Clearing the air around Atsugi incinerator

[unhappycamper]

Smoke from the Enviro-tech incinerator blows toward Atsui Naval Air Facility's housing areas Saturday, with a snow-covered Mount Fuji in the background.


Clearing the air around Atsugi incinerator
By Jennifer H. Svan, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Sunday, November 18, 2007


To call Shelly Parulis dogged would be an understatement.

She has good reason to be persistent.

At stake, she believes, is the health of her family and hundreds of others sickened with unexplained illnesses since being stationed at Naval Air Facility Atsugi in mainland Japan.

The wife of a retired U.S. Marine Corps master sergeant, Parulis, 40, has gathered reams of documents about the now-shuttered Enviro-Tech (formerly Shinkampo) commercial waste incinerator, which pumped toxic smoke over the U.S. Navy base from 1985 to 2001.

Parulis has devoted more than a year to the effort, all the while imploring the Navy to take care of personnel and their families who are now sick, some without medical insurance.

Her attempts have been met with resistance.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50334

[MADem]

1. I remember that incinerator, and it seems to me it was stinking the joint up

BEFORE 85. I remember the issue reaching critical mass, to the point that it percolated up the chain from Japan back to the Pentagon, State and Congress, as early as 83. I also recall that the incinerator was operational and generating vociferous complaints at that time. I further remember that air quality studies were commissioned and completed BEFORE 85.

This article is a bit off on the timeline; I hope this is simply an error or due to lack of knowledge, and isn't an effort to exclude a class of people who may have been damaged. It's a serious issue, and I do think people were poisoned by that thing. Anyone who spent any time at all in Atsugi, even flying in and out, would remember that stink--it was pretty disgusting.