Delay Ruins Blood Samples

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Apr 15, 2004
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New Blood Tests Needed After Dominican Delays Ruin Survey Into Polluted Site

June 06, 2007 ? By Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press


Following are the closing paragraphs of the report:

"Local children who play on lead-ridden fields and live in homes flooded by contaminated run-off have suffered debilitating diseases and brain damage, said Steve Null, director of the New York-based nonprofit Friends for Lead-Free Children.

"Environmental tests taken last year in the town about 16 kilometers (10 miles) west of the Dominican capital revealed soil samples that still were almost 50 percent lead, Null said.

That earned the town a spot alongside the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine on a list of the world's 10 most polluted places, published last year by the Blacksmith Institute, an international environmental group.

A thorough cleanup of the site has been long delayed by inaction on the part of the government and the plant's former owners, advocates say.

A spokeswoman for the Dominican Republic's environmental ministry declined to comment."