I am mapping environmental pollution in hotspots and marking the documented contaminant sites on a map. I started this because we now have 3 hematologic cancers in my immediate household within 3 years, are currently treating 2 with chemo, transfusions and a planned imminent stem cell transplant on the human (the other 2 are 1 cat and 1 dog and it is currently a tough fight). All in 1 household with 2 adults and a number of animals. We are rural on the FL/GA line off any city grid. It looks clean and pristine around here. We are on our own well that is poked into the endless Wakulla Aquifer. The water always tested clean on our well.
Then came cancer after cancer, all 3 hematologic. It could all be a coincidence but it's about enough strange coincidences. So I looked into the old history of this place. All I knew was that it was plantation land since forever. It was. No manufacturing industry of any kind. I pulled down cancer statistics for the state of FL and my county has nearly double the FL average of specifically leukemias. That describes one of the current patients we are fighting for with an impending transplant. I don't like the coincidence that this is consistent with the high rate in our county. THis county is almost unpopulated. So where exactly is this hotspot or spots? I asked Florida State and specifically the FL Cancer Registry, a state office. They said because we are so sparsely populated, no real city is on the map and the county is swept into one pile of doubled stats. Jefferson County extends from the GA border to the beaches of the Gulf Coast with only scattered small populations. The state now wants to know what I find out about this.
I pulled county history archives, state and fed records. Found there is a superfund history of an area within a mile of me that never manufactured but served as chemical repackaging site for decades for a major out of state chemical corp that put a repackaging site right on the railway through the woods here and brought whole tanker railcars via railway here, emptied and repackaged 1,4-dioxane, cis/trans-1,2-DCE, 1,1-DCE, vinyl chloride, 1,1,1-TCA and 1,1,2-TCA and a whole shitload of alphabet soup chemical brew that will kill ya. This ran from 1975 to the early 2000s. It was sold through several corporations, shut down and everybody left the state and left the mess. The EPA ran several big studies on this superfund thing and delegated it down to the state to clean up. I am trying to open records right now which contractor allegedly cleaned up this toxic dangerous mess and when. Florida has a way to clean up superfunds the way Trump cleaned up his reflecting pool. I found records that these tanker cars were washed out all day long with water and the chem rinsate from the whole tanker train car dumped into unlined retention ponds in the woods or flushed into a creek that runs near me. In rogue amounts. For decades. I had to start digging in archives and writing letters and declassifying files to begin to even learn the beginning of this and I am right at the beginning of a big excavation what is going on here.
How do we know this all PFAS to benzene sloshing and spilling connects to our well? We don't. We are about a mile away but on the exact same big aquifer. I am writing to the state to open archives which way the aquifer flows and has its many underground rivers here to see if I am downstream from this thing or if it bypasses us. We have a peculiar cluster of human+animal hematologic cancers that are all in the same Hem/Onc family of MDS going AML to lymphomas in 1 cat and 1 dog with common denominator between the human and 2 animals being that all drank the same well water for years.
We did well tests. It is useless right now until we know more. None of these chemicals are tested by regular well companies. We need separate 1,4-dioxane analysis, pref. EPA Method 522. We need a VOC panel. We need a lot but we first of all need to know what exactly Gulf Chemical Corp and its many other corporate names spilled in these woods for decades and then we can start testing for specifically that.
So I contacted the EPA and sent them 2 FOIAs when I they told me that they had done extensive testing years ago on this exact spot. Did they clean it up? No, they told the state to clean it up. Was that done? Dunno, gotta send more FOIAs to more places. I found some chemicals confirmed and VOCs were also present but do not have enough data to get a full picture yet what all was dumped into our groundwater here. EPA was very nice and contacted me right back and promised to declassify and send me a lot of data and their old water test samples. Then we will have a clearer idea what was documented here over the years and what we are looking for. Then we can start water specific water testing on our well, multiple creeks (this is off the grid acreage), pond and endless open water on the property.
The bestest bulldog ever is having vincristine tomorrow. My personal baby Hannah. A Full CHOP regimen. It is heartbreaking to watch how fast she was just diagnosed and immediately got so sick. I am not prepared to euthanize as long as there is a chance to make it better a while longer. She is only 6. We are a medical family and were able to get chemo meds almost at cost while a great vet is doing it, so the horrible cost is coming down by a lot because we could not afford to do chemo on human or animal out of pocket. We will do everything we can for Hannah the puppy so whatever happens next is comfortable. And next week is a battery of preps and tests at Mayo JAX for my husband, the other Hem/Onc patient. Bone marrow transplant has become fancy and surprisingly successful. It is only a complicated and very involved and long process of stem cell transplants but that is what we have to do because without it, the prognosis is grim. MDS turning into AML. Meanwhile, a friend will have to take our puppy for the last chemo treatments because we will be having chemo and I am then locked down as caretaker at Mayo in JAX at that same time. The cost of all this is frightening. Not doing it means somebody dies. Keep pushing. Stress is a benign word to describe my state of mind right now but that Indica vape pen works enough to focus the cope and I have to keep going.
It's a lot. All at once. I will be happy to post what the EPA said when they finish the FOIA they are preparing on the mess in our glorious piece of nature, if anyone wants to see it. This country is so beautiful and so fouled up by the same industrialists, elites, whatever these oligarch destroyers are but it is always the same power circles.
Here is the Florida map of dangerous chemicals and hotspots I assembled. I mapped specific toxins I am personally searching the archives for and put them on this map.