Waiting for Brockovich | 4
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Previously, on historical, I felt like Linda blair in the exercise.

I remembers exactly like getting out and just like standing there are staring at the cameras, like holy shirt.

like what the hell is going on? There's just the history as of women being dismissed by doctors. The day is all in your head. Oh my god. S you're exaggerate.

Is something actually happening to their bodies then? I believe coming from the outside, the environment.

somehow you live with the environment did IT to me. That to me was terminal.

You say the royal .

that's the great debate of genocide are even I know you can't believe .

i'm still talking about the freaking name thing, right but you should know that i've uncovered pernent information IT came up when I was shooting the shit with local library gadfly cn barren. His ancestors have lived around here since the seventeen hundreds playland will .

shirt skua p becker bar more. That sounds little Better.

But even there.

I guess, have the people say library and other have, say, the right. So turns out .

this isn't just a loye ROI thing. This whole area is riddled with weird prunty ation.

People can call burgin burgin van. yes. And then there's evan, which is often pronounce avan.

We sure that yeah, SHE is clearly sharlet. That's amazing. There's something to this, the names around here, but put a pin in that for now, because I met barns here at the side of the road a couple of miles from the high school for a different reason.

Last time you recalled, after several weeks of tests, tests on the girls, some tests on the school grounds, state school officials came to believe that this whole thing was a mass psychogenic illness, a massa steria, and that nothing else made sense. Until, that is, someone slipped a document and a note under the dorm mat of one of the affected families. The details of how this went down are sketchy. The note was anonymous, and we still know nothing but the messenger, except they clearly had a sense for the drama of the moment. But the note said, basically, if you're looking for the cause of the outbreak, go back farther, go back to something that happened forty years ago to event that was huge at the time, but that everyone seems .

to have forgotten.

And IT LED investigators here, where baren has brought us today.

This is golf road in the channel, the roy uh, over in the area where the stone cheries are. I think this is where the the ivi tracks to traverse golf road here.

And this is .

a big cleared .

section of land squared off and leveled and covered in grey gravel. There are some not very effective markers posted to keep people off the grounds. How did you know that I was here?

Well, I think mutual aid was called twitter. So we heard the sirens go off. And you .

remember IT happening.

Yeah, was december six, nineteen seventy.

Beards was intense grade when IT happened .

somewhere around three thirty in the morning, a lehigh valley train. I think there were twenty five cars on a derail and emptied, two tons of sign I Crystals and thirty to thirty five thousand guns of try chlor of thane solve. I mean, everybody knew what sign I was. Nobody knew. Try a claw Ethane was.

Try claw. Athlete n is a greasing servant used to manufacturing thirty five thousand gallons of IT went into the ground that night and into the groundwater. And it's still there. Long term exposure to tce has been known to cause disney noja, headaches, liver damage, several forms of cancer and neurological complications.

What is in the water in liberal in new york? And if poisoners are bubbling up from the ground beneath your feet, why would you ever believe that people telling you it's all in your head? I'm dantis cue from wondering and pinup street studios this .

is historical .

episode for waiting for broken ment.

Picture, if you will, in your minds eye, Oscar winner and hollywood icon Julia Roberts okay, now picture her teeth. They're incredible, right? And that smile as someone with a gap in his teeth. The width of a jink block is Julia and that grin, who are mine, shining stars of dental perfection.

And that's why it's kind of funny to me that in the role SHE won the Oscar for, SHE barely cracked ed a smile, because in that movie, SHE was playing iron brock habit. And rock of IT is not a big letter. see? Now that pisses me off.

We have more than four hundred plantin. And let's be honest, we all know there are more out there. The movie tells black of which is journey, as a struggling single mom and file clerk who follows a hunch and discovers a huge CoOperation.

P, G, N, E has poison the groundwater and hinkling, california, leading to sickness and death and dozens of families in the town. Take out your calculator and you multiple that number by one hundred. Anything less than that is a waste of our time.

The reason that works as a movie is because black of IT is a little bit toxic herself, but in a fun way, like this, talking to you bit or like this, that's all you got. Lady too wrong feet and fucking ugly shoes. IT is a great movie, and I made the real book of its famous for her effectiveness, that exposing toxic spill scandals and uncovering cover, and for her truly god like levels of self confidence.

This is from her own website for beta, say the name Aaron rock of IT. And you think strong, tough, stubborn and sexy iron is all that and definitely more. She's a modern day David who loves a good bra.

With today's good lives, SHE thrives on being the voice for those who don't know how to yell, she's a rebel. She's a fighter. She's a mother. She's a woman. Is your name.

In late january, rock of which appears on doctor drew pinsky s headline new show doctor drew by now is gaga over the library story? Big surprise.

If somebody maybe ten years ago or back actually when I watched you, your robbert to playing you in the in the theaters, h asked me what I probably doing in two thousand. Probably a very last thing on my list would have been teaming up with there in ba rich to about a medical mystery in the substate new york.

I bub.

And it's here, book of IT announces that SHE is cannabis ing into the fray .

the information the very quickly just to share with you what people are reporting to me from the area they are.

When word of her interest in the story got out, the tips from leura came rolling in, broke with herself, says he got thousands about the one thousand nine hundred and seventy trained arrayment other suspected toxins and a stream of disturbing health problems that people fear those toxins are causing.

I have people reporting to me who grew up in the area whose sons were born with rare birth effects. I have children who grew up in the area who are reporting to me they had bone cancer at the age of ten. I have people reporting to me that there are two and a half year olds have tick .

like center going to stop you because we can't substantiate this. But we get to get the .

idea I hear i'm ba b, and I just finished the doctor drew show.

This is her back stage, that doctor drew appearance, doing some extra behind the scenes content for the show.

And what is to come next? We have a team going out there that's going to be doing a side assessment. They're going to be meeting with the families. They're going to go to the original derail ment site. We're gona be getting more eye accounts and documentation of the spill, how far the plum .

has now there might have been a time where iron herself would have just shown up in li. But when you get a high profile like that, you don't just go somewhere anymore. You send people ahead to make sure it's legit. You seek your number two on them, the one who does all the work and gets none of the glory before you get iron broke of age. What you get is bobok c that the film .

about her is about ninety nine percent act.

But bocock is a water supply expert, and broke of which is a long time partner. And investigations like the one they were about to embark on in .

the but i'm not the batch ET crazy one irons the batch get crazy.

They've also clearly got the same, shall we say, casual sense of workplace to corum.

Okay, he gets on these things and she's like a bob. This is just mean my sticks to witness or, you know, i've got a feeling here and you know, i'm always right and I shut up, bitch. I know you're right. Well, you just leave me alone and let me figure .

their staff meetings must be so uncomfortable.

At that time, he hated my guts for the first ten years. He was very protective of the words he had done. SHE had your guts for how long? About ten years. That's a long time to for thirty, more than thirty.

But all the salty talk aside, bob clearly believes in her, know she's the one that .

one out there and pulled the frogs out of the ins and test to the pools and work with the people and and really found what was going on. And me as a scientist was, you know, skeptical of her application of inuendo to certain aspects of things. But the camp t he's right all the time. SHE gets a feeling about something.

and she's usually right.

I mean, look at the local case, for instance. You know what? I have participated in something like that. No, but he kept hounding me sometimes is wrong here.

something is not right.

How much tc e did that chemical spill leave behind in the soil, in the water? What about those fracking whales over by the high school, the epa was still trying to clean up the old chemical factory just eight miles from the school, where industrial ways to found its way into the ground. And even geo, and the stories of how the creek in town would change color depending on what flavor, or they were cracking out of the gel factory that day. To be clear, these toxic fears aren't just a tos imagination getting away from them. The president around here is real.

too real.

For several years, chemicals have been seeing into the basement of a number of houses.

No case, however, has received more attention than the waste site at love can, love can. One of the worst environmental disasters in american locals .

have been .

raised on stories .

of love canal. Catastrophic toxic waste scandal from the one thousand hundred and seventy IT happened just fifty miles from li, and for what it's worth, about three miles from the house. My monkey up in the sickest part of the joke is in the name, love can sounds sweet until you're learn that the canal in question was where chemical companies had done t tens of thousands of tons of toxic waste for years in the thirties and forties.

In the fifties, the canal and all the crap in IT was quietly covered over, and a modest neighbor od of eight hundred or so ran style homes was built a long side IT. By the seventies, reports of sickness began to spread. Asthma, epilepsy, birth defects.

Miss carriage, here's a local on the news at the time. K, how many more kids have to be sick? How many kids? We're not let that happen.

IT was the parents in the neighborhood, the moms especially, who got loud and raised the alarm that something was wrong. Women told us the state office had dismissed their studies connecting the pathways of old stream beds and increased health problems as useless housewife data. A local mom named lowest gibs helps lead the charge.

I am a housewife, as I important in the paper.

Many times before IT was over, at least twenty neighbor od kids had cancer. Almost one thousand people were evacuated off the land. We live in the house.

We lived there for two years. We want that house. Noting policies was happen. And what can do for my kids, what you going to .

do now I can only represented, or suppose ort us, what the nations look at you would like.

And the memory of love canal was looming large in the right IT was one .

of the mothers of one of the impacted uh, Young ladies who who started writing iron. Um we're not sure what's going on. This is what's happening in our town.

Can you take a look at IT? IT was primarily ant's mothers, grandmother's and their daughters. That's interesting .

in in terms of the Price, not just people who are were who are suffering having symptoms with people who .

are problem solving. Right, right.

right. Is that common with .

the airport of IT? Yeah there is there is a you know a woman to woman woman power kind of aspect associated with that. And initially there's the oh, shit and we got bob you.

I still suffer from that just exactly. In our big story this morning, nationally known environmental alist iron broke of IT sena him til the row yesterday to dick for answers about a mysterious medical condition there. But not everyone .

is happy about IT news for bo koc sets out for the center of the storm.

Leery new york late january, fifteen cases of the sickness now confirmed one to three inches of snow expected. The media hord now includes camera cruise from sweden and japan. The new york times is on the ground knocking on doors, and the local paper does a pole.

Two thirds of respondents say they don't believe the high school is looking out for the best interest of the kids. Here's Jessica, a senior. yeah. I mean.

at that point, I was scared to go to school, but I was more scared of like not going and missing something. And like, I felt like we were like something was being hit from us. That's just how they made IT seen.

Were you getting into the drama of IT as well, like a teenager? Wood.

absolutely. I was absolutely like, I I love in history too. So I trying to get to the bomb of IT that was like, my brother bother. I was like, what I live for.

I must have been, I don't want to say fun, but but I can see almost was like .

fun in away because I was so exciting, like nothing ever happens in the sleepy little town. And now we all our national new story, like every brock of which is coming like IT, was crazy.

When bob bocock arrives in leery, he starts by meeting with the affected girls and their families.

I was very skeptical when I first showed up, because I had seen the news reports, you know, and I was like, I didn't understand .

that you thought .

they were faking.

oh yeah, wow, oh yeah. I thought iron was so full of shit. I thought this was insane. I thought this was crazy. What the hell are doing and .

what change your mind?

I SAT the room with these kids. They could not. You can't fake that IT.

You could not fake that they were inflicting excitation pain upon themselves. Whether IT was chemically induced, whether IT was psychologically induced, they were not faking. You couldn't fake that.

Bob heads to the high school.

First thing I chased down for like a week was the natural gas wells on the school .

property is unusual to have a natural in school.

Why would you .

is that unusual? Have six natural gas wells on school?

H one is about as dumas IT gets six is just kind of pathetically stupid.

At six different locations around the school, caged natural gas wells stand, and including one right out front, where a statue of Miller d film more or some other historic orange would Normally be kind of hiding in plain site.

No, we did not know that.

Here's Jessica again. I know my mom was picked on that one too.

He thought for sure I had something to do with that. He was super angry to find that I was. She's like, really, we just built the school and rebuilding parking, what like? That makes no sense.

IT makes a little sense. Actually, the revenue from the walls help the school offset the cost of heating the building. Fracking forces natural gas out of the ground by shooting chemicals into the ground.

What happens to those chemicals once they're in the ground is the highly controversial question. Environmentalists had already been pushing the state to ban fracking altogether. Nationally known environmentalists, iron broke of age sent an investigative team to the school ground saturday morning.

Bob shows up, news cameras in tow and travel in hand to take soil samples around the world. Hood, according to the school district bca vhs team, never asked permission to take samples on school property. Sound like that. Maybe the that crazy one is.

But after being denied access to schoo grounds, bocock remained sceptical. I will tell you that usually and settings for situations like this, when i'm confronted by officials, barring access to something, they usually have something to hide.

IT would soon come out that they had recently been leaked in two of the whales releasing pools of brian near one of the athletic fields, burning grass and killing trees right next to wear. The cheerleaders cheer in the marching .

band plays shit. Having those gas wells on my football fields, not a really fucking smart .

thing to do now is IT. And if IT burns grass and kills trees, what does he do to teenage girls?

After taking some water samples at nearby residences, BOC headed to the derive and site where in thousand nine hundred and seventy over thirty thousand gallons of the toxic solvin T C E spilled after a train when off the track.

When you read the reports of that T C E bill, thirty five thousand goods of IT, the initial cleanup in one thousand nine hundred and seventy IT sounds more like an initial tidying. After that, the railroad shut down in seventy six, and the tracks were Young out. By the nineties, sky high T C, E levels have been discovered in dozens of private wales near the crash site. Now the E P A was assuring parents that the T C E bloom still in the ground, had not made IT as far as the school. Less than three miles away, when bob showed up to check out the derailed ment site in person, IT was being devoured by a jungle, a three sized weeds.

almost like that seen in tar hand, where, you know, they pull back the bushes and you see the lost city.

Only what bob s. Are rose and rose of fifty five gallon and drums, over two hundred of them holding contaminated soil from the spill site, still there and falling apart.

Somebody one out and then left all the contamination there, and the barrels rushed out the legal right back into the environment. So they are probably still cleaning IT up you, fifty years later.

standing in front of a science saying, danger, hazard, ous materials silcock gives a warning.

yeah, have a sign like that. And fifty five gallon drums rotten away, leaking material out into the environment right now.

Draw your own conclusion.

While all this is happening around the time bob came to leura and rock of its fever was at its pitch, something else starts happening. The symptoms in many of the girls are getting visibly worse.

IT all starts to have off.

Here's dommage vig e the neurologist. At this point, he is seen almost two thirds of the known afflicted SHE still believes it's a mass psychogenic illy.

So just got got crazy because first everyone starts to a text, and so we're managing this text and we worry about motor issues. Then IT turns into which I think is so interesting single events. So now we're s we're passing out.

So single he is when we pass out near sync. Aby is when I I feel like i'm going down and I feel dizzy. Scope is actually the act of passing out.

So people start passing out.

are passed in, out, right left.

Now we're passed in out. And remember, doctor, my vega is not some hard and veteran SHE hasn't even sad for her boards yet. How are you feeling .

doing all this? IT was a very chAllenging time in my life. Like I lost ten pounds, I my kids thought I was going to be arrested and taken away because they were news vehicles that would follow me home from work.

I was a little traumatized by IT, i'll be honest, you know. And also, I was very protective of the kids too, because I did not want anything. I did not want to be the cars of anyone having a problem.

This is not a case. This is a person. This is a human.

I know their dogs name. I know their family. I know their parents. You know, like, these are babies that could be my baby.

Did you ever see the clip where one of the girls and I were on enter Cooper and he had an episode, right? The mom of the show?

no. Anderson cooker has sort of a daytime talk show back down studio. Audience, the whole thing.

He hosts an episode hashing out the medical mystery. And bob is on IT talking about all the taxes. Also joining him on the panel was march, the thirty six year old nurse with symptoms.

There's also another girl there that you might remember. It's like this electrical tingle ling, feeling that never goes away. Hey, the girl from youtube who had been looking for help, even though he loves a couple hours from leary. SHE, too, was now fully embroiled in the mania. She's the one who had a season on T.

V. SHE went into a full on epileptic fit on the stage. I mean IT was on the ground screaming OS IT was scary and we went to commercial break right then and there um they called them a doctor. I mean, he was horrible.

We tried to get a copy of that moment in the episode. The company wouldn't release IT. But according to someone who worked at the show at the time, the last thing the viewers at home heard before cutting to commercial was an off camera voice yelling code blue.

having a little bit reaction there. Are you okay?

Something similar had already happened on doctor ju with a different affected girl that time. However, when the seizure starts, instead of cutting away to commercial.

let's get back to, i'd like to go back to so what I can see what's going on here. Please help me go room.

They cut back and we see the mom leaning over her daughter, who's on the floor seizing, just had a frame.

You're right, mom, what's going on there?

She's having a seizure and IT .

doesn't seem to occur to anyone to maybe point the cameras in a different direction for a minute.

我， okay. Paramo.

yes.

O O.

K, no, they nothing. 走开， 走开。

I'm first. This is ridiculous. We've been to wait in months.

We come down your details. Cdc, this set and IT takes the school calls. Another town meeting in the auditorium.

Love canal took years. This is gonna years. We want to know now, let's going now what you do. This is just a few days after bob koch began poking around, he had raised too many new questions and kicked up too much dust. And the parents are getting ready to erruptive the.

Well, i'm going to make a statement.

The crowd this time includes environmental activists from around the state, cameras from everywhere, and even a paraNormal investigator has arrived to take a crack at the medical mystery. And that is when IT all finally .

spins out of control your child, you set them to the school. now. Now i'm done listening to you.

You guys need to do something. You are not doing your job. You are not doing your job and not.

嗯， hysteria, to tRicky word.

is not the historia we've been talking about so far. Is the medical one an asell thing usually called by more polite terms, now almost always pinned on women, but still that perplexing battery of symptoms where mind and body seemed to meet the medical definition of the unknown in a way.

But there is also that other hysteria, our collective reaction to that unknown, when all of our attention is on one thing, one moment, one fear, one big question, creating something huge and explosive and out of anyone's control. And IT can be hard to know when you're investigating one kind of hysteria, whether or not you're unintentionally creating another. After four trips back and forth to lei bubble, kok brings this investigation to a close nine .

times out of ten. I actually have a result that I can report. The I was one of those few instances where I literally spent months down there and never resolved or had a complete conclusion as to what happened.

That's spicious, brian, that lead from the fracking whales into the sports fields. IT was deemed not toxic, the school was cited but not find the T C E ploo m from the trained around mant. IT was still in the groundwater, but further test showed that IT had not migrated toward the school for the two hundred disintegrating barrels of waste.

The epa would spend the next decade trying to clean up the derailment site, but they say that swed no additional taxes seeped into the ground because of them. Basically, before you came, the epa in the U. S. State department of health said that we did tests on the school ground and there was nothing right. Why was that not enough for you?

Back to what I was saying earlier where aron was like, no, bob, there's something else. Just keep looking, just keep looking.

And they did find a lot of problems, but no smoking gun, meaning the big claim made by the school in the state that there was no taxi component to the contingent IT seemed to be true. Or perhaps more accurately, no one could prove that IT wasn't. In the end, iron rock of which never shows in li, after all that lead up the lack of anything concrete makes IT a wash.

SHE pops up again the following week in berlyn, promoting her next movie appearance about safe drinking water. Were you afraid that you are making IT worse? Were you getting that criticism?

Both both did something good come out of IT from an environmental investigators perspective. Yeah, I got, I got the T, C, E. I cleaned up that had been neglected for probably the Better part of twenty years.

Did the fact that I came to town and found environmental things of concern exacerbate or contribute further to the psychological impacts to these kids did IT validate their feelings. Could have, you know, could we have made IT worse? We tried not to eh.

this is awkward. Can I see those .

statistics? Yes, because in fact dr.

Make VGA has been looking into that very question.

so there not in .

that and she's collected the data somewhere in those dyers that suggests team rock of which actually may have demonstrably made things worse.

So this is an actual statistical analysis because its very hard to do correlational stuff. And we had to go back.

Big vigor team went back and tracked every time a patient had what he calls an exasperation like a trip to the emergency room or a dramatic worsening in the severity of symptoms, any serious flare up in her patients. And then SHE mapped all of that against the big up peebles in the the today is show appearance, the contentious town hall meetings and team brock of IT pair a shooting into the mystery, all to see how her patients fared afterwards.

And then in black of which comes into town, and there were eleven execution tions. So now the take start to get worse again. Now we have singapore episodes. Now we have a lot of non elective seasons.

IT was the worst stretch by far of the outbreak in lian. This is in the week after earn block of the following week, there's eleven, the patient, the nine week, and in the following two years, after three times five. I don't mean to make this a knocked against brock bach or a bocock or demanding answers, or the press and the cameras, or a doctor drew, well, maybe doctor drew, but it's not a knock against the hysteria that grew around the hysteria. And that is because of the third meaning of the word.

being hysterical. Will not you want a good?

We going to just be hic. We're going have to ask you believe l every night. No, i'm not estero. I'm trying to tell you this is commonly, as I know how o is the one they hurl when they want to diminish you, when I want to make you seem like you're reacting over nothing, or if it's something, then your way over reacting.

I was sort of a regular housewife buying the american dream in one thousand nine hundred and seventy eight.

There was a series of interviews done a while back about love canal, the toxic waste disaster in western new york. The interviews are with lowest gibs, the local mom who raised hell at the center of IT.

IT wasn't until I put up the newspaper one day, and I talked about twenty thousand tons of chemicals underneath the ninety nine sweet school and leaking out into the homes.

And gibs tells the story of when SHE first brought her concerns to the school, and how hard IT was to get them to take her seriously.

And so I went to the school board and said, can you move Michael, head of the school? By then? He was in kindergarten seventy eight, and they said, no, we cannot. Because if we move Michael gifts because of the potential threat, we have to move all four hundred and seven children. We're not going .

to do that. We're not closing .

the school because of one irrate historical housewife.

They called lowest gibs hysterically too to shut them up, but lowest gives didn't show, would you? And SHE helped cause what i'm sure felt like massive aria over the chemicals in the ground beneath .

their feet got a cake. Cause also do .

run pay sweating.

And lowest gibs was right. In two thousand and four, after twenty five years of clean up and remediation, the epa finally removed love canale from its list of worst unresolved environmental disasters in the country. The lora train arrow ment is still on that list.

So what do you think we reit to call IT? We know it's not a virus and now we know it's not toxins, at least as far as anyone can prove. So unless the bad camp on theory makes a comeback, I guess what happens next is that everyone in leura, master rea, in a warm township de embrace as the answer to their medical mystery.

Yeah, that chance. That's not how this story ends, but before he does. And before we come to our grand unifying theory of what happened in liberal in new york, you're gonna wants to hear from this guy that we talk to in northern Virginia, the idea that this is somehow psychogenic psychosis.

Matic, massive rea, I mean, that just doesn't apply to me. And you are definitely gonna want to hear what's happening to this woman in highland county, ohio. People are just so tired to be being called liars that they don't don't talk about anymore. And before you try and say what's happening in any of these places, you're first onna have to come to terms with one indelible and fairly nauseating facts. Whatever is happening to these people, you are not immune to IT.

No one is that next .

time on historical, i've never been A C A, I sport in their basement, in their basement. Yeah, you know, the room was spending wildly. I had a splitting headache. Had tonight this, which is no ring in my ears, and I knew something was really wrong with scary .

hystErica is alive and well. So for you.

functional disorder or psychogenic illness is the same as saying that you were abducted by anyone, because that makes no sense. The human mind is a very powerful thing. Follow hysterically on the wander APP amazon music or whether you get your podcasts, you can manage all episodes early and add free right now by joining wunder plus in the wander APP or on apple podcasts.

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Our sociate producer is mary ex ocaw, a producer sophie bridges, managing producer eron Kelly, senior producer lmc. Additional production by SAndra Allen dian hunton is our editor. Our executive editor is joe level fact checking by not sumi arg sa mixing by hand as Brown.

Our head of sound and engineering is rage marketer original music composed and performed by da mac dy legal services for a pineal street from Crystal tupia. For wondering, our senior producers are lazy basket and clear chAmbers coordinating producer maria gossip, senior managing producer copy es history is written and executive produced by me. I'm down to burki.

Our executive producers for pineal street are maximum sky and we, masha saluda and gentle wise berman. Executive producers for wondering are Morgan Jones, martial, lewi and gene sergeant? Thanks for listening.