News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Monday December 15th 2025
Letter to the community: Pesticide pollution is perplexing: Arsenic 1938 to 2019
The StarTribune article entitled “Superfund Site Mostly Clean,” Aug. 1, 2019, B1, page 1, is incomplete and leaves questions unanswered.
For example, reporting that there are only nine property owners who refused soil testing does not tell the whole story.Though the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is tracking this, the number of properties refusing testing puts the onus or blame on the property owners as if they are the only problem remaining.
When the EPA tested a total of 472 yards, it refused to test outside a three-quarter mile radius of the original site of contamination at 28th and Hiawatha. This three-quarter mile parameter limits our knowledge of how far out arsenic soil contamination extends. So, we do not have a true measure of how far out and how many properties are still contaminated with arsenic.
In addition, the StarTribune article refers to East Phillips alone, as if the wind only blew the arsenic pesticide in one direction from 1938-1968 when the Reade pesticide plant was in operation. There are other surrounding communities where 18 inches of topsoil was removed in Seward, Longfellow and Corcoran as was done in Phillips. And, as can be seen in the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) photo of the Arsenic Triangle at E.… Read the rest “Letter to the community: Pesticide pollution is perplexing: Arsenic 1938 to 2019”
Keep citizen journalism alive!
Water is life: Drink and live
Step Up interns
by Abigail Abby Samuel, Kristian Nordland, Elhan Abdullahi Jama, Asha Ali Hussein, Kristian Herrera Amigon, Angela Yareli Collazo, Ismael Castro, Abdinasir Jama: Cultural Wellness Center Backyard Community Health Hub STEP-UP internsÂ
The human body is made up of 60% water. The longest a human can go without water is only 3 days! That”™s how important water is.Â
Not only does it help you survive, but it also offers a lot of benefits for your body. Water helps our physical shape, helps us exercise, and helps our brain function. Water is one of the most important substances on earth. All plants and animals must have water to survive. If there was no water, there would be no life on earth. This is daunting to think about and why we say water is life, so drink up and live.
Apart from drinking it to survive, people have many other uses for water. Water delivers important nutrients to all our cells, especially our muscle cells, postponing muscle fatigue and helping us lose weight and flushing toxins from our body. Water protects your many tissues, especially your spinal cord and joints. If you do not consume enough water, magnesium, and fiber, you may be more likely to experience constipation.… Read the rest “Water is life: Drink and live”