Kodak's Toxic Moments

By Michael I. Niman, AlterNet. Posted May 29, 2003.

Maureen Reynolds, a former neighbor of Eastman Kodak's sprawling Kodak Park facility in Rochester, New York, suffers from more than her share of Kodak moments -- believing that Kodak poisoned her and her neighbors. She wasn't suspicious when her three-year-old son developed asthma. Rushing him to the hospital for adrenaline shots was traumatic, but these things happen. She also wasn't suspicious about the thin layer of ash on her car's windshield. She even noticed ash sometimes on her young son's glasses. Cities have dirty air, however, and a little ash isn't uncommon.

Things started getting strange, however, when Reynolds' herself developed asthma at age forty. During the next ten years she developed cancer, neuropathy, fibromyalgia, arthritis and the autoimmune disease, Primary Biliary Cirrhosis (PBC) -- a rare disorder that only affects one person in a million.

Reynolds moved out of her Kodak Park neighborhood four years earlier, after living there for 23 years. As Reynolds began to confront the downturn in her health, she noticed that many of her old friends from the neighborhood were suffering similar fates -- plagued by fibromyalgia and a host of other diseases. Curious, Reynolds starting focusing on the rarest disease that she suffered from -- PBC. PBC, which primarily attacks women, is related to Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC), which primarily affects men. What she learned was startling. PSC is one of a host of ailments from which Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange suffer. After a little more research she discovered that, like her Kodak Park neighbors, these same veterans also suffer from neuropathy, diabetes, asthma and cancers of the thyroid and pancreas.

#1 in Dioxin

The most potent ingredient in Agent Orange is dioxin -- which is often blamed for health problems suffered by those exposed to the herbicide. Reynolds' former neighbor, Kodak, has been releasing massive amounts of the same toxic substance into the Kodak Park environment. A 1992 trial burn at Kodak's incinerator released more dioxin into the environment than all of New York's other tested hazardous waste incinerators combined. Dioxin is a sore subject in Western New York since it was also found to be responsible for much of the sickness in Niagara Falls' Love Canal neighborhood.

According to the EPA, Kodak released more dioxin into New York's environment in 2000 than any other source. Kodak isn't just number one in dioxin emissions, however. As of 1999, they've also ranked as New York State's leading producer of recognized airborne carcinogens and waterborne developmental toxicants. They've also gained notoriety as New York's number one source for releases of suspected endocrine, gastrointestinal, liver, cardiovascular, kidney, respiratory and reproductive toxicants as well as neurotoxins. Kodak alone released more toxic chemical emissions listed in the federal Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) than all of the 144 major polluters in Erie (Buffalo), Niagara (Niagara Falls) and Monroe (Rochester) counties combined.

During the 13-year period from 1987 to 2000, thanks primarily to Kodak's toxic stew of emissions, Rochester ranked number one in the U.S. for overall releases of carcinogenic chemicals, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG). Kodak alone was responsible for over 90 percent of the 64.4 million pounds of carcinogens released during that period into Rochester's air and water.

Cancer in Kodak Park

The end result of this dumping is a toxic-laden environment poisonous to human life. Hence, it should come as no surprise that according to the National Institute of Health and the National Cancer Institute, the Rochester area is in the top ten percentile for death rates from 13 different types of cancers. The New York State Department of Health found that "women living near Kodak Park had approximately an 80 percent greater [than average] risk of developing pancreatic cancer," which is often fatal. That rate increased to 96 percent among women who lived in the Kodak Park area for at least 20 years, leading the Department of Health to suggest that the longer people live near the Kodak facility, the greater their risk of getting pancreatic cancer becomes.

Children seem especially susceptible to toxins in the Kodak Park area environment. One concerned area mother conducted a door to door survey in the Kodak Park neighborhood, eventually documenting 33 cases of brain cancer in children living within five miles of the Kodak facility. Currently the parents of five of these children are suing Kodak for $75 million, holding the corporation responsible for poisoning their children. The concern about children's health is further exacerbated by the realization that there are 21 schools located within three miles of the sprawling Kodak facility.

Kodak's Public Relations division has been active for generations working to keep community protest at bay. Charlie Roemer, who lives two blocks from the Kodak facility, remembers a time 40 years ago when the company used to placate the community by offering to repaint cars whose finishes were damaged by ash from their smokestacks. Roemer says the "persistent bad smells" that have continuously come from the plant since his family moved into the community 51 years ago are just something people in the Kodak Park community learned to tolerate. He recalls how his neighbors, during particularly bad air days in the 1960s, would chalk the stink up to "Kodak cleaning their stacks." On other days, especially during wind shifts, the stench of Kodak's effluent emissions into the Genesee River would overwhelm the neighborhood. In an effort to demonstrate how safe the stinky water was, the company at one time maintained a small aquarium near its discharge pipes, with fish allegedly swimming in waste water.

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