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i live in paradise. the largest and southern most island in the marianas archipelago walheim is dotted with blushed, palm trees and miles and miles of soft white and surrounded by turquoise squatters of the pacific ocean. but our paradise has the toxic legacies. while i'm sure the history of contamination with many us and overseas military base communities is common knowledge that the us military use is highly toxic substances. and we are experiencing contamination of our land and waters by the agent orange. p. fast pcp is petroleum fuels heavy metals, fonts, high organic compounds, all the military reward time cocktails. so you can imagine from being carpet bomb during world war 2. we're an island that has been referred to by veterans as one big superfund site. a history of military dumping impacts the health of many

families here on our 212 square mile island. it only takes 2 hours to drive from one end to the other. that's how small we are. and we're inundated with environmental contamination. in this episode, i'm sharing real stories of community members whose homes are located by known military top 6 dump sites and how their families are among countless others and the communities suffering from clusters of where cancers in chronic illness. while it's difficult to definitively connect their health issues, but the environment, the correlation is enough for them to question why their family members are dying. dr. leasing, let's have it on a professor at university of bombs and primary convenor, a big long coalition for peace and justice. sat down to me and shared just how much this topic legacy must, by the us military affects us today. when we talk about the impact of the transition on the health of tomorrows of us as an indigenous population,

then we see is that the toxicity that comes from military activities, from war preparation, military exercises. it really is manifested in our physical bodies. and we see this in cancer rates for example. and so one such evidence of this is a study that was done by novel and headaches which was published in 1997. and in their study, what they did was they looked and surveyed a 25 year period of cancer death certificates and so, and looking at those death certificates be identified and you know, computed what was the incidence of a staff of cancer and go on and they were able to establish that tomorrow's were the highest risk for tensor and that the incidence of cancer was increasing.

and this is after they use different calculations from the world health organization to standardize that across populations. and the 3rd finding, which for me is, was the most significant was that they were able to glean and 1997. that the villages of santa rita and hugo were the ones with the highest incidence rates. and they, in their article and particularly point out that those are the villages with the largest military base presence. and so you see this, this can grow and see in terms of military activities and very direct impact on the bodies of tomorrow's. i met up with rudy polco mer municipality at the heart of juan called mama to to might see where he was born and raised. this municipality is commonly known as mtm and m. c. m is home of the largest flatland area, and juan called the have gone you swamp. more than 70 years ago, run off from a navy operated power plant. and milan drained into a portion of the

a gun. yes. swamp. contaminating the residential area. it was totally chlorinated by fennel's or p c. b, which are industrial chemicals thing to capture. brenner from the power plant which ran into the yard of paco's childhood home to the 19 ninety's alco challenge, the federal government to test for p. c. bees. not only on the swamp and surrounding soil and but on residents whose health may have been effected by the chemicals. but all i asked the federal government was to do a physical for the community of mtm. nice every quarter, but that never happens. there's a family right over there in that house, every one of those and show cancer and look at where they live right across from the parks. another with the nose, so speak a little on. pick her up in the home,

directly across the navy power plants. she and 5 of her siblings battled nasal french healed cancer. tragically, all 5 passed away of cancer and she is the soul cancer survivor. due to me before i tiring from karen and the government pastors. right, but here's some of the sites. so why are you for this game when we were young, i'm sorry, we go through the, from my net or this can of the navy risk and, and go down there and would play in a month when we put your hands inside. we've got to so many, they're huge and they're very good ink to find that plan and they're in the area. uh those 2 products are from area and brand to my dad can farms and

see name is my grand kids and my mom to the brothers and sisters leave around the area to they say yeah, missing there. it's also from the bread there's. uh huh. that are sick during those documents for me it's harder because, i mean, i have been directly affected, but i've had to like grow up my whole life. i have these memories watching my grandma, like very her siblings. and that hurts. losing family members is quite okay. i feel like they could have had more years on this earth that my baby brother . yeah. so yeah, my brother brittany has his cancer from major, very new york, and then he received

a new bid. and then you know, they can to these and that's what i'm very fortunate to around the origin of my exercises. yeah. way from you know, when so like, i really selfish to because i'm thankful that my grandma was the one that survived on like how many, how many list i was is did you lose or 5 or vice of me around my mom to the brother died before a month the issues are 5051, and then my sister, my older sister, she has a native and you can transfer. and she had a 5 set of treatment,

but she never ran out of it. and then and love to years later, i have nice uh, uh, native ranger, cancer, the street in ryan same as when when i ran in 1997 doctor was seeing that there is no. so cancer is not really the and as of right, something is not right or there is a x that cancer in the same time for lunch going on around that area, which is, oh, these kind of generations less around my dad fish we, this is a plan and not by then,

right, we're not going to. there weren't just pcp use in the nearby waters into yard of victoria lola leon. guerrero's childhood home sections of the top. so at this world war 2 dumpsite were found to be contaminated with hazardous levels of mercury, but arsenic pesticides and pc piece. the property was formerly of the location of military supply warehouses and military vehicle base yard and a shooting range. the department of defense that a partial clean up and never came back. oh yes, found that metal fee for this is the letter on that list. and so for this sentence collecting, so there's even, um the rest of the day on that i think a year yeah. some of the metal center that really belong to the military. these are all,

i don't know what all these are types. so blue cross carts and is there might be a couple in there, but you know, i just threw them all in there. so i know every time the bus, the guys come and they kind of fly all over the place. yeah. when i was a kid, i would play in this with martha and bully me and i would like to play in the jungle. and then i find like little pieces of metal and how her hungry me, the land that i grew up and talked to is my mother's land. and she inherited it from her mom. and they started living there after world war 2 and wednesday, and that had belonged to the family and was mostly used for farming before the war . and then after the war for both my grandmother and her brother built hose in the app on the property. and it was on and so we had always known that there was military waste from the war buried in the property. because

when we were kids, we went bank be playing in the dirt and there was a gun powder or like once my brother found a bomb buried in the yard and had to, you know, they had to bring the like bomb squad and everything. and it was a bigger deal, but we had been really aware that the property itself had been used as a jump site after the war. but we had never been informed to what extent or what was buried in the property. and so, in 2008, the army corps of engineers had contracted team, they came and they asked permission from our family and from my uncle, ben's family, my grand this brother and his children, to sort of take it up and, and really study what was there and that the degree of contamination that had occurred. and so they and said that in 2008 in 2010, they invited our families to load up some of the community center and have like

a public sharing just for our families about what they had found. and so it was the site power point and all bullet points, and they were, you know, basically saying that it had been both the water and the soil had been so heavily contaminated that the mediation they suggested was excavation and off site removal . which was only which only happened in cases where the contamination was so severe . their member of the town hall meetings. what that experience was like sharing. finally, in details about contamination and what was in your property. for me, it was kind of a, almost a shock because nobody ever said, we never had any clean up or anything like that when we didn't, even when they were digging for the house, it was your dog and we do it your house. and that was it. right, but it was kind of scary. this is the fact and now i have grandkids and how much pile of dirt do i have to have in the bath so that they can be able to play back

there. for how much dirt do i have to put a good, clean dirt so that i can plant something back there and need off loud? i'm not get upset because that's not a guarantee for me. oh, what else? they just don't you have to safe house to come and engagement because the trail when so many find themselves will support we choose to look for common ground the the, i think one of the biggest obstacle is we offer you since the lack of

accountability and the lack of information and so i think the 1st thing for our family is like being fully informed. like when we were requesting information about what, what do these particular account last name is, what are some of the houses that are connected to you know, this, this doubled up since combination in the water and soil and we were never provided that information, but we requested that as a public hearing number, if you prefer anything for us, the biggest issue is you know, as part of the community of how bad you know how badly it's been contaminated and then what does that mean for our bodies? what does that mean for our overall house and then cleaning it up? don't just about that. you know what they found in the property was that the soil high levels of lead pcb arsenic and a ton of other chemicals i can not mean. and that even the water has degrees of contamination that were higher than other areas on the island. um,

in the public hearing, there were family members from other parts of talk to in monroe who had come because in their properties there was military can, you know, waste that they had found over the years just like we had. but they weren't told that the public hearing was only dealing with the monthly cavalry banners properties because we were like, i guess, considered one of the super fun in the science. and so any other properties in the village they weren't even going to investigate that. it wasn't on their list and that this was all that they were there to discuss. so like one guy came in was like, you know, i found like tanks buried in my yard grade and they're like, oh that's, it's not on our list of property use that needed to be cleaned up. so where we can discuss that i had followed up because of that very same year i had lost my 1st child to a very birth dfcs caught on file

a solid square. his intestines had formed outside his body and a sack and so abdominal wall dfacs are pretty rare, but are very common here in guam. and so when i had been doing research, you know, in so that just because i was, as a mother, really trying to understand like, how did this happen? you know, i had found like a connection. i had found an article, a scientific article linking the presence of an invalid ssl, or like high incidences of abdominal wall dfcs and a community that had like rocket fuel in the water. and so i would say, well, if there's like a mean it wasn't directly caught or caused, but there was this correlation rates on. i could then this environmental contamination have impacted my child. then they did show up

a year later with like a construction crew. most of the contamination was in my uncle ben's property, which is right below my mom's property. and so what they had signed ways of, i dug into the soil like these long rectangles and they had failed like shipping container is full of the soil. and then midway through the project, they ran out of money and they buried everything back and they have not shown up sense. so this one is around 2011. and now more than 10 years later they never came to finish the clean up. so they, you know, they investigated what was there, they informed us, what was there they began to clean up, and then they ran out of money and never finished a job. and my uncle ben's family, you know, my nc norma recently died of cancer. i know that you know, a couple of his funds have also had cancer and you know, who knows what other health conditions may be connected to this. but you know,

a lot of the chemicals on that list are chemicals that are connected to high cancer rates and other communities. but yeah, for me like growing up in psych we were never growing up. we didn't drink water from the time like it was just always been given that the water is not safe to drink period whether or not we knew how the land was contaminated, there is always just this way in which i think we're aware as a community of like the fact that we don't have clean drinking water and that it's a risk to drink the water coming out of our top. and then when we finally, you know, heard about our specific property. it was confirmed when i think about what happened to our property. i mean, think about like just this idea that we like build our whole lives on the

contaminated land and you know, with no accountability from the department of defense or not even like, i'm just thinking like there are people who live here. sometimes i wonder and say, when you hear about the way guam is depicted to the rest of the world as the military base, it's like no one ever thinks about the people who actually live here. they only see one as a military installation. not as a island nation with such a rich history and families who call this place home and have done so for thousands of years freight and that is really terrifying to only the state to not be seen as a paul. because what it means is that our actual house and wellbeing our lives, they don't matter, and the military mission is what matters. the defense of the continental united

states is what matters and what sacrifice is our own house and well be. i think we need to go back to back to the table and discuss some more. i'm just invite more families in. and even if i don't have a major clean up this way, the test to test the dirt on the ground. because i'm never going to find anything in the back pc. these aren't just a problem in mtm. presidents in the southern village of reed, so are still being advised to avoid eating fish from the co goes to do because the level of pcp contamination and sampled fish remains of bugs federal standards for steve consumption for it says the closest village should compass island, the farmer site of the us coast star is long range, navigation for a bar and stations from 1944. to 1963 pcp is from

electrical equipment use at the coast curse lauren stations, such as transformers and capacitors for improperly discarded on campus island. and in cocos in 2005, the coast guard removes sources of pcp, contamination in around cobra's island. but it's 2015 follow up. sampling showed some spikes and p c b levels. and levels of toxic pesticide d, d t. and the water is around kobus island including fish when us. so we just took a boat out to this is cocos island. it's right off the coast of one. 9 right back there is the village of molest sue, so the military shuts down the navigation station in 1965, but we're still feeling the effects of the p. c. b contamination. up until today. these are lasting decades long impacts of historical contamination done by the us military that our people are still feeling. and

a lot of what activists have been saying all these years is that we can't be building up the, you know, the, the military expansion in this region is called the military buildup. and we can't be building up. well, we're still trying to clean up. there's so much taxes to be still in this area. and so we have to do what we can as a community to continue to raise awareness so that our families are not affected. so that. c we're not suffering from cancer and other chronic illnesses, from the toxicity across our island. and my name is ronna fi, g. doctor melissa, uh, born and raised there. i just recently moved up, but my father and all generations before me have all lived in my life with world from there. and i live in this the more northern side of miller so which is in

billy billy b. but we fish there all the time and focus on insurance. so it was a big thing and in municipal, my youngest cousin, my cousin at my age at that time, and in his thirty's, dido cancer and my other cousin who was younger than, than uh, his brother, died at age of 40. he died of cancer. and all that i think is because of what they would do left in the ocean for us. and luckily i didn't made it a habit to, to go there all the time, but they did because that was whenever there was a party we were sent out to go out and do fishing all the time. every time, every day, whenever we needed to, we had to know was the place we went to. so i think the military has not done the due diligence show and if not really help the people to control what, what is there? i'm sure others feel the same way that the p c b is not, is,

is still there. and is that the position we think is affected us. i think the federal government needs to continue to do their part not just on the, on the ocean, but also to even assist on our people in the village. very so mir ernest char gloss says the community has been left in the dark about water quality rather sash do as far as information because i know they did studies online, they should be cleared up. some other sam, it will show your samples on shar, nurse your nurse on, in atlanta, as well as the waters in the immediate area and then instead of the moon and those studies and then whatever scientific things that they were doing in the water were never given back to the community as far as the research where i wanted to find it for so to me is the stair step. on the side of their single, our issue may be and push drive. they should collaborate with their information to disseminate the appropriate information. so that you may know people knowledgeable

of what's going on and you keep them updated on your findings are on, on, on one basis as some read. so residence is family has subsisted off the land and waters of the last 2 for generations. charge to off express, concerned about the health impacts of pcp exposure. i was there. i was there, the trash grab, blank drum and toner crap. and i won't let the fish as well. so the fish in the wrong. they are in the dish back to catch the fish on there. so i'm concerned that the, you know, i don't know if i ever, i may have been just it or those that in dollars with the fish that i caught in the area may have been just it. and then a hasn't bearing on their health from shark last, christ active. the federal government should continue to conduct regular testing and exhaust all remedies to restore the health of the co goes. because the responsibility should be on the federal government. they're the ones that created

library, so those transformers there. and they shall know, that you don't dispose of it in a properly use of portions on how to dispose of a pcp containing element. so you know, the transformers or anything then as talk she materials, you have to discard them. i'm just partial them accordingly. that's wanting to chime different ways of onto this portion or math properly for each function that whatever we have face today is something our children don't have to worry about tomorrow. fun. who can, that will not be in the, the, to not fun. who do we have to do? not fun. who rooms? he has a book some time on the

the way obviously using it by some some of these, this finalize. i'm sure the same. yes. the no, that was the finest. click the windows east of joy moment for

you while you're on so we can use the cool dip startups that somebody for each of the best here as well. yeah, of course on the bill for the from chicago, they put us towards each of them. and that's only what you me is to suggest them with learning is good and you can still not feeling when you're feeling the feeling of getting that by the

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