WHAT’ S KILLING
GUAMANIANS
The island is tainted with 25 toxic chemicals
The food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe are tainted with toxic chemicals lurking beneath an idyllic facade. Measuring approximately 30 miles long and 4 to 11.5 miles wide, Guam is contaminated with 25 types of toxic chemicals detected at 39 military landfill sites in Yigo. While most of these landfills have long been closed, the legacy of their danger lingers.
Due to evaporation, rain, infiltration and wind dispersion of the toxic chemicals in the dumpsites for more than 50 years, the contamination has spread all over Guam, according to the long-forgotten report prepared in 2007 by former Guam epidemiologist Dr. Luis Szyfres.
Szyfres, former professor of natural sciences at the University of Guam, cited the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’ s findings that concentrations of toxic chemicals in Guam’ s soil and groundwater exceeded the acceptable levels. They were detected in landfill sites which hosted deteriorated drums of chemicals, asphalt wastes, scrap metals, sanitary wastes, construction debris and solvents from the 1950s and 1960s.
Arsenic is among the toxic substances poisoning Guam.“ The spring waters that discharged from the northern lens aquifer in Guam reported unusually high levels of arsenic,” reads the report.“ There are more than 100 groundwater wells in this part of the island( North). Some of these wells are connected through conduits that flow out as springs or seeps along Tumon Bay.”
By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
The toxic chemicals found on Guam, all of which were on the Superfund’ s National Priorities List, include aluminum, barium, antimony, arsenic, cadmium, copper, chromium, lead, manganese, unspecified metals, nickel, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, selenium, silver, thallium, tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxins, total petroleum hydrocarbons, vanadium, volatile organic compounds, trichloroethylene, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes and semi-volatile organic compounds and zinc.
Szyfres theorized that the presence of toxic chemicals caused the abnormal rate of cancer prevalence on Guam. On average, one person is diagnosed with cancer every day in Guam, based on an age-adjusted rate for every 100,000 people, and one resident dies of cancer every 2.3 days, according to the University of Guam’ s 2024 Cancer Registry.
Szyfres’ study found that the incidence and mortality rates of chronic diseases on Guam have epidemic proportions. Death rates are up to 2,000 percent higher on Guam than in the continental U. S.
The prevalence of certain types of cancer is far higher in Guam than in the mainland. These include nasopharyngeal cancer, which is 1,999 percent higher in Guam; cervical cancer, 65 percent higher; uterine cancer, 55 percent higher; liver cancer, 41 percent; diabetes, 150 percent; Ischemic heart disease, 15 percent; and kidney failure, 12
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