Out Of The Borders Damage of progress
The ghost city Anniston
by Anastasiia Hrechka
Anniston, Alabama, 1979: „While looking around, the abandoned houses draw my attention. Whole neighborhoods are dead, people that I know are dead. Either dead or sick - cancer, paralysis, memory loss are a few of the illnesses strolling around. I am surprised by the amount of empty and moribund zones. On my way I enter the local church and a shiver runs down my spine. The emptiness and stillness chase me out. I continue discovering the town. The streetlights are dark. No red, no green, no yellow. I don’t know what to do, I want to disappear. I pass a backyard stream, it’s red, blood red…“ This story is fictional. Nevertheless, this is a
They are either oily liquids or solids that are colreal description of how it was, of how Anniston orless to light yellow and were used in hundreds became a ghost city as a result of PCB-release of industrial and commercial applications. into the air and water by Monsanto. And yes, “Monsanto admitted to poisoning residents of Between 1935 and 1971 Monstanto dumped Anniston with PCBs”. But what is Monsanto tens of thousands of pounds of PCBs into streams (that’s why they were blood red) or and what are these plaguy PCBs? buried them in and around the city. Monsanto used to be the world‘s largest seed company. While in the 70s Monsanto was And guess what?! In 1979 PCBs were banned a chemical company, in the 80s it began to in the US, but it was already too late. Simultransform into a seed company. In 2018 Bayer taneously, Monsanto closed their chemical company in Anniston but years later people bought Monsanto. from there are still sick. Even small amounts of Monsanto took over the Swann chemical com- PCBs harm the developing nerve system of fepany in Anniston in 1935 and started producing tuses and children. Mental illnesses like attenPCBs and other substances. PCBs are mixtures tion-deficit disorders or cancer, paralysis and of up to 209 individual chlorinated compounds. memory loss are a few of the possible conse-
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