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We live about 5 minutes walk from Bishop England and smell it home, smell it around the library, and at Publix shopping center. We've also smelled it in the Daniel Island Park section, which is on the opposite end of the island from us.
Regardless of where you live on the island and whether you can smell it, the smell IS on the island, and it means the particulate is in the air, with all the health ramifications.
Just an aside - to me it doesn't smell like rotten eggs, it smells like wet brown paper bags.
Not sure why DI residents (especially those with children) don't try to do something about it, because it IS a health hazard, and it DOES detract from the island's appeal.
I live in a newer home in a subdivision in a quaint, Mayberry-esque town in Michigan. It is a wonderful place to live with the one issue being that there is a concrete plant on the other edge of town that emits a strong, rotten egg odor when they are mining their quarry for sulfur, which is normally about once a week. Sometimes I can even almost smell it inside the house.This quarry and this company were here long before my neighborhood was, and they are a good employer in the community that pays a living wage.
My chances of getting this place to change its ways or shut down? Zilch. And really, since they were here first and we had the opportunity to buy a home elsewhere, they owe us nothing, and I'm sure would be quick to tell me or anyone else that if we tried to address it. Since we're otherwise very happy here, we choose to live and let live, and apparently so does anyone else who can smell it.
I haven't had the opportunity to smell the paper mill that you speak of, but I have read similar complaints to yours about the paper mill up in Georgetown. It really does smell bad, I've smelled it many times when we were driving from our place in Myrtle Beach down to Charleston for the day. However, it employs many people in that area and was there before the tourists, snowbirds, and transplants. It is an unfortunate fact of life that sometimes you just have to live with things that you don't like. There is no perfect place. If the locals have been living with this odor for all these years and adjusted to it, they are not going to take kindly to a new transplant coming down and trying to change things, especially if this place is a large employer in the region. I can understand your concerns about the carcinogens, but the response you are most likely going to get will be, "Well, then why did you move here?"
Last edited by canudigit; 03-30-2015 at 07:37 AM..
Google health risks from paper mills and you find that they say that while the odor can be quite prominent, the emissions are so diluted that they aren't necessarily hazardous.
We live about 5 minutes walk from Bishop England and smell it home, smell it around the library, and at Publix shopping center. We've also smelled it in the Daniel Island Park section, which is on the opposite end of the island from us.
Regardless of where you live on the island and whether you can smell it, the smell IS on the island, and it means the particulate is in the air, with all the health ramifications.
Just an aside - to me it doesn't smell like rotten eggs, it smells like wet brown paper bags.
Not sure why DI residents (especially those with children) don't try to do something about it, because it IS a health hazard, and it DOES detract from the island's appeal.
The mill has been studied up the wazoo for health risks long before you even thought about moving to Charleston. You're making a big deal out of a smell, nothing more, because it's not a health risk no matter how much you want to equate the the smell with one. Not sure why you even moved to Daniel Island if you thought it was such a pressing health risk anyway.
Besides, it if were such a health risk, as you claim, don't you think residents who have lived around it for years and years would show health issues as a result?? They haven't. You chose to move there. The mill, with its smell, predated you and now you think 'something should be done'?
Quote:
Originally Posted by moneill
Google health risks from paper mills and you find that they say that while the odor can be quite prominent, the emissions are so diluted that they aren't necessarily hazardous.
I'm sorry that I have apparently ruffled feathers...
Please re-read my initial post - it wasn't me that stated that the mill emissions are a health risk. It was the Post and Courier article that stated so, which is why I raised the question.
The article cited the American Lung Association, the Coastal Conservation League and the EPA, who stated that the mill is in the top 10 facilities in SC for "toxic chemical release", that the level of particulate matter in the air "exceeds levels attributable to most chronic health conditions", and the American Lung Assn. gave Charleston County an F for "hazardous particle pollution" in the air.
Their words - not mine.
I was merely asking - after reading the article - if the mill IS a health issue (as stated in the article), why people don't want to do something about it, smell aside? I got the answer - the mill predates the houses and is a big employer.
macalan, you're not going to get a proper response here. Too many people have a vested interest in sustaining the myth that DI is barely affected by the mill and that emissions from the mill are harmless, heck I've heard DI residents go 'what mill?'
So you get responses like plough mud, or the plant was here first as if that's relevant to anything ... btw the slave markets and tobacco companies were also here first, that doesn't mean that mindsets don't evolve as people get more informed, and their sensibilities and opinions change accordingly.
But if they admitted there was an issue and did something about it they think it will devalue their interests, so they perpetuate the myth that they never even smell it, much less acknowledge that it might be bad for them. Watch how some of them hammer the organizations cited in the article. Don't take it personally, shooting the messenger is just another necessary part of their cognitive dissonance.
It's interesting though, you never get SoB residents trying to convince others the place isn't inundated with tourists, I'on residents telling people our lots are huge, or John's Island residents pimping traffic is super ... something about DI residents and a group delusion about that mill, as if the rest of us never drive by or visit there and as long as they keep saying it it will be so. It's funny sad.
The mill smells like roses compared to the levels of crap it was spewing out back in the seventies when I lived in Mount Pleasant. I suggest you register your complaints with the developers of Daniel Island and the local politicians who approved a new community downwind of an existing industrial facility...
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