I broke out laughing reading the endorsement letter for Bruce McComas for hospital commissioner of Jefferson County because of his past and present experiences as general manager of Port Townsend Paper and now at Columbia Pulp — a straw pulp mill in Eastern Washington near the junction of the Palouse and Snake rivers.
A few years ago, I started investigating cancers in their relation to chemical damage from the paper and wood product industries and cancer hot spots in Washington, Idaho and Oregon near these industries.
Most recently, I focused on brain tumors, in particular glioblastomas, after meeting a family in the Port Angeles area with a family member developing this cancer.
I found Jefferson County not only ranked first in incidence per population with nervous system cancers compared to other counties in the state of Washington, but also first in overall cancer risk, according to the state cancer registry.
Clallam County is a little better but ranks first in the state for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
I now wonder about the pollution from a straw mill and long-term effects.
While Indian Island arsenic contamination may have put Jefferson County over the top, I find placing a pulp mill general manager in charge of a local hospital strikes me as similar to putting the Koch brothers in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a 2008 report from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry Division of Health Assessment and Consultation.
By the way, the Koch brothers own Georgia Pacific, and investigators have found they influenced the appointment of Scott Pruitt now in charge of the EPA, according to a February article on AlterNet.
Got a clue, people?
Cheryl Nash,
Port Angeles