The average American consumes about 3 to 50 picograms a day of the deadly toxin. This means that the average American takes in about 100 times the safe amount at a maxi-mum. At the very least you increase your chances of getting cancer. It has also been reported that dioxin dramatically increases your chance of heart attack, kidney failure and other diseases.

However if you ingest a really large dose of it, you merely waste away and die. Given that the EPA has just revised its estimates of the toxicity of dioxin by a factor of 10, then the new “safe” daily limit of dioxin is .042 picograms per kilogram. This means that an average American has the potential to exceed this limit by 1000 times. Humans get dioxin in our bodies by eating or breathing it or it can be absorbed into the skin.

Most dioxin is created accidentally, many of these dioxins including the most carcinogenic (TCDD), are byproducts of chlorine bleaching of pulp and paper. The production of certain herbicides such as Agent Orange, production of plastics such as PVC, production of germicides such as Hexachlorophene, the manufacture of other chlorinated hydrocarbon chemicals, burning leaded gas in cars and the incineration of municipal solid wastes.

Chlorine accelerates the problem because it is highly reactive and readily binds with whatever it touches to form new chemical compounds. It is usually not found in a free state but in combinations like table salt or sodium chloride. For years in Port St. Joe, we could see tank cars of chlorine sitting near the St. Joe Paper mill. The chlorine in those tank cars was used by the mill to bleach paper, producing the trademarked “Crest White” paper, which was used in making white cardboard boxes.

As much as 40 percent of the world’s chlorine bleached paper was produced at the Port St. Joe mill. This would have produced and released an incredible amount of dioxin into the local environment. The deadly dioxin at St. Joe Paper Company was formed when the bleach hit the pulp or paper. The pulp or paper was the organic material that the chlorine bound with to form the dioxin and its related compounds. This went into the mills effluent discharge, which was sent to the Port St. Joe Wastewater Treatment Plant and dumped untreated, into St. Joseph’s Bay.

On September 24, 1990, the EPA released risk estimates for eating dioxin-contaminated fish taken from the waters downstream from 104 Florida chlorine-bleaching pulp and paper mills. Twenty of these mills had effluent so hazardous that the EPA felt that a warning about fish and shellfish consumption was necessary. St. Joseph’s Bay was number 15 on the list. The report specifically stated that consumption of more than 2¼ pounds of fish per month downstream from the first 20 mills on the list had the potential to seriously increase your risk of cancer.

The risk was estimated to be 1 in 10,000 for those that exceeded these limits. Now based on the latest EPA release, the risk is much greater. The most polluted area of the state was the Fenholloway River downstream from Buckeye Cellulose in Perry, Florida, which was number two on the list. Stone Container in Panama City was number 78.

While the EPA had recommended a fishing advisory for St. Joseph’s Bay, no such fishing advisory was ever issued.

Did Mill release Massive Amounts of Cancer Causing Dioxin?

Based on the data submitted by the Port St. Joe Waste Water Treatment Plant, in its request for a permit to increase the amount of pollution it was permitted to discharge in 1990, the average fish had some 7.5 parts per trillion of dioxin. This translates to 7.5 picograms per gram. Since the St. Joe Company was self monitoring its own dioxin discharges these figures are suspect and a figure as high as 20 picograms was alleged, as was the existence of two sets of books at the mill, one with lower more acceptable figures for the discharge and another set which allegedly showed the actual data.

The type of dioxin most prevalent in St. Joseph’s Bay (TCDD) caused weight loss, infertility, liver damage, edema, loss of hair, and suppressed the immune system of all the animals tested. It is blamed for poisoning enzymes, changing endocrine balance and decreasing the ability of the body to store vitamins.

Dioxin, has been implicated in low sperm counts, deformation of the genitals and neurological problems such as attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity. It can dramatically increase the rate of spontaneous abortion. The 1994 EPA report links dioxin to endometriosis and diabetes.

Dioxin also causes damage to the immune system, which can be likened to a kind of chemical AIDS virus. Women have a way of getting rid of dioxin. It can cross the placenta and go into the developing fetus or they can expel it through their breast milk. This means that it again goes into the child if the mother is breast-feeding.

This of course enormously increases the chances of both birth defects and cancer in children, if the Vietnamese and EPA’s studies are true. How long has dioxin been known to exist in St. Joseph’s Bay? Many elected officials have known about it since 1990. These officials include at least one who is currently on the Port St. Joe City Commission. The City Commission is responsible for the operation of the wastewater treatment plant.

Commission members should have been aware of the information that was contained in their own application for a permit to continue its operation. In early 1990, the Gulf County Commission formed the Save Our Bay Committee, which was to study the bay and report back, to the County Commission with recommendations on what should be done, in terms of the various problems it found.

There were problems and one of the central ones emerged quite by accident. I was a member of the Save Our Bay Committee, and was approached by John Lee, the chair-man, about a problem Lee had seen in the bay. The sea-grasses on the edges of the bay were dying out in a peculiar fashion.

"Untreated industrial waste water from Port St. Joe’s unlined lagoon is discharged into ditch that flows into a shallow, fresh water canal, directly adjacent to town’s water wells."

We investigated and found the grasses were dying from the edge of the bay outward. Where the dead grass was encountered, it was covered with a band of orange foam, which had come from the wastewater treatment plant. A sample of this foam was taken and carried to the next county commission meeting, April 10, 1990. Pat McFarland, John Lee and I appeared before the Commission and I pointed out the problem with the grasses dying and that the foam from the wastewater treatment plant seemed to be implicated.

Commissioner Ed Creamer noted that he had seen the canal full of such foam at times from one bank to the other and running out into the bay. I also pointed out that the city had applied for a new permit for the wastewater treatment plant, which would allow them to legally dump more pollution into the bay.

I asked the commission to adopt a resolution against increased pollution of the bay and to request the EPA to hold public hearings on the permit, as allowed by law. The resolution passed unanimously. All the Commissioners were vocally opposed to further pollution of the bay.

At the committee’s request, I drafted a letter to be signed, by the Chairman, John Lee, asking for a hearing on the treatment plant permit and opposing further pollution of the bay. That Friday afternoon, April 13, 1990, John Lee signed the letter and we both mailed it together. The letter clearly pointed out the presence of dioxin in the bay and a desire to learn more about this.

We also learned just before mailing the letter, that the County Commission had held an emergency meeting at 5:00 PM on the day before in which they voted to rescind the resolution opposing further pollution of the bay effectively rescinding their call for the EPA to hold public meetings on the treatment plant permit application.

The commission’s resolution passed unanimously and it supported increased pollution of the bay.

Before their next meeting, county commissioners were informed that if I was not removed from the Save Our Bay Committee, the St. Joe paper mill would go out of business.

One commissioner was so upset he protested, “If St. Joe Paper Company wants to run things, why don’t they run for office like everyone else”.

“Commission Fires Childers from St. Joe Bay Committee”, the April 26th Star newspaper read.

The article stated, “Commissioner Don Parker made the motion to remove Childers and that with no discussion and no objections, the vote was unanimous.” The article pointed out that I had been one of the instigators and leaders of the Save Our Bay Committee.

I had been a long time activist in environmental affairs and recently tried to place roadblocks in renewing the operating permit for the Port St. Joe Wastewater Treatment Plant. The Save Our Bay Committee met after-ward and at the next commission meeting they unanimously asked the board of com-missioners to reinstate me.

Commissioners were not about to back down from the St. Joe Company orders, apparently they feared the wrath of St. Joe more than the citizens. The editor of the Star newspaper praised the county commission for its wisdom, for reversing itself on the pollution issue, saying that “the City of Port St. Joe was purported to have been doing the dastardly deed (polluting the environment) by some-one who either took someone else’s word on the matter, mistakenly, or didn’t know what he was talking about, himself.”

The Star editor found that pollution is not pollution when it is being done by a favored entity. Indeed, the Commissioners had seen their error and it only took them ten minutes to vote unanimously in favor of increased pollution.

In the following days, the Save Our Bay Committee met with John Marler, a senior official of the Southeastern Region of the United States Department of Environmental Protection (EPA) in a private meeting at Bay Point in Panama City.

This meeting had been arranged by the EPA in lieu of the public hearing that obviously wasn't going to take place.

Numerous Chemicals Were Discharged...

Even though I had already been removed from the Bay Committee, I attended the meeting along with Katherine and Bill Koran and Mr. and Mrs. Bill Blackmore, then committee members. Marler explained to us that even if there had been a public hearing, the EPA would not have been able to be as candid with us as they were going to be at this meeting.

He was then asked about the increased pollution that the wastewater treatment plant had asked to be allowed to produce. Marler stated that they were already doing this and that the permit would simply reflect the current state of affairs. Further, that due to legal problems with the first permit, the EPA had to allow this.

This was undoubtedly true and the city had good reason to take advantage of this situation to request a permit to increase the pollutants coming from the plant. They had apparently been unable or unwilling to meet the former standards and it had been alleged by several people well before that time, that water samples that should have been taken at the outfall of the treatment plant into the canal were being taken in the open Gulf beyond the tip of the peninsula in order to find water that would pass the EPA’s standards.

We asked EPA’s Marler, “Is there anything that is safe to eat in St. Joseph’s Bay? Marler answered, that there was “nothing safe to eat in the bay.” He stated dioxin contamination was the reason. All the bays fish and shellfish were contaminated by dioxin. We asked “is it safe to swim in the water?” Marler said that the EPA did not know because it did not monitor the water to see if it was safe to swim in.

This question was highly important since the wastewater from the treatment plant ran out of the canal, since fresh water is lighter than saltwater, it would outpour along the shore to Mexico Beach and occasionally into Crooked Island Sound on Tyndall Air Force Base.

Waterborne contact with dioxin can cause "chloracne" as shown on child.

It was important for us to know if high levels of e-coli bacteria contamination could be causing illness in wimmers at St. Joe and Mexico Beach. Those swimmers had to swim through the contaminated zone to reach the relatively cleaner water.

Marler noted that the State of Florida had a water clarity standard which they had never enforced against the wastewater treatment plant. The implication was that the discharge violated this standard. We asked EPA’s Marler, “that since the sea-food was unsafe for human consumption, why hadn’t the EPA issued an alert informing people of this?”

He responded, “It is not our job.” He suggested that members of the Bay Committee make up signs and put them in the water warning people. It should be pointed out that Marler, was asked if there were any toxic releases into the bay by Arizona Chemical as a result of its manufacturing activities.

He stated that the EPA was not monitoring their operations. After our meeting with EPA’s Marler, I con-tinued to investigate the dioxin problem. I began contacting members of the Canadian government in Vancouver and the Canadian Ministry of Health in Montreal. At one point when I told the Canadian official in charge of Canada’s dioxin health problem what the alleged dioxin level was in the bay, he said, “you have a very serious problem”.

Those who long for old days in the former Soviet Union would have been proud as the Star Newspaper ran an article on February 7th, 1991, saying there was no dioxin in the bay and that the sea-grasses were dying because of the extreme high tides at the time.

In 1995, my mother died after she contracted an astrocytoma, a primary tumor of the brain. These tumors are extremely rare as there are only 100 cases of this type a year in the United States. During that same year, there were two other people in Gulf County with the same type of cancer.

During the time my mother was receiving treatment at Shands Medical Center at Gainesville, there was a six-year old boy from Port St. Joe there, receiving treatment for another rare tumor. The boy’s doctor had directly attributed the rare tumor to dioxin exposure.

During her pregnancy, the boy’s mother had eaten massive amounts of seafood from the bay. It was a horrible, heart wrenching sight, to witness this handsome little boy turn into a walking skeleton and to see the pain he endured in attempting to cure the deadly illness that he later surrendered his life to.

It is interesting to note that St. Joe Paper Company which produced the dioxin found in St. Joseph’s Bay was primarily owned at the time by the Alfred I. Dupont Testamentary Trust and its related Nemours Foundation which as one of its primary reasons for being, runs the Alfred I. Dupont Hospital for Children.

There is an astronomical amount of cancer in Gulf County, Florida. People who have been to M. D. Anderson in Texas, have been told “Gulf County has one of the highest rates of cancer in the nation.” But, when local health officials are asked about this fact, they maintained until recently that the cancer rate was about normal.

Now health officials claim the astronomical rates are due to the lifestyles of the people who live in Gulf County. Others maintain that these are just damn lies and statistics, because the county is so small. Health statistics released by the US government consistently have shown that Gulf County ranks in the upper 10 per cent nationwide for cancer for men since 1950 and for both men and women since 1970.

Children Suffer Most...

According to the Florida Department of Health, in 1996-1998, Gulf County ranked number 2 in the State of Florida for deaths from cancer.

The age adjusted death rate for cancer in 1996 was 283.76 per 100,000 while the state average was 195.09. The only county in Florida with a greater death rate from cancer was Union County, home of the North Florida Reception Center Hospital, which services the male prison population of Florida and whose death statistics seem to be included in those of that county.

For this same time period, Gulf County also ranks 3rd in deaths from heart attacks at 456.64 per 100.000 population being beaten out by Baker County at 459.56 and Holmes at 481.22. The state average is 323.81. Gulf County is number one by far in colorectal cancer at 47.51 deaths per 100,000 persons.

Gulf County ranks number 2 in deaths from liver diseases such as cirrhosis after Union County. Gulf County also ranks 4th in age adjusted death rates at 1102.32 per 100,000. Gilchrist County is number 2 at 1128.09 while Union County is number one once again with 1510.22 per 100,000. The state average again is much lower at 811.06.

Gulf County also appears to have a tremendous amount of kidney failure. It is claimed, that eighty per cent of the dialysis patients visiting the regional kidney dialysis center in Panama City, come from Gulf County. The majority of these persons allegedly come from North Port St. Joe, another spot residents fear is contaminated. Whether or not this is true, there has been a recent announcement that a kidney dialysis center would be opening in Port St. Joe, a town of some 4,500 residents.

Local health officials deny the existence of cancer clustering in Gulf County. In 1990, I wrote down the names of all the people that had died on Constitution Drive which fronts on St. Joseph’s Bay, an area that older residents called Cancer Row. Out of the 20 or so names, only three died of something other than cancer.

One possibility to account for this is that the dioxin is volatilizing out of the water and is being inhaled by the residents of the area. The closer one is to a source like this, the stronger the effect would be. Surrounded by this illness and members of my own family afflicted, I attempted to initiate an investigation into the high cancer rate. I contacted one of the Florida Health Department’s epidemiologists.

After the phone line had gone dead three times during one conversation, which might simply be coincidence, she said she had never had that happen before and asked what was going on. I asked her if she had ever investigated The St. Joe Company before?

After a thoughtful pause and she responded, “if it was one disease the area was high in, it could possibly be isolated and maybe the cause could be determined. But, in St. Joe and Gulf County, we were high in everything!” She indicated that this was a very unusual public health dilemma. Her official inquiry went nowhere and it ended after her transfer to another job. No meaningful public health studies have ever been conducted, in Gulf County and the dioxin-cancer link continues to go unexplored.