Open Forum: My Cancer and the EPA Clean Air Regulations

I'm dying. My stong, hardworking body will waste to nothing in the next months from a form of cancer that doctors say was most likely caused by air pollution. Before I go I am compelled to speak out for your help to support the new EPA clean air regulations, because they are rules that would most likely have saved my life - and might just save yours. I'm speaking out because the power brokers in large, polluting companies are fighting to discredit and destroy the new protections. They want to make you believe their greed is not killing me, and the 15,000 other Americans who die from these air-pollution-caused cancers and cardiopulmonary diseases every year. These corporate executives also ignore the suffering of millions of others who, though they may not die, endure chronic illness including asthma that limits their lives and work. They must either deny we are dying because of their pollution, or consider our deaths an acceptable cost of doing business.

I wouldn't mind dying if it was for a good cause. But I am angry - very angry - that I'm most likely dying for the profits of a tiny number of wealthy people who own and run the companies that cause this massive pollution. Why should my mom and dad have to be the ones who have to watch helplessly while their son dies slowly? These rich corporate polluters should be paying the consequences. Not me, and not any of the other victims, who are usually the vulnerable in society, like children and elderly people. But instead of paying to reduce their emissions, these corporate executives are mounting a multi-million dollar public relations campaign to discredit the new pollution rules by saying the EPA uses "bad science" without real data to back up the new rules. The PR campaign also says the new rules would cost more than the benefits. Those statements are untrue, and those wealthy corporate owners know it.

. Don't believe me. Listen to a middle-of-the-road magazine, Consumer Reports. In their August 1997 issue they reported that two studies helped trigger the call for increased protection. The first EPA study followed 8,000 citizens for an average of 15 years. In the most polluted communities the population had a 25% higher death rate from lung cancer and cardiopulmonary disease. The results were so shocking that the EPA repeated the study using 500,000 citizens. They got the same results. Three additional research groups now back them up.

And the cost argument? The last time the industry squawked at stricter rules, they claimed the cost would be $1,500 per ton for cleaning up acid rain. The real cost ended up being $70-100 per ton. In every instance to date the cost of cleaning up and preventing pollution has proven cheaper than continuing to pollute. This time the EPA has calculated we'd save about $45 in health and social costs for every buck the companies pay to clean up their mess.

If anything, EPA has really been too slow and cautious at cleaning up the air. Until now they have bent over backward to accommodate the corporate executives. Had they acted sooner I, and 15,000 other Americans who will die this year alone, would have been spared the torture of radiation, chemotherapy, heart attacks or emphysema. Another 15,000 will suffer and die next year, and again the year after.

In just four years with the new EPA regulations in place we will have saved more lives than were lost in the entire Vietnam War. Perhaps people would be noticing the casualties of air pollution if we were being sent home in body bags the way those boys were- but the casualties in this war are all too hidden.

I will not live long enough to see the victory of these new protections; time is running out for me. But we need to remember the real costs-- the human costs-- of air pollution. We can't let these few rich polluters, their big campaign contributions and their PR firms continue to manipulate Congress. Pick up the phone and tell your Representatives and Senators to support the new standards. And keep fighting after I'm gone.