THE AGONIES of a developing nation? Cubatão has its counterpart in Ironbound, New Jersey. Flanked by Newark's commerical district and surrounded by train tracks that inspired its name, Ironbound appears as a faded, faintly depressing industrial enclave, barely rating a glance from the New Jersey Turnpike. But I found a hardworking, close-knit community that is angry and confused about the air it must breathe.
In or near Ironbound are dozens of plants whose emissions join fumes from the turnpike and busy Newark International Airport, in sight of New York City. On a clear calm day the region gives off a brownish urban plume that marks the mouth of the Hudson River like a biblical pestilence. And it is equally perplexing. Chemicals released in an industrial area number in the thousands, and science is still identifying them.
"We can detect substances we never even knew existed in the air five years ago," said Dr. Ron Harkov, researcher with New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection. "Some have cancer-causing properties and other health hazards, but at what levels, we don't know."
New Jersey's cancer death rates led the nation during our century's middle decades, and the state's industrial complex became known as "cancer alley." A bad rap, officials say, noting that national cancer rates have since overtaken New Jersey's, and the fact that industry is blamed for a minority of cancers. New Jersey now has pollution laws as toughasanyintheU. S.
Laws, however, must be tighter than pipe fittings to stop all the leaks.
"Think of a single refinery and all the valves, pipes, and flanges in it," said researcher Harkov. "Nothing is sealed perfectly, and when a company is making 75 different substances, there's no way they can tell you every second of the day what is leaking out of their pipes."
Spills and leaks in the chemical age have spawned a new breed of patrolmen, those of hazardous materials, or "hazmat," units. Prowling industrial areas, they snoop and sniff for suspicious gas fugitives. Clad like spacemen and armed with detection instruments, they precede fire fighters into curtains of smoke to warn of dangerous fumes.
New Jersey requires a hazmat unit in each county. I joined one in hard-pressed Middlesex, where potentially serious chemical accidents occurred ten times in eight weeks in 1985. A tank of the pesticide malathion exploded, for example, and some 200 people received treatment at hospitals for vomiting and shortness of breath. A seal on a pump failed at another plant, and 40 painters collapsed on a bridge a mile away from breathing another pesticide ingredient.
Rich Kozub, 30, grew up in Middlesex County before taking a degree in environmental science. As we patrolled his old neighborhood in an unmarked car, the radio crackled with reports of chemical peril: A railroad tank car holding chemicals had slipped its rails and was leaning dangerously. Fumes lingered from a paint-factory explosion and fire that had killed two men.
As we neared a metal smelter in Port Reading, a dark cloud from the plant billowed over a horizon of row houses. "Smoke plume!" barked Kozub and accelerated down a side street for a look. It was gone by the time we gained a close view, but complaints were pouring in. Mrs. Diane Pitz, young, blond, clad in a running suit, answered her doorbell and acknowledged phoning in a report.
"I opened the window to let in some fresh air and noticed the smell right away," she said. "It happens almost every day."
(Since then the plant has shut down, precluding a court fight to close it.)
So what does one do, flee to some remote isle? Even flying might be hazardous to your health. A report by the National Academy of Sciences to Congress in mid-1986 included 19 recommendations on improving the air quality for airline passengers confined in close quarters for hours. "A noteworthy suggestion was that smoking be banned on all commercial flights," said James A. Frazier, a member of the study group. "We also suggested that ventilation systems on planes be used to optimum advantage at all times." Ventilation systems are driven by air bled
from the engines, and sometimes part of the system has been shut down to save fuel. On newer planes as much as half the air is filtered and recirculated instead of being bled from the engine, an engineer with Boeing explained to me. Clean air at last? Not exactly. Bacilli from a sick passenger, he admitted, could pass through the filter and reenter the passenger cabin.