On a cheerful playground outside the local elementary school, a bench commemorates the brief life of Emma Grace Hemsilen Hess, a bubbly 12-year-old who died in July after a long battle with congenital heart ailments.
No one knows what ultimately caused Emma’s heart problems. One of her doctors suggested an obvious suspect: C8, a chemical once used in the making of Teflon, which has been found in the region’s water supply. But “that’s not a road we want to go down,” said Emma’s mother, Christina Hess, 51. Casting blame is “not what Emma was about,” said Hess, whose relatives and neighbors have long worked in the chemical plants that line the nearby banks of the Ohio River. “She was about loving life and loving God.” Loyalty to the plants runs deep in Belpre, one of several towns strung along the “Chemical Valley” on the Ohio-West Virginia border. For decades, the plants have provided good jobs paying as much as $35 an hour in a hard-luck part of Appalachia where people have few other prospects for employment. full: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-ohios-chemical-valley-a-debate-over-good-jobs-and-bad-health/2015/12/12/3341b626-8fab-11e5-baf4-bdf37355da0c_story.html _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
