The next Task Force meeting will be Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 7:00 pm in the St. Louis City Hall. Before the meeting please join us at 6:00 pm for our annual holiday dinner with a food dish to share. Drinks, dinnerware and flatware will be provided.

June 2008

Alma College and the Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force are the 2008 recipients of the Carter Partnership Award, the premier community service award for higher education and community collaboration.

The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Award for Campus-Community Collaboration is given annually by Michigan Campus Compact to one partnership involving a Michigan college and a community group for working together in exceptional ways to improve people’s lives and enhance learning in the process. The College and Task Force will share the $10,000 prize.


Dr. Suzanne Snedeker recently presented a talk on chronic health effects associated with exposure to DDT, including the risk of diabetes and cancer, at an international conference on the health risks of DDT held at Alma College on March 14, 2008. Alma, Michigan (MI) is located a few miles from one of the largest Superfund sites for DDT contamination in the US, the former Velsicol Chemical Corporation plant in St. Louis, MI, located on the banks of the Pine River. This article describes Dr. Snedeker’s experiences visiting the Superfund site, topics discussed at the conference, and the struggles that the Community Advisory Group, the Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force, has had in getting support for conducting health assessments of residents that live in close proximity to this still active Superfund site. Since the World Health Organization now supports the limited use of DDT to spray interior walls of dwellings in areas where malaria is endemic, it is critical to revisit the importance of continued research on the health effects of DDT and why alternatives to DDT are equally important to pursue.

To read her article entitled "View from the Pine River and Beyond: The Legacy of DDT Use and Health Effects" please go to http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/Newsletter/articles/v13DDTLegacy.cfm#content