Dick Durbin Quotes

You can’t imagine what it’s like to live in one of the nine counties effected in West Virginia …what it’s like to not have any water except to flush commodes and put out fires….It has devastated this area … everything is closing … no restaurant is allowed to open…, the people are in their homes, the schools are closed. You’re not supposed to take showers and certainly not supposed to drink the tap water…. I smelled it and tasted it, and I knew something was very wrong.

I believe that we have a huge problem with the water in America. We don't want to make that connection that these chemicals, at varying levels, in our water supplies, over time, is, in fact, related to our disease process. And it concerns me greatly.

Contaminated water is not a problem limited to Flint. Think of New Jersey, where school fountains were found to contain unsafe levels of lead. Or the EPA's 33,000 superfund sites, which are highly-polluted areas that require long-term clean-up operations. The problem is so large that it feels insurmountable.

You know, unfortunately, as to PFOS, it's starting to look like all of us. This is all of our problems. You know, all of us have been exposed to some degree to these same chemicals.

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, has shown us what can happen when we ignore the warning signs of lead poisoning and corroding pipes.

Government and other scientists have identified hundreds of chemicals that are linked to diseases in small concentrations and that are unregulated in drinking water or policed at limits that still pose serious risks.

When you can light your water on fire due to methane contamination in your ground water, what else can you do but laugh?

Every article I wrote in those days, every speech I made, is full of pleading for the recognition of lead poisoning as a real and serious medical problem.

Lead poisoning is an insidious menace that robs our citizens of their fullest potential.

But I suspect most people across the United States are still unfamiliar with PFAS and don't realize the exposure that occurs. I'm going to continue doing what I can elevating that awareness.

Look, I'm not a water expert. I'm not a scientist. But I've been to Flint. I've seen what's happening. We have a third-world situation still going on in the United States of America. That's the truth.

We're talking about a chemical that's out there. Not just on one farm in West Virginia, not even just in the public water of an entire community there, but it's now in water all over the country, all over the planet, in the blood of virtually every living thing.

No Minnesotan should ever experience preventable health risks from breathing polluted air or from drinking unsafe water.

Lead levels exceeding federal thresholds pose a serious public health threat, particularly for more vulnerable populations.

They just tested the tap water in Los Angeles and they found traces of estrogen and antidepressants in the tap water. So it's nice to know my son's going to grow up and have huge breasts but it's not going to bother him that much.

I mean, think of Flint. I mean, think of the lead poisoning of thousands of poor and black children across the United States.

I’m just some white guy in California, and nobody in Flint is going to pay any attention to what I’m saying. I don’t blame them. Nor do doctors want to publicly agree with me, because nobody wants to downplay the effects of lead poisoning. I get that too. I can already imagine the number of tweets and emails I’m going to get demanding to know why I think Flint is no big deal.

When elected officials abandon our environment and ruin our natural resources, public health is endangered. I know the importance of providing a clean environment for our children; I have attended more than one funeral for a child who has died from an asthma attack.

Of course, as consumers, we want cheap and good products; however, if these production processes are exceeding wastewater discharge standards and even causing heavy metal pollution, they will cause long-lasting damage to the ecological environment and public health.

I moved into this neighborhood, and I was walking on this beach with my kids, and we came across a sign that said, 'Water's polluted, no swimming.' And I didn't have any answers.

The asbestos problem impacts everyone.

One out of six women are toxic with mercury. Mercury comes out of coal plants and chlorine plants. I am toxic, I deal with symptoms, children are born with, you know, autism - there is an epidemic in this country. This is like, the air that we breath.

I do care about the mercury contamination which this country will be experiencing because of the attempted sellout by this administration to special interests which will result in more mercury in the blood of young children in America.

For example, lead paint in old houses can be a greater threat to children's health than lead that may be under some industrial site where there are no children.

The Safe Drinking Water Act was passed in 1974 after tests discovered carcinogens, lead and dangerous bacteria flowing from faucets in New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Boston and elsewhere.