Hinkley groundwater contamination
[6] Although the dumping took place from 1952 to 1966 (when Hinkley was a remote desert community with one school and a general store),[1] PG&E did not inform the local water board about the contamination until December 7, 1987.
In 1993, Erin Brockovich (a legal clerk for lawyer Edward L. Masry) investigated an apparent cluster of illnesses in the community which were linked to hexavalent chromium.
[9][3][10] During negotiations, the presiding judges told PG&E's lawyers that a 1987 study by Chinese scientist Jian Dong Zhang reporting a strong link between chromium 6 pollution and cancer in humans would be "influential" in their decision.
[13] Peter Waldman, reporter for The Wall Street Journal, wrote that Zhang's son was "outraged" at "the idea that his father would willingly have invalidated his earlier award-winning work.
The revised study—which did not reveal the involvement of PG&E or its scientists—helped persuade California health officials to delay new drinking water standards for chromium.
The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), established in 1991 with the creation of CalEPA, had been located across from UC Berkeley and had maintained academic ties with the school.
[16] A meeting was held on July 25, 2001, to obtain "public input on the review of scientific questions regarding the potential of chromium 6+ to cause cancer when ingested.
[19][20] On August 31, 2001, the Chromate Toxicity Review Committee (which then included Russell Flegal, Jerold Last, Ernest E. McConnell of ToxPath,[clarification needed] Marc Schenker and Hanspeter Witschi) submitted its report, entitled "Scientific Review of Toxicological and Human Health Issues Related to the Development of a Public Health Goal for Chromium(VI)".
[19][21] The committee recommended that reports of chromium concentrations (particularly in southern California) were alarmist and "spuriously high", and further evaluation should be handled by academics in laboratory settings—not by regulators.
[14][20] In 2001, the law firm of Engstron, Lipscomb and Lack filed a follow-up lawsuit on behalf of 900 people alleging chromium contamination in Hinkley and Kettleman, California.
[20] At the hearing, Gary Praglin, a lawyer with Engstron, Lipscomb and Lack in Los Angeles, testified about how the flawed 2001 report by the Chromate Toxicity Review Committee adversely affected the firm's court case against PG&E:[19] After the blue-ribbon panel report came out, PG&E came into court, and they told the judge that everything had changed.
It has said that chromium VI does not cause cancer by ingestion, and they wanted to amend their paperwork, their motions, their declarations, and move to dismiss our case.
[27] That year, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) responded to research by the National Toxicology Program on the development of cancerous tumors in mice and rats who had consumed heavy doses of chromium 6.
"[39] For their 2013 series Science for Sale, PBS NewsHour journalist Miles O'Brien interviewed PG&E director of chromium remediation Kevin Sullivan.
[37] A 2007 toxicity report for the National Toxicology Program provided evidence that high doses of chromium 6 caused cancers of the gastrointestinal tract in rats and mice at levels higher than 5 mg/L of water, (5 ppm, or 5,000 ppb).
[33] In 2013, PG&E's Sheryl Bilbery told a PBS journalist: "There's a lot of scientists that are still debating that question [hexavalent chromium toxicity].
"[39] In July 2014, CalEPA established a maximum chromium-6 MCL of 10 ppb as a result of new research which linked ingestion of hexavalent chromium with cancer.
A 2015 United States Geological Survey (USGS) report, based on the EPA's 2010 review of the health effects of chromium 6 in drinking water, re-examined related federal regulations.
Hinkley, in San Bernardino County, is covered by the Desert Sierra Cancer Surveillance Program (DSCSP) with the California Department of Public Health.
[48] In 2013, the Center for Public Integrity found weaknesses in Morgan's 2010 analysis which challenge the validity of his findings: "In his first study, he dismisses what others see as a genuine cancer cluster in Hinkley.
[50] Paustenbach was at the center of a publishing scandal[12] involving the research of Chinese scientist Jian Dong Zhang, who published a paper in 1987 reporting an association between chromium pollution of drinking water and higher rates of stomach cancer in residents of three villages in Liaoning Province (in rural northeastern China) who lived near a chromium-ore smelter and drank tainted water for years.
[11] According to Allan Hirsch, CalEPA's 2008 review of Zhang's 1987 paper agreed with his findings that the rates of stomach cancer in the three villages were significantly higher than those in the province.
[49][51] According to the Center for Public Integrity, "[Zhang's] revised [1997] study—which did not reveal the involvement of PG&E or its scientists—helped persuade California health officials to delay new drinking water standards for chromium.
"[49] In September 2010, EPA scientists concluded that "even a small amount of a chemical compound commonly found in tap water may cause cancer.
"[23] Steven Patierno, who had been an expert defense witness in seven chromium-6 lawsuits, was named by the EPA to the peer-review panel critiquing the agency's chromium-6 findings in a potential conflict of interest.
