Americas High SchoolResearch GuidesASARCO and Environmental JusticeBook Study: Copper Stain (copper stain written using an EPA grant]

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Americas High SchoolResearch GuidesASARCO and Environmental JusticeBook Study: Copper Stain

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ASARCO and Environmental Justice: Book Study: Copper Stain

Book Study: Copper Stain

Documentaries and News Clips

Centennial Museum Exhibit: The Town and The Smelter

UTEP Library Special Collections

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Essential Question

Essential Question: How did ASARCO commit acts of environmental injustice by contaminating the soil, water, and air in El Paso and exposing workers to toxic, hazardous materials?

Over the next week, we will read Copper Stain  ***  and discuss the environmental toxic legacy of ASARCO, learn from ASARCO workers, and view the exhibit on Smeltertown.

Focused Notes for Copper Stain

Chapters 1, 2

Chapters 3, 4

Chapter 5

Chapters 6, 7, 8

Field Trip Reflection

Chapters  9, 10, 11

*files will be posted as we read the chapters

Vocabulary

pollution- material in the natural environment that does not belong there, and that damages the environment and living things, including people

inequality- unfairness; a situation in which some people gain privileges simply because they are members of a group defined by race, wealth, sexual orientation or other factors. Those who are not members of those groups are denied the same privileges.

environmental justice- The fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, incomes and educational levels with respect to the development and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies

environmental racism- the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color

Copper Stain by Elaine M. Hampton and Cynthia C. Ontiveros

Cover ArtCopper Stain by Elaine M. Hampton; Cynthia C. Ontiveros

Call Number: 363.73 HAM

ISBN: 9780806161778

Publication Date: 2019-01-10

Copper Stain is a history of environmental injustice, corporate malfeasance, political treachery, and a community fighting for its life. The book gives voice to nearly one hundred Mexican Americans directly affected by these events. Their frank and often heartrending stories, published here for the first time, evoke the grim reality of laboring under giant machines and lava-spewing furnaces while turning mountains of rock into copper ingots, all in service to an employer largely indifferent to workers’ welfare. With horror and humor, anger, courage, and sorrow, the authors and their interviewees reveal how ASARCO subjected its employees and an unsuspecting public to pollution, diseases, and early death—with little in the way of compensation.

Additional Readings

Cover ArtSmeltertown by Monica Perales

Call Number: 976.4 PER

ISBN: 080787146X

Publication Date: 2010-09-13

Traces the history of Smeltertown, Texas, a city located on the banks of the Rio Grande that was home to generations of ethnic Mexicans who worked at the American Smelting and Refining Company in El Paso, Texas, with information from newspapers, personal archives, photographs, employee records, parish newsletters, and interviews.

Cover ArtA People's History of Environmentalism in the United States by Chad Montrie

Call Number: 333.72 MON

ISBN: 9781441116727

Publication Date: 2011-12-08

An account of the history of environmentalism in the United States, challenging the dominant narrative in the field.

Copper Plant Illegally Burned Hazardous Waste, E.P.A. Says

from The New York Times

Investigation of a Cluster of Multiple Sclerosis in Two Elementary School Cohorts

from Journal of Environmental Health

Human Lead Absorption -- El Paso, Texas

from the CDC

"In December 1971, the City-County Health Department in El Paso, Texas, discovered that an ore smelter in El Paso was discharging large quantities of lead and other metallic wastes into the air. Between 1969 and 1971, this smelter had released 1,116 tons of lead, 560 tons of zinc, 12 tons of cadmium, and 1.2 tons of arsenic into the atmosphere through its stacks."

Last Updated: Apr 2, 2024 9:48 AMURL: https://ahs-sisd.libguides.com/c.php?g=993260 Print PageLogin to LibApps

"

[Published under fair use]

*** Copper Stain was written using an EPA grant

AUGUST 1, 2010 Ex-Asarco employees seek reason for illnesses By Chris Roberts – EL PASO TIMES

 Recasting the SmelterUPDATESPROJECT TEAMCOMMUNITY

COMMUNITY INPUT

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

TRUSTEE MEETINGSQUESTIONS TO THE TRUSTEE

STACK ASBESTOS QUESTIONS

STACKS DEMOLITION DELAY

FAQsMEDIA

EMAIL UPDATES

FACT SHEETS

NEWS ARTICLES

PRESS RELEASES

VIDEO CLIPS

DOCUMENTSVISUALSINFO GRID

AUGUST 1, 2010

Ex-Asarco employees seek reason for illnesses

By Chris Roberts – EL PASO TIMES

EL PASO — Patrick Garza worked as a pipefitter and welder at Asarco in the 1990s. As he describes his years there, he gestures with his left hand to make a point. It trembles, so he steadies it with his other hand.

Doctors diagnosed Garza, 48, with multiple sclerosis in 1997. A few weeks ago, he learned that hazardous waste was illegally incinerated at Asarco. He wonders if that exposure caused his illness.

Records of the chemicals processed at the plant have been incomplete and in most cases unavailable, said Verónica Carbajal, an attorney working with Garza and about 15 other former Asarco employees who have health problems.

They hope sampling at the plant will provide key pieces of information that could help doctors treat their ailments. But time is slipping away.

In November, crews are to begin demolishing the 123-year-old copper smelter. The plant was established on the bank of the Rio Grande in 1887, when El Paso was an “adobe village of several hundred inhabitants,” according to a city history. Asarco soon became an economic engine for the city.

Smelter operations halted in 1999 when copper prices plunged. Between 200 and 300 employees were laid off. In recent years, copper prices rebounded and Asarco received a state permit to resume operations. Governments on both sides of the border objected. Then the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stepped in, indicating that the company would have to make a significant investment in equipment. Asarco, which had gone bankrupt, closed the smelter for good.

The plant is now in the hands of a trustee, who will oversee a yearlong, $52 million demolition project.

“People want to cover it up, take down the smokestacks and forget this ever happened,” said Carbajal, who is with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid Inc. “They (employees) gave this company decades of their healthy years, and all they get is pain.”

Calls to the Asarco headquarters in Tucson seeking comment for this story were not returned.

Carbajal said a lawsuit would be difficult so long after a bankruptcy reorganization. Other hurdles to legal action include the statute of limitations, proving what caused the illnesses and the expense.

Instead, former employees are fighting for information. Permanent rashes and serious illnesses where there were no previous symptoms are among the mysteries they want to understand. In some cases, doctors have not been able to pin down causes or find effective treatments, they said. The group, with its direct exposure, could be an indicator of problems soon to surface in the surrounding community, Carbajal said.

“No one has done a comprehensive study of the workers, so we’ve started doing it ourselves,” Carbajal said. “They don’t want the community to go through what they’ve gone through.”

One event touched off outrage against the company. An EPA review showed Asarco had been illegally burning hazardous waste from Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Arsenal between 1989 and 1997. Chemical weapons, including napalm and mustard gas, were manufactured at the arsenal. After World War II, private companies made pesticides there.

Asarco paid a $5.5 million penalty without an admission of guilt, but no definitive list of contaminants incinerated at the plant was released.

A letter sent in February to EPA officials asked the agency to help find funding for an “independent health study” focused on the workers. Carbajal and 31 other groups and individuals signed the letter. It also asked that the EPA “release to the public all of the information concerning the type, source and amounts of hazardous waste that were illegally incinerated at the facility.”

In its May 14 response, the agency referred to federal and state studies looking at health effects of lead and arsenic on neighboring communities. One of those studies showed that Mesita Elementary School students “were found to have a higher rate of (multiple sclerosis) than would be expected by national estimates.”

The response stated that waste material containing lead, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, zinc and other metals were shipped to the site, and that its data indicated toxic organic wastes were in such small quantities as to be undetectable. But it stated that some of the data is considered “confidential business information, which is legally protected from public release.”

It concluded: “EPA’s understanding has been that the results of the health evaluations conducted (by state and federal agencies) did not clearly show a need for an independent expert to study the potential health effects of people living in the El Paso area.”

An EPA spokesman said Friday that nothing had changed.

That leaves a plan — part of the cleanup — to catalog pollutants lacing the site. In mid-July some of the former employees joined trustee Roberto Puga for a plant tour. They pointed out where leaky train cars they believe carried the hazardous waste entered the plant and where the material was stored. Puga said samples will be collected at some of those locations after the state approves a plan.

Former employees will have access to the analysis, Puga said. But they say they do not have money to pay for a health study that would put the results in context.

Management never told them what was dripping from the train cars, which arrived when Asarco was receiving hazardous waste, said Carlos Rodriguez, 61, a former company electrician. He has rashes, hypertension and thyroid problems.

When placed in the furnace, the waste would erupt in violent spurts of molten material that burned holes in the bricks protecting the oven walls, said Mario Nevárez, 57, an Asarco mason who maintained the ovens.

He remembers the warning labels on the fire bricks. “It said that after being exposed to heat, the molecular structure is going to change, and it will create carcinogens,” he said. “We would be breathing all that smoke.”

Nevárez has rashes on his feet. He said his doctor has not been able to diagnose the problem. Application of a fungal cream made the burning worse and did not stop the outbreaks, he said.

“You just need to ignore it,” Nevárez said. He also had a stroke that has damaged his memory and eyesight.

“I used to be a self-employed bricklayer,” he said. “Now I can’t even read the tape measure right and make a decent cut.”

In 1997, Garza, the pipefitter, reported to the company’s medical personnel that he had numbness in his face that had lasted two weeks.

“They said, ‘Maybe your respirator was too tight,’ ” Garza said. So he went for testing, he said, which revealed high levels of lead, cadmium and arsenic in his hair samples.

After Garza was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Asarco officials put him on light duty, which included doing laundry and cleaning toilets. They laid him off in 1999. Garza sued, claiming the company had discriminated against him because of his disability. He lost.

“I wanted to appeal,” Garza said, his hand trembling. “It would have cost about $12,000. I could not afford the appeal process.”

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