The Invisible Killers

by Georgia Hans

We creep into the homes and lives of those unaware.
We take refuge in your water, food, clothes and air.
It is then that we become in essence your worst nightmare.

Slow, painful and miserable death is our MO.
It is man’s greed and disrespect for God’s creation that makes us so.
We carry out our destruction of life by both day and night.
Through your loved ones and friends you see that we are a hideous sight.

Man’s progress without the proper regulators
Gave to us Mother Earth as our incubator.
Man gave birth to us through decisions and choices unwise.
Man will also have to bring to pass our much needed yet timely demise.

In our raw form we bestow upon man riches and prestige.
But, our finale guarantees a life of sickness, death and disease.
Oh, by the way, we do have names you see;
We are PCE, TCA and TCE.

Only man can bring an end to our reign of pain, death and terror.
He can revert back to a safer, healthier and simpler era.
 

Georgia Hans is a resident of North Casper, the contaminated residential community in the heart of downtown Casper that we wrote about in our last Frontline. She is a member of the board of Citizens Outreach,a local group formed in Casper to address community pollution problems, particularly in North Casper.

Georgia and three other members of Citizens Outreach gave a presentation to the Wyoming Conservation Congress conference in July about North Casper’s health problems — which the group believes are caused by contamination plumes in shallow groundwater underlying their homes. North Casper residents have complained for decades of a high rate of illness in their community, including birth defects and cancers. Georgia herself lost a child and father from such illnesses, and her mother has had a series of medical problems of undetermined cause.

Through the untiring work of many North Casper citizens, other community groups and Citizens Outreach, North Casper’s health problems have finally come to the attention of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region VIII. Those agencies have formally requested a community health consultation from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a program within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition, The Casper Star-Tribune recently ran a series of stories about the health plight of North Casper residents. WOC will continue to work with all these entities to pursue a more in-depth investigation and possible remedy of the cause of these public health problems.