Should Ford be held responsible for the sickness of the residents? Why or why not?

Check the videos at http://toxiclegacy.northjersey.com (Links to an external site.). Do the videos suggest that the contamination should concern you? If yes, why?

What would the various forms of environmental ethics described in this chapter say about Ford's actions?

On the Edge
Ford’s Toxic Wastes
Making cars produces a steady stream of toxic liquids and solids, and from the mid-1950s to about 1980 Ford Motor Company dumped thousands of tons of its Mahwah factory wastes on a wooded hilly 500-acre area of Ringwood, NJ, including unused paints, solvents, paint thinners, battery acids, and other chemicals. It was legal to dump wastes on bare land then, and Ford owned the wooded area. Yet a memo written at
the time by a Ford executive said, “The area used as a dumpsite for many years is leaching into a public water supply and represents a contingent liability.”23 The colorful sludge, which contained benzene, lead, arsenic, antimony, xylenes, and other poisonous sub-stances—some carcinogenic, like chromium which causes nosebleeds—was dumped on what locals call “Sludge Hill.” The slippery goo attracted local children who played with it and often came home with bad nosebleeds. A resident, Wayne Mann, said in 2009: “I was one of those children who used to go up on Sludge Hill . . . [I would] take a car hood and ride down, hand steering in the wet sludge. You paint your face. You lick it, whatever.”24 Many residents, including Mann, are sick. Some have already died of cancer. Adults and children suffer mysterious rashes, rare blood disorders, cancers, asthma, and other unusual diseases. The 600 people living in the area think the toxic sludge caused their illnesses and that too many are sick or dying to blame the sicknesses on chance. The area is populated by Ramapough, an impoverished Indian group who say they are victims of environmental injustice.
Although Ford admits they dumped the chemicals, John Holt, a company spokesperson, insists that the chemicals are not causing the sicknesses: “They’ve found no higher inci- dence of cancer or anything else here besides lung cancer.”25 Federal officials have reported that bladder cancer and non- Hodgkin’s lymphoma rates are also elevated but their numbers are too small to rule out coincidence. Statistics do not show cause-and-effect, so there is no way to know for sure what caused the diseases.
Holt points out that Ford spent 10 years cleaning up the site and in 1994, the U.S. EPA and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection certified Ford did an adequate job. However, in 2006, the EPA found Ford’s cleanup had left much of the wastes behind, so they relisted the site as contaminated. Ford was forced to agree to another cleanup, which by late 2015 they had yet to complete. Holt argued that the company had done a good job the first time: “This site was done and excavated and restored to its natural state . . . [according to] the requirements of the state of New Jersey and the EPA.”26 However, federal officials say that much of the sludge remains. A state official said, “Ford made false or misleading submissions to federal regulators” about their earlier cleanup.27 Rain has now carried the chemicals into streams, rivers, and under-ground. They have also entered the local food chain. By 2015 Ford had hauled out more than 40,000 tons of the sludge,28 but tens of thousands more remain. Much of the sludge had been poured into deep underground caves that are now almost impossible to access. Ringwood is just one of the country’s 1,300 Superfund (most contaminated) sites. Twelve million Americans live within 1 mile of a similarly contaminated Superfund site, and about 53 mil- lion live within 3 miles of one.