Her bosses said the job was safe. Then her hair fell out and coworkers started dying of cancer
· 26.04.2024 · 15:48:45 ··· ··· Friday ·· 5 (5)
The Real News Network “Vina Colley was Erin Brockovich before Erin Brockovich,” Kevin Williams wrote in a 2020 Belt Magazine article titled, “The Poisonous Legacy of Portsmouth’s Gaseous Diffusion Plant.” Williams continues,
“Colley has become an unlikely citizen-scientist, spending a lifetime researching and documenting PORTS and its sins… Colley was hired as an electrician at the facility in 1980 and worked there for three years. ‘I was exposed to everything. We were cleaning off radioactive equipment that we did not know was radioactive. They never told us,’ Colley told me. Then, she said, her hair started falling out, she developed rashes, and ‘I got really sick and went to the hospital, not knowing that it was my job causing me all these problems. I had big tumors.’ In the four decades since, she’s faced a range of health problems, including chronic bronchitis, tumors, and pulmonary edema.”
In this episode, we sit down with Colley herself to talk about growing up in Ohio during America’s Cold War atomic age, her experience working as an electrician at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and her decades-long fight to hold the plant and the government accountable for what they’ve done to her, her coworkers, and her community, and to get them the compensation they deserve.
Click here for show notes and additional links: https://therealnews.com/before-east-palestine-there-was-portsmouth
Featured Music: Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song
Studio Production: Steve Zeltzer, Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor
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