What chemical did Erin Brockovich discover?
chromium-6
If you’ve seen the film “Erin Brockovich,” you know how a California utility poisoned the drinking water of a small desert town with a cancer-causing chemical called chromium-6. You may be shocked to learn that more than two decades later, chromium-6 contaminates the drinking water of two-thirds of Americans.
How did the water get contaminated in Hinkley?
PG&E operates a compressor station in Hinkley for its natural-gas transmission pipelines. This led to groundwater pollution, affecting soil and contaminating water wells near the compressor station with a plume originally about 2 miles (3.2 km) long and nearly 1 mile (1.6 km) wide.
What kind of chemical is in the water in Hinkley?
Residents of the town of Hinkley, California, alleged that PG&E knowingly dumped wastewater contaminated with chromium-6, a known carcinogen since 1925, into the region’s groundwater.
What was found in Erin Brockovich’s tap water?
A few years ago, The Environmental Working Group did a study of U.S. tap water, and it found a chrome-plated, potentially carcinogenic mess. They tested tap water samples from 35 cities and found chromium-6 in 31 of them.
What was the name of the gas station in Erin Brockovich?
The utility company was found liable for dumping hexavalent chromium (aka chromium-6), a carcinogen used to suppress rust formation at the Hinkley gas compressor station, into an unlined pond in the ’50s and ’60s. The chemical seeped into the town’s groundwater.
Is the water in Hinkley really that toxic?
Beyond the secondary plume’s radius, much of the water in Hinkley is clean of chromium-6 (though other naturally occurring contaminants like lead and uranium remain a concern). The chromium-6 plume only extends so far from the PG&E station, drifting north with flows coming off of the underground Mojave River.
Why did Erin Brockovich go to Hinkley, CA?
Brockovich smelled a rat. She drove to Hinkley to investigate her suspicions, going from door to door interviewing residents. Almost everyone Brockovich met had symptoms ranging from chronic nose bleeds, sores and asthma to breasts cysts and cancer.