https://sph.umich.edu/news/2023posts/mi ... later.htmlMay 10, 2023
This month marks 50 years since Michigan's PBB contamination incident. In 1973, toxic flame retardant was mistakenly sent to Michigan farmers as livestock feed, causing an environmental health crisis. To this day, researchers continue to investigate the health effects of the contamination, and community members are active in advocating for clean-up efforts.
A group from the University of Michigan, Central Michigan University, Emory University, and community organizations are working together on a project to document descriptions of the 1973 contamination. Called the Michigan PBB Oral History Project, the group published an analysis of the oral histories in a special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in December 2022.
Amy Schulz, professor of Health Behavior and Health Education at Michigan Public Health and one of the collaborators on the project, says:
"The oral histories conducted with Michigan residents nearly 50 years after the largest contamination of farm animals and the food system in Michigan highlight both the dearth of formal scientific knowledge about human health impacts at the time, and the essential role of community science in building knowledge about the source of the exposure and its human impacts.
This analysis illuminates long-term physical, social, emotional, economic and political impacts of this massive event, with multigenerational health impacts now well documented and clean-up of the contaminated sites still incomplete as we approach the five-decade mark.
PBB: How a simple shipping error poisoned most of Michigan
by: Matt Jaworowski
Posted: Jun 4, 2023
https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/pb ... -michigan/‘CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS ONE?’
“It is the most underreported disaster I have known in my long journalistic career.”
That’s how Joyce Egginton ends the first paragraph of her book, “The Poisoning of Michigan.” At the time, Egginton was an American correspondent for the London Observer. She says she stumbled onto the story tucked away deep inside an issue of The New York Times.
“I remember calling out to my husband halfway through the task, ‘Can you believe this one?’” Egginton wrote. “Way down on an inside page of the New York Times was a brief account of how in Michigan a large quantity of a highly toxic industrial fire retardant, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), had been confused at the manufacturing plant with a nutritional supplement for cattle feed. As a result, there had been a massive, slow poisoning of dairy herds for almost a year before the accident was discovered. It was estimated that throughout that time virtually all 9 million people living in Michigan had been ingesting contaminated meat and milk on a daily basis.”