Hatter-Mad

An Essay by Stephen Geez
www.StephenGeez.com
Art by Dizzy

It’s been said that the idiom “mad as a hatter” harkens back to the days when haberdashers used mercury in the processing and assembly of their pate-topping creations, and that prolonged exposure tended to make many hatters act somewhat—if not outright—non compos mentis.

I recall my public-school science teachers (let’s just say back when bellbottoms and hippie hair were popular) giving us vials of pure mercury to use in experiments.  We inquisitive students certainly enjoyed playing with the stuff, liquid metal cold to the touch, psychedelic fun on any flat surface.  It never occurred to us—nor apparently to school officials—that certain protective measures might be in order when handling so toxic a substance.  Verbal cautions—“Don’t swallow any, and wash your hands”—I think, were considered sufficiently prudent.

I enjoyed a relatively safe childhood, owing a lot to parents who, like most, tried to anticipate life’s hazards and protect me from them, their efforts including numerous verbal cautions of the “Don’t run with scissors” variety.  I used to divide my free time between reading books and prowling the wilderness to search for all manner of varmints in their still-natural, pockets-amid-suburbia habitats, both kinds of activities being reasonably considered non-toxic.

Some adults couldn’t make the same claim in those days, much to our national shame.  Way too many workers were exposed to chemical hazards fitting the categories of didn’t-know, should-have-known, knew-but-didn’t-worry, and (worst of all) knew-but-kept-it-secret.

At least I thought I was safe.

My favorite critter-crawly hangout sprawled behind our newly minted city hall, a pocket-amid-suburbia parcel of dense woods, clear streams, wildflowered clearings, and several shallow ponds.  I knew the place and its cycles well: the exact stumps where snakes produced writhing wads of little slitherers, glassy shallows serving tadpoles an all-day skeeter-catered larvae buffet, grassy stretches hosting fat toads and sleek leopard frogs gathering so thick that any intrusion would set off a hopping frenzy, sandy washes inviting turtles to jostle for space in the sun, and sweeping branches nestling all manner of colorful birds and their cheeping chicks.

Decades later, that area suffered a thorough bulldozing for the installation of a park, complete with the requisite macro-mosaic of baseball diamonds.  I’m not sure that constitutes site improvement, but it did serve a growing constituency demanding such facilities near to home.

Problem is, after numerous years of operation, soil on the ballfields was discovered to be toxic, contaminated with several substances, including dangerous concentrations of arsenic, lead, and mercury.  Only then did a local old-timer come forward with photos from way back showing hundreds of rusting chemical drums and other caustic debris dumped on that plot by, of all people, our infrastructure stewards at the county road commission.  Now local children are being medically tested, and the park has been closed indefinitely.  Fences and other formidable barriers protect local citizens from walking through what used to be their own neighborhood open-space oasis.

And I can’t help but remember all those days being the only soul out there digging for critter grub and wading through crayfish ponds just a few short summers after massive amounts of toxins were allowed to seep into the same soil and groundwater.  Worse, many years later I did experience a chronic medical problem that could reasonably be explained by childhood exposure, though I doubt I’ll ever know for sure.

It seems our quest to build a quality community often gets a bit ahead of itself, not only destroying much of what should have been preserved, but literally planting the germs of danger that lurk in wait for future generations to discover the hard way, sometimes too late.

We’ve made some progress, yet now children are scavenging recoverable elements from our toxic high-tech trash exported to Africa and Asia—as if that’s sending it far enough away.  We continue to lace our lands and waters and skies with the toxins that infiltrate nature’s cycles, many to settle eventually in our oceans, the nurseries of our life and ultimate source of our sustenance.  We allocate funds for clean-up, but not nearly enough, and too often allow those charged with this important mission to falter in their responsibilities.

Most of the time, we don’t notice what’s going wrong, except when we reach the tipping point, those occasions when something draws our attention: food supplies tainted by mercury, massive stretches of coral reef dying off, asbestos fibers drifting through old-building air, lead in the paint of foreign-manufactured toys . . .

And poisonous ball diamonds threatening youngsters just steps from their own homes.

That guy with pictures of the old road-commission dumpsite assumed “they” had cleaned it up before installing a park where his children’s children might watch a toad hopping into tall grass, or a butterfly flitting from clover bloom to bloom.

He was wrong.

And that leaves me wondering: How much can any of us afford to keep assuming?

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