🚀 go-pugleaf

Lisa <lisse@saintmail.net> wrote:
>...
>My online enquiry about Benzene was prompted by someone building a gas
>station right next to a primary school building, which houses over one
>thousand little schoolchildren.

Health risks will be maximized by snorting or drinking gasoline.
However, natural seeps of crude (some as light as "white gasoline") do
indeed exist in many locations around the globe, none of which are
likely to cause problems for you. The scenario about which you worry
exists between these extrema (and towards the latter). Benzene is
dangerous, but then so is standing in front of a moving train.

http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/chemicals/chem_profiles/benzene/benzene.htm

International standards and all the research indicate that there will
be no problem for the school children, any more than for kids playing
around, e.g., the Sespe Creek seeps in California.

The 7 year old son of one of our friends died a HORRID death from
A-plactic anemia due to benzene. He hated bugs and during the Texas
summers was always spraying himself with OFF and other repellents. He
had massive, direct exposure to benzene and benzene-related chemicals
in the bug repellents. They lived in Texas city next to a gasoline
refinery. It stank (and still does) all the time. But no other kids
came down with A-plastic anemia. His siblings were and are just fine.
So it was not the gasoline or the refinery or any of the other
"hot-button" possibilities, although these provided ample cause for
everyone to get into an uproar. It was OFF. So, the makers of OFF
apparently changed their recipe because several people came down with
the same or similar malady.

It did not help our friends.... but I learned alot about what can and
can not happen via exposure to toxic chemicals.

>...but when I was told that gasoline contains Benzene (among other
>toxic chemicals), and Benzene has been shown to cause various types of
>cancers, like Leukemia and bone marrow abnormalities, my concern
>regarding the case where someone building a gas station right next door
>to a school building only increases.

You'd thus expect that people working in and around gas stations would
have a **MUCH** higher incidence of cancer and leukemia, etc. But that
is not the case. People make a career out of tracking this sort of
thing.... and no one has found any data to suggest a higher morbidity
rate for people working at gas stations compared to other jobs.

>....	I am trying to stop the building of
>	a gas station which is located right
>	next to a school building

It passed whatever zoning laws are in effect for your area. Check with
the county commissioners or whoever approved of the site. They had to
run an environmental impact report. That report will contain all the
data you need to either whip yourself into a real frenzy, or find the
evil people responsible for building a gas station 6 inches from the
noses of all the little kids in the school, or why it is OK to build
gas stations 6 inches from the noses of little kids in schools, etc.

While you are at it, pay attention to how far other sorts of
businesses have to be from the school site as well. The presence of a
bar or a strip joint within eye-shot of the school is IMO a far
greater potential evil than a gas station (unless the station becomes
the source of school-time candy, cokes, cigarettes, hard or soft porn,
place to "hang-out", etc.).