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What are the health and environmental impacts of fire retardant ?

September 5, 2021 By John Dougherty Leave a Comment

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By a regular contributor:

 

Our concern is why so many died–about a third of the town of Yarnell with only 645 residents have deceased at this time in only 8 years. The ratio of deaths per 100,000 in the US for 2013 was 732:100000. That then for 645 resident should mean that there should have been a ratio of 4.7 deaths in 645 residents. If you multiply that by 8 you come up with only 37 people should have died there in 8 years. Folks, withing the first couple years there were already about a hundred deaths. By 2015 the second fire called the Tenderfoot fire required more retardant dumping to add to the hundreds of thousands of gallons that had colored the town during the Yarnell killer fire of 2013.

Looking at it at another way–there were over the 8 years 6-7 times as many deaths than should have been at Yarnell. That does not include the illness caused by the retardant–and as a long time fireman told me–he could only look at the photo of Dr. Anderson a few seconds without turning away. It is traumatic just viewing the photo. Of course there are plenty that will refute the idea that retardant has had anything to do with the deaths and sickness at Yarnell. However they can not deny that fish are instantly killed from even small amounts of the retardant, nor the fact that EPA has already spent more than 140 million dollars cleaning up phosphate dumps from abandoned mine dump seepage into waters in Florida. The ground waters there are being contaminated with the phosphates–the main ingredient of your retardant.

But our major concern are the hidden ingredients under trade secret laws. I suspect they are Fluorocarbons–PFC’s–banned in most European countries. They have many uses and are excellent fire retardant chemicals–used in plastics, treating cloths for fire retardant safety, fire retardant foams, plastics and numerous other uses. They are organic compounds soluable in water and cumulative in human organic systems. Maybe they will make you immune to Covid 19 since they are so deadly but they also are known to thicken your blood platelets so cholesterol sticks to your arteries and can eventually cause heart failure.

Have you not noticed how much more firemen suffer heart attacks than the general population. Many of the deaths at Yarnell, including my own some months after the first dumping of 2013, were due to heart attack–plugged arteries. The retardant seems to have a fertilizing effect on cancer as well.

Carbon is of course an inert element but Florine is one of the most deadly substances on earth. The pilots that haul it in barrels for water treatment plants will tell you that they can not even touch the barrels without special gloves and hazmat equipment. To do so requires a report and immediate medical attention. The barrels are bright yellow with the black skull and bones warning labels everywhere on them.

Most of these chemicals were Monsanto originals. If you want to see their long criminal history of chemical dispersion and death and disease causal–it is there. But of course they pay fines as a part of business expense–there is not conscience, nor does anyone get prosecuted for the death and sickness they cause. They obviously care less about lives, but that is the corporate attitude. Monsanto sold out to another corporation and that corporation sold out to an Israeli outfit that now produces much of the world’s retardant poisons.

If you want to know the great injustice, not only to citizens whose yards and homes are laden with chemical retardant during fires, it is that these chemicals in as much as 15% of the retardant are kept secret under trade secret laws. Neither the citizen nor the fire fighter knows what he is being contaminated with. A doctor can know but can not publicize it.

Now if you do not understand the gravity of the situation–California waters are now in many areas so contaminated with phosphates and fluorocarbons from retardant run off that whole aquifers are becoming useless for human hydration. EPA is now spending millions there to clean up lands –especially around airports where firemen practice and use much retardant.

The government surely knows this–and sending a fireman or wild land fire fighter into these dangerous chemicals is a guarantee that his life will be shortened just as so many citizens had at Yarnell. I do not know how compensation is due the fire men subjected to these dangerous chemicals, but certainly there needs to be an adjustment in pay and education to the real truth of what they are facing.

As I see it and cowboy commons sense says don’t get trapped in a canyon above a raging fire near and keep your self away from the retardant chemicals if you value your health.

Filed Under: Current Investigations, Featured, Yarnell Hill Fire

America is Not Out of Danger Yet

November 9, 2020 By John Dougherty 3 Comments

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Updated 11:34 p.m., Nov. 9

By John Dougherty

We’re now moving into the most dangerous phase of the presidential election.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Commentary, Current Investigations, Featured

Court rules Hudbay security contract created a bias that led to illegal detentions and travel bans

May 11, 2020 By John Dougherty 1 Comment

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A Peruvian Court has ruled that a security contract between Hudbay Minerals Inc. and police created a bias in favor of the Toronto-based mining company that resulted in the April 2017 illegal detention of InvestigativeMEDIA owner John Dougherty and international mining activist Jen Moore and a subsequent ban prohibiting them from entering the country.

“This decision provides further evidence of how the privatization of security forces in Peru undermines their impartiality and independence, and puts them at the service of companies like Hudbay Minerals creating a grave conflict of interest,” Moore states.

“This creates a highly permissible environment for human rights violations, including the criminalization and violent repression of people exercising their legitimate rights to protest mining projects and related harms,” she said. “Further, as this case demonstrates, it heightens state and company control over the information people have access to, such as through the criminalization of independent researchers and journalists.”

Hudbay is seeking permits to construct the third largest open-pit copper mine in the United States in the Santa Rita Mountains on the Coronado National Forest southeast of Tucson. The project has been stopped pending the outcome litigation in U.S. District Court.

Dougherty and Moore were surrounded by police  and ordered into a vehicle after screening Dougherty’s documentary film “Flin Flon Flim Flam” at a downtown Cusco cultural center on April 17, 2017. The film detailed Hudbay’s history of environmental degradation and human rights abuses in Arizona, Canada, Guatemala and Peru.

Dougherty and Moore were held four hours by police who alleged they had violated their tourist visas.

Peru National Police officer Edgar Abarca Lezama holds documents during detention proceedings in Cucso, Peru against John Dougherty and Jen Moore.
Photo by John Dougherty

The next day, the Peruvian Interior Ministry issued a statement alleging Dougherty and Moore were inciting violence against mining operations in Peru. HudBay Minerals argued at the time that it had nothing to do with the criminalization of the two, although it admitted to contracting police for security services. Moore’s attorneys filed a habeus corpus motion in May 2017 and a Peruvian court issued its ruling earlier this month.

“In addition to recognizing that the police and Ministry of the Interior were partial to HudBay Minerals’ interests, the ruling finds that sharing information about the negative impacts of mining does not threaten public order nor does it violate migratory law, which were among the accusations made by police,” according to a statement issued earlier this week by Moore.

“On the contrary, the ruling finds that Moore was acting within her rights, and that this process of criminalization constitutes a violation of individual rights to freedom of expression and collective rights to access information.”

In a separate ruling earlier this year, a Peruvian court determined that the Interior Ministry violated Dougherty’s due process rights when it banned Dougherty and Moore from Peru for 10 years prior to even holding a hearing. The court ordered the travel ban lifted.

In the week prior to their detention, Dougherty and Moore were harassed and subject to police surveillance while they were visiting communities affected by HudBay’s Constancia copper mine in the province of Chumbivilcas where they screened the film and distributed DVD copies in Quechua. Police questioned local community leaders about their activities and sought their personal identification from a local hotel where they had stayed without them being present.

While contracts between Peruvian security forces and mining companies are legal, national and international organizations have vociferously opposed these arrangements given their detrimental impacts on the impartiality and independence of the police force, which is necessary to their role in ensuring justice, not facilitating criminalization, violating people’s rights and repressing Indigenous peoples and other mining-affected communities around the country, Moore states.

EarthRights International, the Peruvian Institute for Legal Defense and the National Coordinating Committee for Human Rights in Peru released a recent study in which they found that mining companies and other extractive firms have signed at least 138 contracts with police in Peru from 1995 to 2018.

There are numerous examples of where these privatized police arrangements occur with grave impacts, including where police response to community protests has led to criminalization or where repression has led to injury and death. In the case of Glencore’s Tintaya mine (formerly owned by XStrata), Peruvian citizens brought a civil lawsuit to UK court for violent police repression of Indigenous communities protesting environmental contamination and the company’s broken promises.

Moore notes in a first-person account in Foreign Policy in Focus that she and Dougherty “got off light” compared to the flagrant human rights abuses that have occurred as a result of mining companies having police security contracts.

“In an area not far from Cusco, police repression against Indigenous communities protesting environmental contamination in 2012 ended with dozens injured and two dead. And Peruvians often face much more punitive legal proceedings than we did.

“For instance, the governor of Puno province has been sentenced to six years in jail for allegedly organizing Aymara Indigenous communities to protest mining concessions for the Canadian company Bear Creek Mining in 2011, over very real concerns about the water contamination that results from gold mining.”

Filed Under: Current Investigations, Featured, Flin Flon Flim Flam, Rosemont

Please Begin Yarnell Hill Fire Chapter XXXI Here

March 26, 2020 By John Dougherty 1,252 Comments

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Chapter I, Chapter II, Chapter II supplement, Chapter III, Chapter IV, Chapter V, Chapter VI, Chapter VII, Chapter VIII , Chapter IX,  Chapter X, Chapter XI, Chapter XII , Chapter XIII, Chapter XIV,  Chapter XV,  Chapter XVI, Chapter XVII, Chapter XVIII, Chapter XIX, Chapter XX, Chapter XXI, Chapter XXII, Chapter XXIII, Chapter XXIV, Chapter XXV, Chapter XXVI and Chapter XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX and XXX.

Filed Under: Current Investigations, Yarnell Hill Fire

9th Circuit hears former Payson Hotshot chief Fred Schoeffler’s appeal for aerial firefighting records of Yarnell Hill Fire

February 12, 2020 By John Dougherty 5 Comments

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The transcript of the appeal hearing is here:

The appeal hearing can be seen here:

 

 

 

Filed Under: Current Investigations, Featured, Uncategorized, Yarnell Hill Fire

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