highly toxic substances and we are experiencing contamination of our land and waters by the agent orange, p. fast pc, bees, petroleum fuels, heavy metals, fonts, high organic compounds, all the military war time cocktails. so you can imagine from being carpet bomb during world war 2. we're an island is interfered 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 with the environment,

the correlation is enough for them to question why their family members are dying. dr. leasing let's have a daughter, 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 left 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. um, then we see 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 the study that was done by no fall and headaches, which was published in 1997 and, and in their study,

what they did was they, bluffton surveyed a 25 year period of cancer death certificates. and so, and looking at those death certificates they identified and you know, computed what was the incidence of, of death of cancer on, on go on. and they were able to establish that tomorrow's were the highest risk for cancer. and that the incidence of cancer was increasing and this is after they use different calculations from the world health organization to standardized 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 you go where 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 the very direct impact

on the bodies of tomorrow's. i met up with rudy polco mirror municipality at the heart of while i'm calling my mom to to might see where he was born and raised. this municipality is commonly known as m t, m, and m. c. m. is home of the largest flatland area, and juan called the have gone yes, one more than 70 years ago, run off from a navy operated power plant in milan. drained into a portion of the a gun. yes. swamp. contaminating the residential area with poly chlorinated by fennel's or p. c. b's which are industrial chemicals. thing to cancer. run out from the power plant. when to ran into yard of paco's childhood home, to the 19 ninety's alco challenged 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 chemicals. but all i asked the federal government was to

do a physics 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 up where they live right across from the parks. i met up with the nurse has to be filled with the hon. pick her up in the home, directly across the navy power plants. she and 5 of her siblings, that old nasal french healed cancer. tragically, all 5 passed away of cancer and she is the soul cancer survivor. we, we for karen from canada and the government testers, right. good the, here's some of the affairs side. so why are you for this case when we were young, i'm sorry, we go through the, from my net or this can of the navy risk it. c

and go down there and would put in the most we put your hands inside. we've got to so many, they're huge and they're very good. thank you. and this class and they're in the area of those to our area in the right to my dad and 5 and same way with my grand kids. and my mom to brothers and sisters leave around the area to they've done a yeah. there is also from the great there's, uh huh. are sick during there was for me it's hardly because, i mean, i have been directly affected, but i've had j like grow up my whole life. i had 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 to. yeah. so yeah, my brother brittany has his cancer from major, very new york and then he was a new bid. and then there began to these boom, and that's what i'm very fortunate to around the origin of my exercises. i guess way from you know, like i really selfish to because i'm thankful that my grandma was the one that survived. oh yeah. like how many, how many times is did you move to

a 5 or vice of me around my mom to the brother died before the end user, 5209 again, my sister i or sister, she had a nice over in your dentist and she had a 5 set of treatment, but she never ran out of it. and then about 4 years later i had that native ranger cancer. so him straight in, right. same as we when i ran in 1997 doctor, we're seeing that there is no. so cancer is not here,

disease and as of right, something is not broke or there is a flat cancer in the same time for lunch going on around the area which is of these kinds of nations less around my dad, fish we fish a 9 and my phone number's not bad then right? we're not going to. there weren't just p c b use in the nearby waters and figured victoria low, low younger arrows, 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 p c. b. the property was formerly of the location of military supply warehouses, a military vehicle base, yard and a shooting range. the department of defense did

a partial cleanup and never came back. oh yes, found that metal fee for this is the letter on that list and so forth and just collecting. so those 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 for a car. 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 coming to you 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 guns, how her have greeting me, get the land that i grew up and talked to is my mother's that. 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 homes in the app on the property. as um, it was an in, so we had always known that there was military waste from the war buried in the property because when we were kids we went thank 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 light 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 side after the war. but, 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

a team. they came and they had asked permission from our family and from my uncle ben's family. my problem is brother and his children to sort of dig it up and, and really study what was there and the degree of contamination that had occurred. and so they and said that in 2008 in 2010, they invited our families to malone. folks might say community center and have like a public hearing just for our families about what they had found. and so it was the psych power point and all bullet points. and they were, you know, basically saying that it has 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, even when they were digging for the house, it was you jogging, build your house and that was it, right? but um, 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 back 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 the land? not yet, because that's not a guarantee for me. now there are many places in the world where you can stay on the divide between 2 oceans and or you might not think kids. what does this hay and what is northern or found? guest vision. and the, you know, is that us national park and today's winning organ, uh, there was

a supplement from taking a deep side into some beach because of the line. scott bennett, i'm former united states army psychological warfare officer, really served in the state department counterterrorism office under investor del daily the . so i wanted to come here to russia in the dawn bass area and to gather the facts, to take back to the american people. the hold on bass is the front line, so this is where the bombs and the bullets are right. jane,

this is where people are dying. this is where the buildings are exploding the law. i wanted to see 1st hand the scars of war. 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 went through these particular councils, need this, what are some of the house of conditions 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. com, but if you need anything for us to biggest issue is you know, as part of the community of how bad the e mail, how badly it's been contaminated and then what does that name for our bodies? what does that mean for our overall house and then come in and cleaning it up? don't just about it. you know, what they found in the property was that the soil high levels of lead pcb arsenic. and that's kind 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. and 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 were told that the public hearing was only dealing with the months of probably donna's properties

because we were like, i guess, considered one of the super fun in 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. okay. then they're like, oh that's, it's not on our list of properties 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 defects 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 is like a mean, it wasn't directly called a cause, 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 the job. in my uncle ben's family, you know, my mc 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 inside, we were never growing up. we didn't drink water from the time, like it was just always the 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 job. and then when we finally, you know, heard about our specific property. it was confirmed when a think about what happened to our property. i mean, think about like just this idea that we like build our whole lives on this 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, is i, when you hear about the way guam is depicted to the rest of the world as the military base of says,

no one ever thinks about the people who actually lived 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 the people. because what it means is that our actual health and wellbeing our lives, they don't matter. and the military mission is what matters. the defense of the continental united states as 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 still tests 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 read. so are still being advised to avoid meeting fish from the co goes to doing because the level of pcp contamination and sampled fish remains of the 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. p. c. b is from electrical equipment use at the coast guards. lauren stations such as transformers and capacitors for improperly discarded on compost island and enclose the goods in 2005. the coast guard removes sources of pcb contamination in around cobra's island . but a 2015 follow up sampling showed some spikes and pcp levels and levels of toxic

pesticide d d t. and the water is around cope us island, including fish when us. so we just take 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 due to the military shuts down the navigation station in 1965. but we're still feeling the effects of the pcp 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, the military expansion in this region is called the military buildup. and we can't be building up while we're still trying to clean up. there's so much talk soon 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, born and raised there. i just recently moved up, but i father and all generations before me of all lived and will actually were from there. and i live in this the more northern side of mother. so which is indeed the baby. but we fish there all the time and focus on and try. and 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 and his brother died of age of 40. he died of cancer. and all that i think is because

of what they, what, what they 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 have to know what's the place we went to. so i think the military has not done the due diligence show and they've 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 there is affected us? i think it is, 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 british. very so mirror 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 shines the big uh, the things that they were doing in the water were never given the community as far as the research where i want to find it for. so to me is the stair step. when the science dash angle, our issue may be and the coast guard, they should collaborate with their information to disseminate the appropriate information so that you may know people knowledgeable or what's going on and you've given them update on your findings are on, on, on one basis as i'm 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

trash grab, blank wrap and colton or crap. and i was let the fish as well. so the fish in the wrong, they are in the dish affected. i catch the fish on there. so i'm concerned that, 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 manager said, and then a hasn't bearing under health from shark. las prospective, the federal government should continue to conduct regular testing and exhaust all remedies to restore the health of the co goes the good. the responsibilities should be on the federal government. they're the ones that created library. so those transformers there. and they should 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. according to

scientific ways of, onto this publishing or not appropriately for each function and then whatever we are page today is something alternative. don't have to worry about the long fun. who can, that will not be in the done to not fun. who do see how people do not fun, who rooms? he has a book, some time on the there's no end in sight over how you're going to continue to destroy the earth. is the case for the med, most of the people. i tried to go to the gym, but i'm certainly not ready to fight russia. this is also absurd. this is the 3rd world lunacy re washing. as of course, the funder line likes to say,

we have the tools. well, we just start with stability and business deal. so just let me let me on. you have a very quick propaganda. you know, a price here in new york. i think we don't know the aftermath any time that you're not allowed to ask questions, you should ask all of the questions. some more questions ask a better. the answer is will be the way obviously using. but if i solve lawson level, it's easier to share the same yes or no. that was to do with his stolen joy. moment though i'm little confused on so we're looking for the most cool dips, the most money for the children here as well. yeah.

the, the customer on the bill for the, from chicago. they put us towards each of them. and there's only what you me is to suggest them with learning is good and you don't know if there was in your office the silver soft in there by the light. so when i was wrong, just don't have to shape house and engagement because the trails when so many find themselves will

depart, we choose to look for common ground the the breaking news as well as private as the video has been admitted. responsibility live deadly pains bowman level and according to the statement virus, but do you need to scramble to figure out how to keep the fine caroling tier that says the mountains of the incoming trump administration might cross. all these allows pressures actively contributing to strengthening the security of african countries. russia is a long standing partner and a friend of ours and all the african nations present. here today are fully cognizant of this fact, right? so half of the summit arrives. so those in attendance think highly quoted to the agent that content security.