Industrial waste pits can contaminate drinking water wells with carcinogens.

Evidence

The article, by a young reporter named Charles C. Ryan, told of the discovery in north Woburn that past July of a half-buried lagoon, nearly an acre in size and five feet deep, that was contaminated with arsenic, lead, chromium, and traces of other heavy metals. The lagoon had been uncovered by a construction crew working at the site of the old Merrimack Chemical Company, producer of arsenic-based insecticides and tanning chemicals. The crew had also unearthed several pits containing the rotting remains of animal hides, hair, and slaughterhouse wastes, the legacy of Woburn’s tanneries. “Arsenic in small doses,” the article stated, “is suspected as a cancer-causing agent,” and chromium was a known carcinogen that caused tumors of the lungs and nasal passages when inhaled. It was unclear, stated the article, whether these toxic metals had contaminated Wells G and H, situated a mile to the south. But the article did note that the two wells, which had pumped as much as a million gallons of water a day during the fifteen years since their construction, had already been closed “because they were contaminated by trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent that has been found to be carcinogenic.” — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 144

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the sacrifice essay’s material-substrate angle — an arsenic-laced lagoon as a modern toxic wound, the corpse of a tannery dumped where people drink. The ‘real kind’ of sacrifice now recurs as industrial burial.
• XREF: connects to: Contaminated tap water corrodes metal plumbing and appliances. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action , 62; A trivial illegal dumping incident triggered discovery of a major water contamination case — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action , 131