In September, a coalition of Scientists, Activists, and Families, called SAFE, traveled to DC to call out the EPA:

STOP working for corporations and start working for people!
CHEMICALS are polluting our water, air, and soil, and making us sick.

DCS members joined SAFE in DC in September. The mission of SAFE and the mission of DCS are one and the same. Every individual has a right to clean air to breathe, water to drink, and a clean environment.

SAY NO TO FRACKING AND FRACK WASTE WATER IN THE DRBC.
SAY NO TO CANCER CAUSING CHEMICALS USED IN FRACKING AND ETHANE CRACKER PLANTS.
SAY NO TO THE FAMILY OF PFAS CHEMICALS USED IN FRACKING AND PLASTICS.

ONCE THESE CHEMICALS ENTER THE WATER, LAND, AND AIR, THEY CANNOT BE REMOVED.
PFAS, COREXIT, AND ALL ENDOCRINE DISRUPTING CHEMICALS MUST BE BANNED.

FIREFIGHTERS ARE DYING FROM CANCER, NOT FROM SMOKE, BUT FROM PFAS.
RECENTLY THE EPA HAS ADVISED THAT THERE ARE NO SAFE LEVELS OF PFAS.
BUT….THE INDUSTRY AND THE EPA HAVE KNOWN ABOUT THE TOXICITY OF THESE CHEMICALS FOR DECADES.

Listen to the heartfelt pleas of the harmed below. Go to the SAFE website for more information about each speaker and the work of SAFE.

Erik Crown – Documentary filmmaker and Podcast host of “The Conservation Conversation” – “All of us who have been touched by cancer have taken that pain and turned it into something positive to change the future.”

Brenda Hampton – Alabama – “On two streets in our community there are 54 cases of cancer, 14 cases of renal failure and 11 cases of autism.”

Paul Griego – Radiochemist – Nuclear Contamination – “There is no such thing as a nuclear clean-up.”

Dr. Edward Marshall – Chapel Hill NC- retired Duke Professor – “Coal ash is the new asbestos and it causes cancer. Each year energy companies produce 140 million tons of it. 1400 sites in 45 states … and they want to put housing on it.”

Kari Rhineheart – Indiana – “Three months and 13 days after my daughter, Emma Grace was diagnosed, on December 18, 2014, she died in my arms.” “The corporations get more consideration than our community.”

Tom Devine – Lawyer for whistleblowers – “High level officials in the shrimp industry told me they did not allow their families to eat shrimp anymore (from the Gulf) because of the Corexit.”

Trevor Schaefer – Idaho- Lives with cancer – “My mission is to address contamination sources causing childhood cancer clusters”.

Lesley Pacey – Alabama – Daughter was diagnosed with cancer at 4 years old – “The EPA and the US coastguard carpet bombed the Gulf of Mexico and its coastline with a toxic chemical dispersant called Corexit.”

Charlie Smith – Idaho – Young son diagnosed with cancer – “The EPA is not protecting our children from cancer clusters caused by contamination”.

Steven Donziger – Environmental lawyer who sued Chevron for contamination in Ecuador AND WON. “Chevron dumped cancer causing chemicals in the Amazon.” “The EPA don’t even THINK they work for you!”

Stel Bailey – Florida – Entire family became a cancer cluster due to aerospace industry – “We didn’t even have the power to know we were being contaminated. The EPA has normalized pollution and cancer, like it’s the flu.”

Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali – Thought Leader – “If I love you I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”

Keoni Defranco – The U.S. Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility spilled 19 thousand gallons of jet fuel into O’ahu’s sole source aquifer. “We designed our societies around watersheds, from mountain to ocean. We understand that water is life. Shut down Red Hill.”

Edward A. Kelly, General President, International Association of Fire Fighters – See SAFE website for more information. Kelly’s in full support of the SAFE mission to protect his firefighters from PFAS (his bio is a ‘must read’).

Jason Burns – Fall River MA Firefighter

Chris Nidel – Environmental attorney with chemical engineering background – He’s worked on Fracking, coal ash and benzene contamination issues. “Again, the solution was dilution.” “The EPA report was written years before the family had moved into the community, before the mother had taken her first sip from that tainted well”. “The EPA needs to stop treating polluters as their clients”.

Pat Elder – Investigative journalist tracking how the military contaminates people and the planet, specifically regarding the harm caused by their use of PFAS in routine military drills.

Major Amanda Feindt – US Army – Hawaii – Family contaminated by jet fuel – “How many children must die in order to meet EPA’s criteria to federally regulate these harmful toxins in our drinking water?” See SAFE website for more information.

Susan Wind – NC – Her daughter, Taylor, and others in her town, were diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2017. She is an organizer of the SAFE movement. “Builders, contractors and landscapers used Duke Energy’s coal ash (instead of soil) as structural fill in my town”.