Next week I will teach VCU’s summer reading Full Body Burden to my new classes of freshman, some of who love it, some who hate it, and some who simply don’t care much either way.
When I teach novels I know how to dive in. Creative non-fiction is another story. When I first read the book with our selection committee, I did not give much thought to Iversen’s personal narrative, aside from my estimation that it would be a story to which students could relate. The rest of the book, the terrifying narrative of widespread systematic contamination, of bonuses granted to CEO’s for meeting quotas at the life expense of the local population, the remarkable disinterest on behalf of the judicial system, were the narratives I planned to use in my class this semester. My impulse was to treat it as non-fiction, and ignore the creative.
Then, three weeks ago, I adopted a dog, and as a result I have been thinking more and more about Iversen and her childhood pets, who occupy a bulk of the text. As part of our newly establishing routine, my dog and I take regular walks down to the river, along its banks, across the footbridge, and around Belle Isle.
As part of this habit, we spend some of our early mornings sitting as far out in the river as the tide and the rocks permit. We watch bald eagles and herons, we wade around in the water, and she does some swimming. Recently we were there with my partner, who commented that the dog* shouldn’t be allowed to drink from the river. I thought it unnecessarily prohibitive until I noticed a sign warning against eating any fish or other wildlife retrieved from the river due to mercury poisoning and other contaminants.
My partner is more practiced than I at wondering what is in the environment around him. On a Tuesday afternoon in July 1986 a train derailed in his small hometown of Miamisburg Ohio, rupturing a 12,000 gallon drum of white phosphorus, which promptly ignited. The tanker burned, as the Miami Valley Disaster Authority report notes, “with no sign of let up” through the following Saturday. Cleanup was expected to continue through October. His family was initially evacuated, but crossed police lines to return home before the area was approved for habitation. Three years later a tritium leak from a local nuclear-production plant occurred in the same town. It was dubbed “minor” by local and national authorities, but today the acres surrounding the area are a lake of concrete. That same year the government closed a uranium processing facility located in Fernald Ohio, less than an hour from Miamisburg. Today the Fernald facility is famous as the subject of a precedent-setting lawsuit against the Department of Energy for violations of the clean air act.
Many of the students I’ve spoken with so far about Iversen’s book exhibit at least one of two worrying dispositions: exasperation at hearing yet again about environmental concerns or a sort of resigned acceptance that everything is contaminated and there’s nothing left to do about this.
If the threats posed by such contamination are as serious as environmental and health scientists assert, it seems that exasperation and resignation might be attitudes we can’t afford. It’s only one year after the earthquake shut down the North Anna Nuclear Power Plant. 50 miles is a short distance for contamination from an improperly maintained plant to travel. I can easily avoid eating fish from the James River, but every day I eat food grown in our yard which sits less than a mile from the James. Ground water is not stationary. Even if we could isolate my tomatoes from the river, it would be a challenge to slow the tide of people and pets who pass my home on their way to Belle Isle. It’s not only my dog that swims there. My students swim there.
If I’ve learned from Iversen’s book, it’s that there’s no way to be certain what we will find in the environment where we recreate. Rocky Flats itself will soon be a public park, hoping to attract hikers, campers, swimmers, possibly even hunters. On their website you can find copies of the signeage that will be posted on the site. It reads in part:
“The levels of contamination on refuge land are low, meet conservative state and federal cleanup standards, and are similar to adjacent lands.”
The signs as planned will then quickly remind hikers “There are hazards involved in any form of wildland recreation,” as though the plutonium contamination is akin to the risk of snakebite or injury. Here is what Iversen has to say about the soil in the soon-to-be public refuge:
“The top three feet of soil at Rocky Flats will be cleaned up to 50 picocuries per gram, soil three feet below the surface will be cleaned up to a level of 1,000 to 7,000 picocuries per gram. There will be no limit on the amount of plutonium that will remain in the soil six feet or more below the surface.”
For comparison, she gives the contamination levels at other sites used by the US:
“The bomb test sites at Enewetak Atoll and Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean are lower, at 40 and 14 picocuries per gram of soil, respectively. The Livermore National Lab in California is at 10 picocuries per gram of soil….Only the Nevada Test Site, where the nuclear bombs were tested, is higher, at 200 picocuries per gram of soil—and then only for part of the site that is not open to the public (319-320).”
It’s hard to know how to respond to numbers like this, though in part that is my job. It’s also difficult, now, to know how I should feel about the signage at Belle Isle. Is mercury poisoning analogous to plutonium contamination? I am not a scientist. I don’t have the skills to assess these problems, or even to do a simple soil test in my front yard.
I wonder if this is where the “creative” is both necessary and dangerous. Art can engage otherwise emotionally disengaged readers. Art is also imprecise; it’s effective, but affected. It can give the impression of certainty where we otherwise lack it.
In class we’ll look at poetic works on environmental issues in concert with Iversen’s autobiographical writing. We’ll contrast it with her more aggressive scientific research. We’ll open the floor for debate on what role, if any, the creative has in non-fiction. Without a personal narrative, without an emotional frame, no story about Rocky Flatts could be complete. The emotional, however, can derail is from the data, can give us a sense of certainty where we’d probably need 6 years of training minimum before we can begin to assess the truth for ourselves.
*full name Captain Delphine Angua Überwald, but answers to Dela, Dellamorte Dellamore, or at times, Delly Beans.
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Iversen, Kristen. Full Body Burden. New York: Crown, 2012.
Miami Valley Disaster Services Authority. “After Action Report on the Miamisburg Train Derailment.” 29 Sept. 1986.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Final Rocky Flats Signeage.” Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. fws.gov/rockyflats. 12 Dec. 2011.
Wald, Matthew. “U.S. Will Pay Ohio to Settle Charge at Nuclear Plant.” The New York Times. 2 Dec., 1988.