Hexavalent chromium exposure1/28/2024 A meeting was held on July 25, 2001, to obtain "public input on the review of scientific questions regarding the potential of chromium 6+ to cause cancer when ingested." The panel was selected by Jerold A. The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), established in 1991 with the creation of CalEPA, had been located across from UC Berkeley and had maintained academic ties with the school. In March 2001, the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) asked the University of California, Berkeley to name a panel of experts to form the Chromate Toxicity Review Committee. The revised study-which did not reveal the involvement of PG&E or its scientists-helped persuade California health officials to delay new drinking water standards for chromium." Peter Waldman, reporter for The Wall Street Journal, wrote that Zhang's son was "outraged" at "the idea that his father would willingly have invalidated his earlier award-winning work." According to the Center for Public Integrity, "In contrast to the earlier article, the new one concluded that chromium wasn't the likely culprit. It was published under Zhang's name (then a retired Chinese government health officer, and despite his written objection) and that of a second Chinese scientist, Shu Kun Li. ChemRisk, a firm known to be working with PG&E since 1995, updated his analysis and published it in April 1997 Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM, the official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine) as a retraction of Zhang's 1987 paper. In 1997, an article was published in which Zhang retracted his 1987 research. Protest sign outside Hinkleyĭuring negotiations, the presiding judges told PG&E's lawyers that a 1987 study by Chinese scientist Jian Dong Zhang reporting a strong link between chromium 6 pollution and cancer in humans would be "influential" in their decision. It was settled in 1996 for $333 million, the largest settlement of a class action lawsuit in U.S. After arbitration for the first 40 people resulted in about $120 million, PG&E reassessed its position and decided to end arbitration and settle the case. The case was referred to arbitration, with maximum damages of $400 million for more than 600 people. Masry) investigated an apparent cluster of illnesses in the community which were linked to hexavalent chromium. In 1993, Erin Brockovich (a legal clerk for lawyer Edward L. for County of San Bernardino, Barstow Division, file BCV 00300). Residents of Hinkley filed a class action against PG&E, Anderson, et al. Although the dumping took place from 1952 to 1966 (when Hinkley was a remote desert community with one school and a general store), PG&E did not inform the local water board about the contamination until December 7, 1987. The water was then disposed adjacent to the compressor stations. At the Topock and Hinkley compressor stations, a hexavalent chromium additive was used as a rust inhibitor in cooling towers. From Bakersfield to the Oregon border, the network served 4.2 million customers. History ĭuring the early 1950s, Pacific Gas & Electric built its first two compressor stations in Topock, Arizona, and Hinkley at the southern end of what became its trans-California natural-gas transmission system: a network of eight compressor stations linked with 40,000 miles (64,000 km) of distribution pipeline and 6,000 miles (9,700 km) of transport pipeline. Since then, the town's population has dwindled to the point that in 2016 The New York Times described Hinkley as having slowly become a ghost town. In 2008, PG&E settled the last of the cases involved with the Hinkley claims. A class-action lawsuit about the contamination was settled in 1996 for $333 million (around $612 million in 2022). In 1993, legal clerk Erin Brockovich began an investigation into the health impacts of the contamination. Hexavalent-chromium compounds are genotoxic carcinogens. PG&E used chromium 6, or hexavalent chromium (a cheap and efficient rust suppressor), in its compressor station for natural-gas transmission pipelines. Satellite image of Hinkley, Barstow and Harper Lake, Californiaįrom 1952 to 1966, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) dumped about 370 million gallons (1,400 million litres) of chromium-tainted wastewater into unlined wastewater spreading ponds around the town of Hinkley, California, located in the Mojave Desert about 120 miles north-northeast of Los Angeles. Not to be confused with Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.
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