Tom's River

I finally finished the book Tom's River by Dan Fagin. This is a non-fiction story about corporate greed.  Humans can be so greedy sometimes; so short-sighted; and so desperate to get ahead that they trample over other people. The author starts out talking about chimney sweeps in London coming down with testicular cancer. Years ago the chimney sweeps actually had to climb inside the chimneys to get the soot out. Young, thin boys were hired for this job and to get into the chimneys they removed their clothes. The soot from inside the chimney pipe caused the testicular cancer. From there the story went on to talk about dyes for clothing.  Once upon a time people used natural substances for dying fabric. Fabrics dyed with natural substances were less toxic but they could never get the rich purple color that people craved.  Eventually they found a chemical way to manufacture that purple dye. The Ciba Geigy Corporation in Tom's River, New Jersey, manufactured that purple dye.  They bought a large parcel of land so the public couldn't see that they were poisoning the land, the water, and the air all around the plant.  Plant employees got sick. Toxins from the plant seeped through the sandy soil and entered the water table under the town. Kids who drank water from the wells in the area got sick.  Pregnant women from Tom's River delivered babies who soon developed leukemia or melanoma or brain cancer.  The corporation knew about these problems but instead of addressing them, they made as much purple dye as they could before they were shut down. They tried to hide the damage by building a pipeline out into the ocean and dumping the waste there.  They tried to hide the damage to the air by only burning the waste after dark so people could not see the smoke and there weren't as many people outside to smell the smells.  In the end there was a monetary settlement but no price can replace a child. There are some heroic women and men in the story who fought hard to hold the industry accountable. I was reminded of the current struggle to mine copper near the boundary waters of Minnesota.  Times are hard.  People struggle to make a living. Working in a copper mine could feed your family and desperate people can overlook the environmental damage if their family is fed. I hope we can learn from what happened at Tom's River, New Jersey and not make the same mistakes over and over and over again.