In Chapter 2 of the book, Protecting New Jersey's Environment, Belton talked mainly about the presence of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls ) in New Jersey and New York's waters. These PCBs were described as being used due to their "widespread use in thousands of applications because of their fire resistance and insulting capacity, especially in electrical transformers and capacitors" among other uses (35,36). Though this poison seemed to have widespread benefits, it was said that from the beginning its deadly effects were known. But, despite how dangerous it was, Monsanto bought the Swann Chemical Company in Alabama, which was making PCBs, just giving me another reason to not like Monsanto. Monsanto went on to use this chemical, which was seen to have caused terrible health effects on its workers, and lead to many lawsuits against them. Thankfully PCBs were banned in 1977, but much damage had already been done not only to the health of the people working with it, but also to the soil and water around where it was being manufactured. It was mentioned that Belton and his team believed General Electric, which used PCBs, dumped 1.3 million pounds of it into the HUDSON!!!
The effects of this dumping were still prevalent at that time, as well as now. His team took on the task of analyzing the flesh of the fish swimming in the Hudson river, crabs in the Atlantic coastline. Belton told us about the PCB Project which he lead up, which studied fin fish and shellfish for contaminants. Specifically their research seemed to focus on Blue Fish since that was a major fish caught in that area. They only checked the edible parts of the fish, not such parts as the organs and head because people were less likely to eat these sections. I found the results to be astonishing: "1982 PCB Project report showed that 75% of the finfish and 50% of the shellfish we collected had some detectable level of PCBs in their edible flesh" (39)! That was just crazy to me. The hard part for them though was not proving the fish were contaminated, but telling the public about it, specifically the fishermen who fished as their livelihood and who this news would hurt the most.
Now, I am not one to eat fish, I just do not find it appetizing. I eat a little shellfish, but even that is limited. I have to say this chapter gave me an even better reason to not eat those squirmy creatures. But, despite how I was not particularly affected by the news that the fish are essentially poisoned in New Jersey's waters, I am still very upset that this happened at all. We, humans, created this terrible poison that supposedly was helpful for electrical purposes as well as other random things, but do the benefits really outweigh the cost? Absolutely not! Now we have so many people dying from crazy cancers, poor sea life infected by this pollutant, and then those animals who eat the fish contaminated by it as well. This problem is so big it is honestly overwhelming for me to think about, hopefully we come up with an effective solution that will clean up this mess and bring nature back to its original clean and pure state.