Erin Brockovich

"This company, a giant utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, knew as early as 1960 that they were poisoning the groundwater, and they made a corporate decision to do nothing about it," asserted Brockovich, whose story was told in an Academy Award-nominated film named after her. She was introduced by Georges Benjamin, executive director of APHA, who said, "we needed to bring to our front the whole issue of health care advocacy."

Working as a file clerk for the law firm Masry & Vititoe in the early 1990s, Brockovich began to research medical complaints of residents in a small, poor California town. "These people lived out in the middle of nowhere," she recalled. "They all had similar illnesses, diseases, complaints, and cancer. All of the animals were sick and dying. There were no birds or bunnies or desert creatures. All of the trees were dead. Something had to have gone terribly wrong."

Brockovich said that she had discovered that Hinkley residents had been exposed to toxic levels of Chromium 6, which had leaked into groundwater from a nearby Pacific Gas and Electric Company compressor station in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. One of the company’s internal documents reported the level of Chromium 6 in the residential water as 20 to 24 ppm, or 400 times the standard allowed by California, she said. Working with a team of town residents, lawyers, doctors, and scientists, Brockovich helped lead a lawsuit against the utility, which produced the largest toxic tort injury settlement in U.S. history.

"We didn’t know the outcome of what we were doing," she said. "We didn’t stop to think that this case would settle for $333 million. We didn’t stop to think that someone would make a movie about it, and I never stopped to think that Julia Roberts would star in it. We simply cared."

Brockovich acknowledged that critics of the lawsuit have questioned the accuracy of the reported levels of Chromium 6 and whether residents were really harmed. She said that damage from ingesting the chemical is debatable but that inhalation of Chromium 6 has a documented association with cancer.

"You think that the people in Hinkley, California just drank the water?" she asked. "The people in Hinkley rely solely on their wells drilled into the aquifer to supply their water. There is no municipal water purveyor. They’ve used this water to bathe in, to shower in, to swim in. Kids ran through the sprinklers laced with it. They used it in their swimming pools. They lived underneath the cooling towers and daily were sprayed with the mist of Chromium 6. If that isn’t inhalation, I don’t know what is."

Now director of research at Masry and Vititoe, Brockovich said her desire is to rekindle people’s interest in the environment. She is currently involved in a case against Beverly Hills, CA, the city’s school district, and oil and gas companies on behalf of former high school students and others who have said that they were exposed to toxic fumes from an on-campus oil rig at Beverly Hills High School. Of the claimants, Brockovich asserted that more than 400 individuals have cancer.

"As I wondered in Hinkley, I wonder here," she said. "Something terribly again has gone wrong. And who would have thought, this time they’re not out in the middle of nowhere."

Brockovich said her work is about finding and intercepting industry’s deceits, which end up harming public health and safety. "Through my work, I have seen first-hand the outcome of a deceit, and the result is villainous disease and lost lives," she said. "It leaves people and communities feeling frustrated, confused, outraged, and in many instances, hopeless. Nobody is exempt from deceit. It doesn’t recognize your social status, it doesn’t recognize the color of the skin, and it doesn’t see your party affiliation."

Priorities for the Future

Calling for attendees to be "public health heroes," APHA president Virginia Caine targeted a number of issues requiring the attention of the Association’s members.

Virginia Caine

Twenty-one states have rivers and lakes that are so contaminated with mercury and other chemicals that advisories have been put out to pregnant women warning against fish consumption. In about five years, if interventions are not successful, at least 40 percent of the United States will be overweight and will be facing the risk of associated complications, such as diabetes. Heart disease remains the number one killer in the country, making even high-profile Americans vulnerable, such as former President Bill Clinton and current Vice President Dick Cheney.

"Don’t you think that Bill and Dick could have benefited from our prevention activities and have healthy hearts right now?" Caine asked.

Funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and for the Environmental Protection Agency is not keeping pace with new threats to health and safety, she said. "We can always find the money for things that we really want," said Caine. "I love my Indianapolis Colts, and I’d love Peyton Manning better if we make it to the Superbowl, but to pay $42 million for one football player, or $26 million for Kobe Bryant, don’t you think we can find the money for public health, too?"

Caine concluded by encouraging attendees to be determined and tenacious in advancing public health, despite these challenges, for "we may be the only bridge of hope for good health in this world."

Awards

A number of awards were conferred at the Opening Session. Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) received APHA’s Presidential Citation in recognition of the group’s work in delivering emergency aid to victims of armed conflicts, epidemics, and natural and manmade disasters. Darin Portnoy, president of the board of Médecins Sans Frontières-USA, accepted the honor on behalf of the group.

	Georges Benjamin