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Contaminated Well Causes Continuing Nightmare

Contaminated Well Causes Continuing Nightmare image
Parent Issue
Day
8
Month
August
Year
1991
Copyright
Copyright Protected
Rights Held By
Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
OCR Text

Contaminated well causes continuing nightmare

By ELIZABETH POLK

OTHER VOICES

The fear I experience at my daughter's nosebleeds and my son's headaches is not similar to the fear that other parents experience.

Recently, I received a phone call that I felt I needed to let you know about. In 1986 my family and I became aware that our well water had been contaminated by Gelman Sciences, an industry that is near our home. As a result of this awareness, my husband and I and our two small children proceeded into a nightmare that is still alive today.

The phone call that I recently received was from another family in another neighborhood in Ann Arbor who more recently became aware that their well water was contaminated. She related to me that they have to bathe at a nearby motel and wanted to know if our experience was similar and how long it lasted. When I told her that we bathed at the same motel for seven months, she became understandably upset.

We went on to share our experiences with washing dishes, laundry and hands, and cooking and brushing teeth in bottled water. I was sorry I could not help her paint a more pleasant picture in order to help her cope. It seems that eight families in her neighborhood have experienced the same nightmare, only this time I have read nothing about it in the newspapers. Has human suffering become so commonplace as to not hit the newspapers?

When I hung up the phone, I was so moved by the remembrance of that period in my life and by the sadness I felt for this family, that I felt I needed to write to let you know that the fear I have about this experience has magnified rather than lessened with time. It took me weeks to shake off the horror of this phone call.

Also, I read in the newspapers that ADP had won $450,000 in a court procedure against Gelman Sciences for property damages. I was pleased to hear that the claim was taken so seriously. Several months ago, some of my neighbors and I rejected a court settlement for a sum of money that seemed unreasonable to us. We decided to appeal this decision. In court, the defense attorneys wanted the jury to believe that 1) we lied and 2) we were greedy and unreasonable to not have accepted such a generous sum of money.

This same attorney was apparently “surprised” that a suit was recently filed by our children asking for a sum of money to be set aside for medical surveillance in order to monitor their health throughout their lifetime, hopefully enabling them to catch any subsequent health problems caused by dioxane before they are too great to treat.

This does no seem “surprising” to me. It seems like common sense in light of what has happened to my children and in light of the fact that the acceptable level for human contact with this chemical has apparently dropped because the level of contamination that this phone caller had in her well was not considered enough to warrant such caution when it happened in our neighborhood.

We did not lie in court and we are not greedy. Neither should it be surprising that we have a desperate desire to protect ourselves and our children from this nightmare. I don’t know (as The Ann Arbor News misquoted me as saying) that any of the health problems we are currently experiencing are caused by this contamination but I do know that the fear I experience at my daughter’s nosebleeds and my son’s headaches is not similar to the fear that other parents experience. I will always have the question in my mind, “Is this the start of cancer or neurological problems caused by their exposure to 1,4 dioxane?” I will always carry a fear greater than most parents will carry.

I am sorry if my children’s recent lawsuit did not seem to fit into the defense attorney’s idea of fair, but neither did the nightmare that began on May 15,1986, fit into my idea of fair. As for the woman who called me a couple of weeks ago; I hope she doesn’t ever experience what we have gone through since this began five years ago but I am afraid she will and I hope our community remains aware that the nightmare continues.

Elizabeth Polk lives in Ann Arbor.