Polychlorinated Biphenyl’s Travelogue, 2021 100 lb. of Arches paper roll, river sludge, and QR code app, 4.5 x 18 inches.
This is a polluted water map created in a specific place on the riverside of Nyack, New York. It resembles the natural course of the Hudson River from Hudson Falls to Manhattan. For the map, I used water and soil from that part of the river. I sent samples of the same water and soil to a professional lab in August 2021. The test results showed that the water and soil contain dangerous amounts of PCBs, mercury, lead, cadmium, sewage, urban runoff, heavy metals, pesticides, and bacteria. While researching why so many PCBs are in the Hudson, I discovered that the General Electric plant that made transformers and capac- itors poured transformer oil into Hudson Falls from 1947 to 1976 without any controls. In the journal, Critical Reviews in Toxicology, Robert Golden and his team noted that their “results provide meaningful evidence that PCBs are carcinogenic in humans.” Using the maps by Sarah Roth from Tufts University,
approved by the National Cancer Institute in 2020, I found a cause-and-effect relationship between PCBs and the cancer spreading in the counties along the Hudson River from Hudson Falls to Manhattan . Finally, after extensive public pressure and lawsuits, GE closed the plant on the Hudson River, and, during the ‘80s and ‘90s, invested around $19B in building cancer treatment centers and producing cancer-de- tecting and therapy equipment. According to Statista.com, the cancer treatment business in the U.S. was worth $184B in 2021 and is predicted to reach $273B by 2025. Through the medical insurance system, we pay the same people who “produced” the cancer patients to treat and cure them.
Made with FlippingBook Digital Publishing Software