Help Launch Laytonville's Community Biomonitoring Program
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The Laytonville Alliance for Environmental Justice is a community based organization located in Mendocino County that is taking on the toxic legacy of air, water and soil contamination emanating from landfills and decades of toxic exposures.
Laytonville is a federally designated Frontier Community located downhill and adjacent to unlined, improperly capped and negligently maintained landfills that operated as early as 1950. These solid waste disposal areas were studied by government and independent experts as early as 1966 and determined to be "unsanitary". EPA Region 9 scientists tested ten private wells downstream from the landfills...all were found to be contaminated. Years later county supervisors asked the state to conduct more testing.
Leaders of the Laytonville Alliance for Environmental Justice are calling for more! Many Laytonville residents live within 1000 feet of these disposal areas - a "toxic soup" of chemicals like arsenic, hexavalent chromium, PCB's, cancer causing heavy metals and volatile organic compounds.
A community survey was conducted by Greenaction in 2022, following a 2021 meeting between Laytonville residents, CalEPA and the California Environmental Justice Coalition, urging relocation of 300 exposed Laytonville tribal and long term residents.
Although Mendocino County carries the distinction of being a "Blue Zone" - a region where people live long lives and have low rates of chronic disease - Laytonville residents struggle against environmental health injustice. 2018 health surveys demonstrate a high concentration of cancer clusters encircling the perimeter of the solid waste disposal areas. Brain cancer was seen at an alarmingly rate.
Additionally, 24% of residents experience shortness of breath and 55% report foul odors. Laytonville residents suffer emotionally from the sickness and death of their pets from cancer, seizures, skin and eye diseases.
The Laytonville Alliance for Environmental Justice has taken a historic step forward
in implementing a community biomonitoring program and is seeking your support. Please donate whatever you can to launch the pilot testing program. Combined with advocacy and the findings of health surveys, the Laytonville Community Biomonitoring Program will "Protect...Detect...and Prevent" exposures to environmental toxins!
Organizer
