industrial polluters that it’s not normal to see, taste or smell the air — or to endure polluted water or land because someone else is not acting as a responsible neighbor.
TRAINING DATES: Stay tuned!
Until then, be sure to log your observations about smells you encounter by filling out a
POLLUTION LOG.
(this is information that was given to community members in the 1990s when the
WHAT AM I SMELLING?
(this is information that was given to community members in the 1990′s when the Institute chemical facility was owned by Rhone-Poulenc)
Processes are listed in red:
- Fish (ammonia, nauseating sweet, sweet aromatic)
ENB
- Rotten Cabbage or rotten vegetables, fishy, pungent (ammonia, nauseating sweet, sweet aromatic)
LARVIN
- Mothballs (napthalene)
- Musty (napthol)
- Geranium (dowtherm)
SEVIN Complex
- French Fries
- Burnt or rotten Vegetables
- Rotten Cabbage
Rhodimet
- Septic
- Chemical
- Rotten Vegetables
Waste Water Treatment Unit Leachate
WHAT DO I DO WHEN I SMELL THESE (or other abnormal) THINGS?
CALL WV Dept. of Environmental Protection!!
1-800-642-3074
(24-hour hotline)
Be sure to log your observations about smells you encounter by filling out a POLLUTION LOG.
I was born in Charleston but went to school in St. Albans from the 3rd grade thru High School. I remember the terrible sickening smell going thru South Charleston back in the 50s. My dad worked at the Institute Plant fro 19 years then left and went to work for AMC in the Springhill auto plant which went VW and he was one of 4 master machinist tool and die makers that VW kept on. Dad died October 17, 1987 one month before he turned 66, mom died in November 1990 a month before she turned 69. They built a house in Brook Haven out behind Nitro in 1965 and live there till their early deaths. Both are burried at Tyler Mountain Cemetary. I have not been back there since 1985 and partly due to the chemical conditions there. I would like information on becoming a member of any class action lawsuit due to probable conditions of my parents early cancer related deaths and possibly conditions leading to my ill health. I just had an iliofemoral bypass right leg on March 3, 2011 2 stents in my left femoral artery and 1 stent in my right iliac on December 23, 2010. Also 2 stents at my heart artery due to a hgeart attack September 30, 2006. The 25th of this month (March 2011) I will be 64. I remember being in a small boat in the Kanawha River back in 1963 that was swamped and me and a buddy had to swim with the current to the Marina there at the St. Albans Nitro Bridge and swallowing a good amount of the chemical poluted river water. That was during the era when the river was so poluted that Catfish were born muted with no eyes and before the EPA cleaned it up. I know now that that river did damage to me swallowing it in during that dip and rescue. I remember the fires at the Union Carbide plants back in the 50s and early 60s. I remember the foul water over at mom and dad’s Brook Haven home and them having to get bottled water for cooking and drinking. Any information that can put me in contact with the right folks would be greately appreciated. I now live out in the Pacific Northwest in central western Montana. Am disabled retired since 1986. Thanks, Bill Shelton.