OPINION Page 6 Friday, August 12, 1988 Ann Arbor residents sue company over dioxane poisoning Gelman taints water TWENTY YEARS AGO, FAMILIES LIVING IN SCIO Town- The compensation demanded by these families is well-de- ship started noticing foul smells emanating from treatment la- served and long overdue. The long-term health effects of diox- goons at Gelman Sciences corporation, a manufacturer of ane, which has been demonstrated to cause tumor-formation in membranes and filters for medical use. By 1986, some of animals, are still unknown. The medical treatment made Gelman's neighbors learned that their'water supply was con- necessary by the chemical should be paid for by the company taminated with dioxane and were notified not to drink or bathe that put these families in danger. Furthermore, because Gel- in their water. Soon after, over 50 residential and commercial man's mishandling of dioxane robbed these families of their wells near Gelman were found to be poisoned by a plume of wells, forcing them to pay for Ann Arbor city water, the com- contamination that had spread as far as one mile from the pany should pay their water bills. Gelman facility. More importantly, the suit could set a national precedent by Sixty families living near Gelman were plunged into a requiring polluters to shoulder the cost of providing medical nightmare of motel showers, bottled water and high anxiety. screening to citizens exposed to their toxic substances. Such a By 1987, Gelman was ranked number two on the DNR's Pri- precedent will deter companies from negligence with toxic ority List of Sites of Environmental Contamination. But the materials in the future. most recent episode in the sordid saga of Gelman Sciencesc o- fIt is relatively simple for a company to obscure the details pitchedof their toxic waste disposal, as the Gelman example illus- cun$ed this week: 16 of these families banned together,pa trates. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR), theoreti- in $100 dollars a piece and filed a suit against escompany cally responsible for monitoring Gelman's activities, lacked for long-term medical costs, as well as for costs resulting the time, money and the proper testing techniques adequately from the loss of their wells and subsequent dependence upon to do so. Therefore, the DNR had to rely upon the company to city water supplies, provide records of its own activities, as well as test results of The Michigan Daily for profit toxicity in the surrounding area. But Gelman was extremely slow in delivering important in- formation to the DNR: Gelman did not report that they were disposing of dioxane until 1980, although they should have given a complete inventory when applying for a permit in 1976. Gelman refused to release a series of test results on the Third Sister Lake on the grounds that this "would not serve any useful purpose." A year later, the lake was found to be contaminated at a level of 510 ppb (the State health advisory for dioxane in drinking water is 2ppb). The crimes Gelman has committed against its neighbors are clear: Dioxane is a suspected human carcinogen. Since 1963, dioxane and other chemical wastes produced at Gelman have been burned, leaked, seeped, sprayed and injected into deep wells through waste disposal methods that are illegal and show flagrant disregard for human health. Gelman will no doubt bring formidable legal machinery to its defense. The time has come, however, for companies like Gelman to be forced to comply with the law, and for citizens hurt and inconvenienced by their negligence to be justly recompensed. Peace acts conquer weapons Unsigned editorials represent the majority views of the Daily's Editorial Board. Cartoons and signed editorials do not necessarily reflect the Daily's opinion. Hey hey, ho ho, --- Protest hasgot A COALITION OF STUDENT groups has come out in opposition to the new protest policy and depu- tization of campus security which violates student rights and is clearly intended to repress dissent on cam- pus. The right to protest embodies the right of free speech and any in- fringement on it constitutes censorship. By criminalizing campus con- duct, the University is appointing itself both legislator and prosecutor - a clear violation of civil liber- ties. Under the new policy, the ad- ministration has the power to both define "unacceptable conduct" and to determine the punishment. Though the policy will be applied only to students, by abolishing Bylaw 7.02, the regents effectively made sure that there would be no student input to either of the processes. Autonomy between those who devise the rules and those who en- force them is crucial to objectivity. Having deputized campus security enforce the protest policy creates a totalitarian state in which the Uni- versity stands as an island of repression within society at large. A look at other colleges with deputized security forces presents a, code to go grim future for dissent on this campus. The University of Califor- nia at Berkley's deputized security made the pages of Life magazine in spring 1986 as officers brutally dragged away a student peacefully demonstrating for divestment from South Africa. Campus police at the University of Wisconsin at Madison have used mace to repress peaceful demonstrators on their campus. Michigan State University security guards carry huge guns which many students feel threatened by. These intimidation factors hardly create an environment open to the free exchange of ideas. President Fleming attempts to justify deputization with the claim that the University will be better able to prevent violent conflict be- tween students and its own security guards than between students and city police. Yet Robert Patrick, one of the guards Fleming wants to deputize, is currently being sued for assaulting a student protester last November. The administration must not be allowed to succeed in its grab for power and its attempt to repress students and violate their rights. O N A UGUST 6, 1945, T H E United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Nearly 100,000 civilians died. Three days later, on August 9, another bomb was dropped on the city of Na- gasaki. An additional 74,000 people were killed instantly or died excru- ciating deaths in the weeks to fol- low. If history is indeed written by the victors, then perhaps it is not surprising that these deaths should go less remembered in the U.S. public consciousness than the Pearl Harbor attack - which produced much fewer casualties and yet went on to became a modern symbol of mili y aggression. Fortunately, there are those who see the carnage in another way. Last Monday in Oakland County, 150 demonstrators commemorated the 43rd anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki massacres by blockading the gates of the Williams International Corporation, a designer and manu-facturer of cruise missile engines. Twenty-five were arrested. In both their choice of targets and their means of ex- pressing their respect for the vic- tims of U.S. nuclear terrorism, these protesters have made a powerful statement. By manufacturing engines for cruise missiles, Williams Incorpo- rated contributes to a frightening nuclear policy known in Pentagon- ese as Escalation Dominance. This policy - and the technology de- signed to carry it out - allows the United States to wage a protracted nuclear war in many geographic theaters simultaneously. According to University physics professor Dan Axelrod, a participant weapons protest in Walled Lake, Mi. last Friday. in Monday's demonstration, cruise missiles form the backbone of Escalation Dominance theory and provide the missing link between limited conventional war and nu- clear war. Cruise missiles, while not first strike weapons, are appealing to the war-fighters for their great versatil- ity. Theycan be fired from almost anywhere: bombers, aircraft carriers, subs, automobile garages. Origi- nally designed as bargaining chips for arms control negotiations, the cruise has become a weapon of ag- gression, intervention and destabi- lization. The engines that drive these mis- siles are produced here in Michigan in a quiet community called Walled Lake. There might be no better way to mark the anniversary of the Hi-' roshima and Nagasaki massacres than by attempting to prevent the manu-facture of these engines from taking place than through acts of resistance. Non-violent resistance is a way of bringing moral clarity to im- moral policies. It has had a history of success in raising public aware- ness about nuclear terrorism, a concept almost unthinkable in its implications. In Europe, massive acts of non- violent resistance have succeeded in effecting important structural changes in these policies. The signing of the INF treaty may be one such triumph, according to some foreign policy analysts. Demonstrations by the "Green-ham women' against the deployment of nuclear weapons insGreat Britain and massive protest. spearheaded by the Green Party in West Germany were in a large part responsible for making disarmament part of the European national agendas. Despite the achievements of the anti-nuclear movement in Europe, the apparent landmark in arms re- duction that the INF treaty repre- sented in fact contains a huge loop- hole. The INF provides for the re- moval of pershing and cruise ground missiles from sites all over Europe, but it neglects to mention the possibility of replacing the old ground cruise missiles with new ones on submarines - a possi- bility quickly becoming reality. New cruise missiles are currently being manufactured for this pur- pose, and Williams International will be making all of the engines. One nuclear cruise missile con- tains sixteen times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. There is no better way to remember the victims of Hiroshima than to prevent their production and de- ployment.