PCB in our Food

The CC Times had an article today about cleaning up the bay. For years, there has been a warning in place to severely limit eating fish taken from the San Francisco Bay. All the usual committees and investigations and political discussions have been going on and at last, a plan has been sent to a state board for consideration. Amid all the usual protests from industry, which does not want to pay for cleaning up the bay.

This kind of thing has always thrown me for a loop. In the first place, what industry, for whatever reason, has the right to pollute a source of food for a people? Where did they get this right? Why has government turned a blind eye and let them do this? How is it possible that people don’t see a problem with this?

PCB was banned almost 30 years ago. Go us. We did something right. But the damage from PCB did not fade into the sunset. It seeped into our soil and into our air and into our water. And it doesn’t go away for a long, long time.

So we are told to eat no more than two meals a month of fish from our bay. Pregnant women and children are limited to one meal a month.

But this is our food source. We should have access to all the edible species in our food source, with sensible conservation our only restriction.

Here’s the jaw-dropping paragraph:

“A coalition of business and industrial groups argued that rather than requiring costly cleanups, the water board should focus more on warning anglers not to eat too much fish.”

What!? How? How did we get to this? What is wrong with these people?

“Just don’t eat?” That’s your solution? Every person in that coalition should lose their business to a more responsible adult and THEY should have to live in such a way that most of their food comes from the bay.

How completely arrogant and irresponsible they are. I’m furious. We should all be furious.