[00:09.95]Six weeks ago, the movie "Erin Brockovich" opened the United States.
[00:16.95]So far, it has earned at least 100,000,000 dollars.
[00:22.47]It tells a true story about a young woman who helped people in a California town gain money from an energy company.
[00:33.18]The people in the town of Hinckley accused the company of poisoning their water.
[00:38.84]Shep O'Neal has more.
[00:41.61]In the movie, as in real life, a young woman named Erin Brockovich made a discovery.
[00:48.67]She discovered that the town's ground water contained a chemical known as chromium six,or hexavalent chromium.
[00:58.31]The chromium had leaked from the town's energy company, Pacific Gas and Electric.
[01:04.99]The people of the town were suffering many health problems,
[01:09.62]including breast cancer, uterine cancer, Hodgkin's Disease, asthma and stomach diseases.
[01:17.92]They claimed their sicknesses were caused by the hexavalent chromium.
[01:23.10]They said the company knew its factory was leaking too much of the chemical into the water.
[01:30.31]The lawyers Erin Brockovich worked for began legal action against the company.
[01:37.46]Pacific Gas and Electric paid the town's people more than 300,000,000 dollars.
[01:45.27]Scientists, however, say no one can be sure that hexavalent chromium was responsible for the peoples' health problems.
[01:55.67]They say any one chemical does not cause so many different kinds of sicknesses.
[02:03.09]Hexavalent chromium is known to cause lung cancer if it is breathed into the lungs over a long period of time.
[02:12.81]But no studies show that hexavalent chromium in groundwater causes so many health problems.
[02:21.09]Officials at the United States Environmental Protection Agency agree there is no evidence that chromium in drinking water causes cancer.
[02:34.36]Yet the agency does not permit the chemical to be present in amounts larger than 100 micrograms.
[02:45.17]Government scientists believe that hexavalent chromium in drinking water is not healthy.
[02:53.48]They have done studies on rats, mice and dogs.
[02:59.46]The studies suggest that the chemical could damage the liver, kidneys and nerves.
[03:08.00]And it could interfere with the development of unborn babies.
[03:14.06]Whatever the scientific findings about hexavalent chromium,
[03:20.49]the people of Hinckley, California received a lot of money from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. |