Another Death Linked to Toxic Wastes
Published in The Philippine Daily Inquirer
(April 04, 2000)
CLARK SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE -- A former evacuee at the Clark Air Base Command evacuation center has died of kidney failure last March 25, bringing to 99 the death toll there from ailments linked to exposure from American military toxic wastes.
Lilia Dizon, the latest fatality, lived at the AFP II building Of the Cabcom since 1992. She died at the Angeles Medical Center.
Her husband, who also resided at the Cabcom, died of cancer of the lungs, said Nerissa Agustin-Sagum, People's Task Force for Bases Cleanup in Pampanga coordinator.
From 1995 to 1998, the PTFBC recorded 50 deaths mostly, childen and women afflicted with liver and breast cancer. Thirty-nine others died there in 1999.
Ten others have died since January this year, including Dizon and child toxic warrior Crizel Jane Valencia, who died of leukemia in February.
Eight women reported having an average of two miscarriages or still births during their stay in the same area.
The PTFBC also received reports of four deaths due to leukemia in Sapang Bato, a village at the eastern periphery of the former Clark Air Base.
Renato de la Rosa, a former base worker who handled asbestos, died on June 30, last year. Mauro Manialung died in May 1998.
Cabcom used to be a motor pool of the US 13th Air Force assigned at Clark. It was one of the 14 sites identified as contaminated with high levels of lead and petroleum hydrocarbons, according to the Weston International, which did the, environmental baseline study for Clark.
Mercury, nitrate and coliform bacteria were also found in three shallow wells at the Cabcom.
Starting October last year, the Mount Pinatubo Commission, the Clark Development Corp. and the Commission on Human Rights began transferring Cabcom evacuees to two major resettlement sites to stop their continued exposure to toxic wastes.
Of the 32 respondents covered by a Department of Health survey, in September last year, six children were found to have abnoiinal levels of lead in their blood samples.
Eight out of .19 respondents had, previous histories of spontaneous abortion during their stay in the area, the DOH study said..
As Cabcom accommodated nearly 20,000 families fro'm, 1992 until late last year, tracking and monitoring them all down had proven to be difficult I according to Sagum.
She said no consistent health monitoring had been carried out in 13 other communities near Clark. So far, 90 people, mostly children with physical deformities, heart and digestive ailments have been documented at the Madapdap resettlement site, she said.
Protesters continue to pound on the doors of Malacañang and Congress to demand compensation for the environmental damage which they said the United States left behind in their two biggest overseas bases -- Clark and Subic.
Effort to make the United States pay for the cleanup of the two sites have also failed to take off, although enough Philippine, government officials have acknowledged that there was, indeed, serious environmental damage done on the two former US bases.
Tonette Orejas,
PDI Central Luzon
