Trading PAHs
It was December 31, 1999 and I was prepared to embark on a new chapter in my life… a life where I was free from the constant chatter in my mind telling me to smoke. My pickup truck was already packed and ready to go. I celebrated the arrival of the new millennium that night, dancing to Prince, of course. I hid beneath the covers of my cozy winter bed for most of the next day.
When I finally mustered the energy to face the world on the first day of the new century, I gingerly walked down the block to my dear friend Stephanie’s house and sat on her couch, comatose, for the remainder of the afternoon. I was proud that I had made it through my first day smoke-free when I crawled back into bed that night. The following day, I slid behind the wheel of my truck, picked up my colleague Karla, and we made our way across Wisconsin to Kingsford, Michigan.
I worked with a crew of environmental scientists on a variety of jobs associated with the Former Ford Kingsford Plant over the next six months. The Ford Motor Company had made cars with wood accents in the area and then used the scrap wood to make charcoal (eventually leading to the advent of Kingsford Charcoal). The final waste products were then deposited in an area known as the Old Ford Dump. I promise to write more about the Former Kingsford Plant soon. It’s a fascinating story.
Among our jobs were inspecting houses for the presence of flammable methane, sampling groundwater, and doing cleanup of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)-contaminated waste. I was one of the smallest of the crew members and had a penchant for computers. Thus, I often was relegated to the back room of our construction trailer building databases. I also regularly had the task of entering strangers’ homes to inspect basements for methane. A police officer and a muscular geologist would always escort me which made me feel safer.
Being out in the Old Ford Dump all by myself was a nice change of pace on lovely spring days. It just looked like a park to the casual observer. I would take my truck out to the site with a five-gallon bucket and shovel. The PAH-contaminated waste that I cleaned up at the dump might be best described as tar. On warm days, it oozed freely out of the ground and had the consistency of taffy. It smelled like barbeque. I scooped up the tar with a transfer shovel (and I sometimes even pulled it out of the ground directly with my gloved hands). When the bucket was full, I would heave it in my truck bed and take it to the disposal facility.
Our rotation was 10 days onsite (including the afternoon of the second Sunday free) and then we had four days back at home. During our free time we socialized a lot, visiting the local establishments, trying things like the Super Duper Yuper Burger and taking shots of mystery alcohol in basement bars. Then during the four days I was home, I just had time to spend a few precious moments with my husband, pay the bills, do the laundry, and then repack the truck.
I was able to resist the desire to smoke throughout it all. For this, I am eternally grateful. Among the carcinogens in cigarette smoke are PAHs. Several PAHs known to be carcinogens also existed in the tar I was elbow-deep in at the Old Ford Dump. Spending six months cleaning up the area around Kingsford was simply trading one exposure of PAHs for another. I don’t choose to see it that way.
My time there allowed me to separate myself from the parts of my life that were triggers to smoke and in doing so, I was able to rid myself of a horrible habit. The work in Michigan may have been one of the more dangerous sites I worked on but it saved me tens of thousands of dollars I would have spent on cigarettes over the past 24 years, freed me from the schedule of smoking, and likely has prolonged my life.