The Way it was Then - Part #8

 

May 13, 1983

When it hits where you live

 The environment never was one of my causes.

In my younger, college-age years, I was a great civil rights advocate, complete with marches and candle-light vigils.

Once or twice since reaching staid adulthood, I’ve gotten wound up about a local issue and passed out leaflets, manned telephones, worked the polls and fought to win (or defeat) the question involved.

But the environment just hasn’t turned me on.

Granted, I don’t live next to Love Canal or even the GEMS landfill.

Maybe proximity might have moved me sooner to care about what is done with toxic or hazardous wastes. But I have to candidly confess I’ve not lost a great deal of sleep wondering where we’re disposing of the radioactive wastes from Salem I.

It sometimes takes just a little thing to stir the juices and make me wake up to an issue I’ve let slip by.

Like Tuesday night’s occurrence.

As anyone who knows me will attest, reading is my very favorite solitary pastime. I often get so lost in the story line (especially in an extremely well-written book) that I don’t hear the phone or doorbell. And whenever I’m not working, doing laundry, cleaning up, running errands or helping with homework, I’m reading.

So last Tuesday might, I had an hour… between nine and ten p.m. to catch up on some library books I’d been itching to get at.

With reading light turned to just the right brilliance, radio playing at just the right volume, dog walked and cats fed and satisfied, I curled up on the couch and opened the book. Immediate absorption.

At about 9:30, I noticed my eyes were tearing and beginning to smart. Looking up from the book, I caught the bitter odor of burning something-or-other in the air. Thinking the house was on fire, I went from room to room pretty rapidly, checking the temperature of the walls, looking for evidence of smoke. Nothing, thank goodness.

And still the smell worsened and my eyes burned badly.

Remembering that a friend had complained to me about a week earlier about a horrible odor ground her home one night, I opened the front door and was assailed by one of the worst smells I can recall. Even the cats, alarmed by the silent invader, leaped from their windowsill perches and ran into the basement.

Outside the house … it was awful. On such a clear, cloudless night, one could almost feel the stench. It was strong enough to have body and substance.

And then, minutes later, it was gone. It took about fifteen minutes for my eyes to stop smarting, though, and I don’t want to guess what inhaling it did to the lungs and genetic systems of those of us inadvertently exposed to it.

The Berlin police, summoned by central dispatch when I called to inquire about possible sources of the odor, said it might have come from one of the industrial operations nearby.

In conversations with friends since Thursday, I’ve learned it’s a common happening around these parts, but repeated attempts to uncover the source have failed.

Obviously, it’s not a healthy thing that is let loose in the air. If it were, it would be done in the daylight when monitoring devices would pick up the emission and record it. If it were, it wouldn’t make eyes tear and cats flee.

And that scares the dickens out of me.

I don’t live near any well-publicized source of pollution. On purpose.

Heaven knows we ingest enough of the junk that kills in our food, our air, our clothing, the substances around us everyday. We can’t help what we don’t recognize.

But an odor that seeps into the crevices of a pretty tight house, that brings tears to the eyes of a concentrating reader, that makes animals prick their ears and run in fear … that should be controllable.

Maybe if enough of us keep the EPA Hotline number (800-424-8802) by our telephones and dial it the minute we catch a whiff of something unusual, the surrounding industries will be monitored closely enough to scare them into stopping whatever it is they’re doing.

In the meantime, ask around. See if your neighbors or your families know about the awful smell. Write letters, if you’re so inclined, to the officials of the industries that surround us and let them know that living in a healthy environment means a lot to you.

Maybe it was nothing at all. Maybe not.

I’d rather be alert and try to put a stop to it than die prematurely from its possible carcinogenic effects.