Hazeltine?

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
Date: Mon Mar 15 19:27:07 1999

Marvin,

  I'm not sure what you're getting at but I know from first hand knowledge
that many companies were still dumping those chemicals well into the early
80s. But that's not the point, we were talking about Hazeltine and they've
been in business since at least the early fifties. That's when the USAF
bought the Hazeltine equipment that I used to work on.

 Second, the statement about dumping copper, nickel,
>etc. is very misleading unless you specify both the amount and the
>concentrations of the waste chemistry you are talking about.

   Misleading? All of those are toxic in anything above trace amounts.
That's why the Hazeltine factory is now a superfund site. For example, the
human requirement of copper is only 3 milligrams per day, even low levels
above that are toxic.

Thirdly, a lot
>of toxic wastes were *legally* disposed of with all the associated
>government regulations that the government is now coming back and looking
>for money to clean up sites they had approved as safe.

  That's all too true. The government has known about the hazards of most
of this stuff for a LONG time before they ever took action to stop it being
dumped. The last place that I worked used a lot of Beryllium. I studied
it's health hazards of as part of my job. I was very surprised to find an
old US government report that stated that Beryllium had been in wide spread
use since the 1930s and was generally considered safe, but that right after
WWII they finally studied it's health effects and found that it was one of
the most toxic substances known. Despite the fact that the US government
knew of it's hazards, we were never warned of it. We were still machining
it, grinding it, polishing it, etc etc etc with no precautions AND dumping
it in the early '90s.

   Joe

At 08:05 AM 3/15/99 -0800, wrote:
>Joe wrote:
>>
>> >On Thu, 11 Mar 1999 06:35:55 -0500, Steve Robertson
<steverob_at_hotoffice.com>
>> >wrote:
>> > This building is about a 20 minute drive from my house. It's on
Pulaski
>> >Road in Greenlawn. The sign outside now says "GEC/Marconi/Hazeltine"
and is
>> >locally acknowledged as a Superfund site
>>
>> That's common for places that used to make circuit boards. Almost all of
>> them simply dumped the waste water containing copper, nickel, tim, lead and
>> chromium out the back door.
>
>That might have been true many, many years ago, but my involvement with the
>mfg of printed circuit boards started in the mid 70's, and that was not the
>case from that point on. Second, the statement about dumping copper, nickel,
>etc. is very misleading unless you specify both the amount and the
>concentrations of the waste chemistry you are talking about. Thirdly, a lot
>of toxic wastes were *legally* disposed of with all the associated
>government regulations that the government is now coming back and looking
>for money to clean up sites they had approved as safe. A favorite saying of
>mine is "There would be no such thing as the environmental movement were it
>not for scientific illiteracy." Yes, it is an overstatement, but there is a
>lot of truth there.
>
Received on Mon Mar 15 1999 - 19:27:07 GMT