Healthy Communities News

As the new home of WISPIRG's environmental work, Wisconsin Environment can be contacted with any questions regarding this report.  

Wood County and Marathon County together released roughly 25% of the states suspected respiratory, neurological, and cancer-causing toxins according to a new report released today by WISPIRG.

WISPIRG's report, Toxic Releases and Health: A Review of Pollution Data and Current Knowledge on the Health Effects of Toxic Chemicals, is a first ever analysis by health effect of air and water releases reported by industry to the Toxic Release Inventory Program from 1987 to 2000. The review of these data demonstrates the degree to which toxic substances with links to serious health problems are released into the environment.

"Polluters in Wisconsin discharge millions of pounds of toxic pollution while the people of Wisconsin have no knowledge of how it is affecting their health," reports Trevor Kaul, a public health associate with the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group (WISPIRG). "Specifically, Wood county ranked worst for releases of suspected respiratory, neurological, and cancer causing toxins in Wisconsin. Marathon County ranked 6th, 4th, and 3rd in these same categories."

Between Wood and Marathon country, residents were exposed to roughly 22% of the states suspected respiratory toxicants, almost 28% of the states neurological toxicants and just over 28% of the states carcinogens released in 2000.

As a state, Wisconsin consistently ranked between 19th and 24th for releases of dioxins, neurological, respiratory, cancer-causing, developmental, and reproductive toxicants.

Toxic releases are concentrated in a small number of communities. In 2000, 76% of air and water releases of chemicals linked to potential reproductive harm occurred in just ten zip codes nationwide. In Wisconsin Rapids, the Stora Enso pulp mill was responsible for nearly 3 million pounds of neurological toxicants released. This accounts for roughly two thirds, 66%, of the neurological toxicants reported in the Toxic Release Inventory for Wood County.

WISPIRG's research also showed that the public lacks information on how toxic pollution affects human health because few states track the public's exposure to toxic discharges or the rates of potentially related chronic diseases. Currently only three states, Massachusetts, California, and Iowa, have high-level cancer and birth defect registries and systematically track asthma. No state in the nation systematically tracks such other chronic diseases as autism, and no state tracks the potential environmental exposures linked with these chronic diseases. Wisconsin currently tracks cancer and asthma and is scheduled to start tracking birth defects this year.

While the chemicals covered in this study were linked to various serious health consequences, this report uses data from the Toxic Release Inventory, which covers less than one percent of the estimated 80,000 chemicals on the market today. U.S. law also makes it difficult for a chemical that poses a health threat to be banned or restricted. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency has only restricted the use of nine toxic chemicals out of the thousands that potentially pose a danger to human health.

During 2002, Congress approved funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to award 20 grants to state and municipal public health departments to either improve or initiate health tracking programs in those cities and states, Wisconsin received one of these grants. During the 107th Congress, the Senate awarded an increase in funding for these health tracking programs, but the House failed to approve the relevant Appropriations bill. The Senate will be required to reconsider the funding for health tracking this month, and could increase funding to make more grants available to more states.

WISPIRG applauded Representative Tammy Baldwin for co-sponsoring legislation in the 107th Congress introduced by Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to set up a nationwide network for tracking chronic diseases. This network would expand the monitoring of human exposure to toxic chemicals as well as track chronic diseases such as asthma, cancer, birth defects and neurological conditions.