Sunday, April 20, 2008

PG&E Water Contamination

Our group chose to do our ethical research on the water contamination in Hinkley, CA during the 1960s. It is a topic that one may recognize because it is addressed in the movie "Erin Brockovich". I really enjoyed researching this case study and found out some very interesting information. According to the facts of the case, the movie did a very good job in portraying the sequence of events accurately. Basically, PG&E is a plant located in the Mohave desert, right near the little town of Hinkley. PG&E was dumping million of gallons of cancer-causing agents into unlined ponds as well as vaporizing the chemical and releasing it into the air. The chemical was chromium 6. There are 2 forms of this chemical, one that can be beneficial to one's health in small amounts, and the other deadly. They claimed that they were releasing the beneficial chromium 6 and that it was safe and the residents of Hinkly had nothing to worry about. The chromium 6 was being used in the plant to help reduce corrosion through the factory. Once the chromium 6 had gone through the system, the plant would dump the waste products into unlined ponds as well as evaporate the liquid and disperse it into the air. Test results proved that these chromium levels were thousands of times higher than the legal and healthy levels, but PG&E stuck with their story that the water was safe and there was nothing to worry about. Residents nearby and employees of the plant began to have multiple cases of cancer and other ailments such as headaches and nosebleeds. PG&E willingly paid for doctors to check the patients, but surprise, they stated that the water was not the source. Turns out that once the evidence was too damning for PG&E to deny anymore, they stated that they were unaware of these outrageous levels of chromium until the 1980s, yet employees and records state that they had knowledge of these deadly, cancer-causing chromium levels as far back as 1965.

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