I Live in a Toxic Town, How About You?

Anniston was a quiet little town home to about 24,000 peoples. A beautiful town, one full of tradition and friendliness, often considered the “model town,” Tara Hulen, author of “Dispatch from Toxic Town,” said. In 1890 and in 1942, Anniston was made into a military town with Fort McClellan came around.

Fort McClellan originally seemed like a vast improvement for the residents of Anniston, bringing in thousands of jobs. But jobs were not all that Fort McClellan Brought with them. They brought many lethal chemicals with them as well, which they would eventually release out into the public’s environment.

So many toxins at such high levels have been released in Anniston that the birth defect rate was astronomical, and early death caused by cancer was extremely common. Eventually this beautiful little town was destroyed by toxins released into the atmosphere and the water, driving residents away.

This scenario is particularly scary to me because I feel, in a slight way, that our town of Pensacola can relate to this towns problem. We are a town of many beauties. We have a nice beach, friendly people, and we are a military town as well.

After reading “Dispatch from Toxic Town” I visited http://www.epa.gov/triexplorer/ and http://www.scorecard.org/ to explore further the pollutants in the Pensacola area. What I found was shocking.

Although Pensacola is a military town after doing some research, I found that aside from the large number of 3,662 pounds of chemicals release from the military base, it was not the main source of pollution from the town of Pensacola.

Companies such as Solutia Inc. and Gulf Power Co. Plant Crist are dominating the pollution here. Solution released an astonishing 25,500,247 pounds of chemicals, followed by the 10,276,006 pounds released by Gulf Power, according to www.scorecard.org

Of all of the toxins released, what exactly are they? At the top of the list we find Nitrate compounds, followed in order by Hydrochloric acid, formic acid, methanol, cyclohexanol. Hydrochloric acid was the one that caught my eye. According to www.scorecard.org, hydrochloric acid’s health rankings are “ranked as one of the most hazardous compounds (worst 10%) to ecosystems and human health.”

With that being said, Pensacola had 9,725,276 pounds released into their environment placing this horrible toxin as the second most released toxin in Pensacola.

Reading these studies I have learned that Escambia County is in the top 10 percent for worst toxic emissions in the United States.