ANNISTON, Ala. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- More than 20 million Americans have diabetes and 54 million people are considered pre-diabetic and at high risk of developing it. Although genes play a role, risk factors include age, obesity, physical inactivity and race. Now, researchers believe they have found a new cause of this life threatening condition … and it could be found in your own backyard. Now, Ivanhoe explores a place that's considered one of the most contaminated towns on Earth, where diabetes is running rampant.

For decades now, Steve Cooper has made his living off the land, selling the produce he grew in his own garden. That was until he found out the veggies he grew were laden with a deadly chemical manufactured in a factory, just a stones throw from his home in Anniston, Ala., in the same neighborhood where his grandparents, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers and cousins all grew up.

"All of them dead but me," Cooper told Ivanhoe. "I'm the only one left livin'." And now Cooper lives in pain. "I'm diabetic," he said. "I've got poor circulation."

Cooper lost his leg to diabetes … and he's not the only one. A groundbreaking study reveals that the people who live in the shadows of this plant may be at a higher risk of diabetes.

"We believe this community is probably the most, was the most, highly exposed community in the world," Allen Silverstone, Ph.D., an immunotoxicologist at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, told Ivanhoe.

Anniston was home to one of only two U.S. plants that made polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs from the late 20s to the 1970s. 

"Diabetes is one thing that can happen and that probably happens because these chemicals can affect glucose metabolism," Dr. Silverstone said.

Before being banned in 1979, PCB chemicals could be found in batteries, paint and wood floor finishes. They were used in thousands of factories across the country … the waste from manufacturing it buried in the ground around the plant.

"It was just dumped in the ground so every time there is a flood, the stuff is spread throughout the community and then pigs and cows, vegetables, everything becomes a source," Dr. Silverstone explained.

"They've created a genocide," Anniston resident Shirley Baker said. "There's at least a couple of generations that have just been wiped out." Baker helped implement one of the largest PCB health impact studies.

"An article came out in the paper that said the perfect place to study death was Anniston," Baker said.

The study found PCBs may be the newest risk factors for diabetes in adults between the ages of 35 to 54, regardless of their race, obesity, family history or gender. The people who live near the plant had levels four times greater than those who don't live here – and had two to four times greater risk of getting diabetes.

"We caught tadpoles and crawfishes in the ditches and stuff," resident Reverend Frederick Durant recalled to Ivanhoe. His sister -- one of the 20,000 people who won money in lawsuits against the Monsanto company -- died last year. The check was for less than a thousand dollars.

"My mother is now going through the same slow death that my sister faced," Reverend Durant said.

The plant, which is now owned by Solutia, Inc. would not talk on camera for this story, but did send a statement, saying that after residents of Anniston filed a lawsuit against the original company Monsanto, Solutia and Monsanto have cleaned up contaminated soil around homes, completed a wastewater treatment facility project and they promise to continue to work with the environmental protection agency. Even though PCBs haven't been made here for 30 years, there are still high levels detected in the soil, water and the food chain.

"Right now, there is not a lot of ways to get PCBs out of a person's body and we also don't know if the changes that are started would reverse." Dr. Silverstone said.

The unknown leaves some angry. "If I could get away with it, I would go over there and blow the damn thing up," Cooper said.

Others are left feeling lost. "You try not to let it get you down, but it's just a slow process of death," Reverand Durant said. "That's just the nature of living in Anniston right now."

But most everyone says they'll stay. "Most of the community members here feel like this is home," Baker said. "We can't afford to move so we just live here and we'll die here."

Another shocking discovery -- the children of parents with high PCB levels scored nine points lower in one IQ measurement than children whose parents did not have high levels of PCBs in their bodies.

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