Koch Brothers Exposed: Cancer Risk In Crossett Arkansas Blamed On Georgia Pacific
Good reminder that the odious pollutocrat killionaire Koch brothers - in addition to being the biggest bankrollers of climate-change-denying groups and the GOP/Tea Party - love to destroy the environment in other ways:
Now the Brave New series is taking a hard look at another Koch disaster already in progress in an Arkansas community ravaged by cancer. The residents living (and dying) on Penn Road in Crossett suspect that air and water pollution from the town’s only manufacturer - Koch subsidiary Georgia Pacific - is making them ill. Georgia Pacific’s facility - a plywood, paper mill and formaldehyde resin plant - has dumped millions of gallons of wastewater into open ditches nearby, in violation of the Clean Water Act.
And just as the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation tries to obfuscate and hide the links between smoking and cancer, so too do the Kochs themselves lie about formaldehyde:
Our research has uncovered very strong ties between Georgia-Pacific, a company co-owned by David Koch through Koch Industries, and a political lobby group called the Formaldehyde Council that is involved in efforts to downplay the dangers posed by formaldehyde to human health.
To add irony to injury, David Koch used to be a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board:
But David Koch’s membership on the National Cancer Advisory Board, which advises NCI, became a flashpoint of its own after The New Yorker magazine last month reported that a Koch-owned company lobbied against designating formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen while he sat on the panel.
Thankfully, after Koch buggered off the board, formaldehyde was finally classified as a carcinogen.
Anything else add to that delay besides Koch on the board? His pet politicians, of course:
An investigation by ProPublica found that Sens. David Vitter (R-LA) and James Inhofe (R-OK) had used their power to add years of delay to the report. The piece linked Vitter to lobbying from Koch’s Georgia Pacific company, which has plywood plants in Louisiana.
The website kochbrothersexposed.com has more information and videos about Koch’s cancer-causing activities in Arkansas, and a petition as well. Please raise awareness about this issue with people who may not be aware:
“What we’ve done with each of the Koch pieces is to use specific stories to depict people’s lives and show that ideology has consequences. What the Kochs are doing is not harmless, it is not victimless, and there are people who are paying a terrible price for the brothers’ politics and their profiteering.”