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Join us for a FREE viewing of the documentary Dirty Laundry at the Normal Theater on Tuesday, March 4 at 7:00 p.m., hosted by the McLean County Museum of History in partnership with the Illinois State University Office of Sustainability, Environmental Health and Safety, and Department of Health Sciences.A panel discussion focusing on the impact chemicals and hazardous substances, such as asbestos, have on people and our environment will begin immediately following the film.
Dirty Laundry follows two cousins across the United States as they search for answers about how their 90-year-old grandmother and housewife died from a rare form of cancer whose only cause is asbestos exposure. The answer: asbestos dust on the clothes of her husband, who worked at Shell Oil’s Wood Reiver Refinery in Roxana, Illinois. Through interviews and research, they uncover a trail of corporate disinterest and broken families, bound together by a common thread—asbestos exposure and the death sentence of mesothelioma.
This film reveals the stark reality of corporate dissembling and the apparent disregard for both the lives lost and the lives still being placed at risk from the continued manufacture and use of asbestos, the creation of open asbestos waste sites, and the reckless excavation of contaminated ground.
Following the film, the panel discussion will focus on several topics, including air quality and the impact it has on people’s health, how asbestos and other hazardous building materials are handled in older facilities, and the impact asbestos exposure had on the family of one worker at the UNARCO manufacturing plant located on Bloomington’s west side.
This program is a part of the Museum’s ongoing programming related to the temporary exhibit, A Deadly Deception: The Asbestos Tragedy in McLean County, sponsored by LiUNA! Midwest Region Laborers’ International Union of North America. Mike Matejka, co-curator of the exhibit and local labor historian, will moderate the panel.
The panelists are:
Dr. Guang Jin, Professor in Health Sciences at ISU
Adam McCrary, Director of Environmental Health and Safety at ISU
Terry Redman, whose father worked at UNARCO and ultimately died due to asbestos-related disease in 1977
Questions? Please contact the Museum's Education Department at [email protected].
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
200 N Main St, Bloomington, IL, United States, Illinois 61701
