Interview with Pamela Miller, Founder of Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT), (Part 2)

The Toxic Avengers

In this episode, we have Part Two of my interview with Pamela Miller, Founder and Executive Director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics, also known as ACAT.

We pick up our conversation as Pam describes the work that initially brought her to the west coast, from Florida, including her work for Washington state’s Department of Ecology to establish a National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Washington and Oregon.

We discuss her work with Greenpeace, and the environmental and health impacts of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, as well as the less well-remembered Nestucca spill in 1988.

Pam talks about the process of starting ACAT, and its early work researching the leakage of radioactive material from nuclear testing under Amchitka Island in the 1960s and 70s.

Finally, we discuss Pam’s work as Co-Chair of the International

Pollutants Elimination Network, IPEN, to implement the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (The POPs Treaty), and enact global bans of persistent chemicals including the pesticides lindane and endosulfan and the plastics additive UV238.

Here are links to the two reports on the impacts of underground nuclear testing in Alaska, that Pamela discusses in the interview:

Nuclear Flashback report: https://www.akaction.org/publications/nuclear-flashback-the-return-to-amchitka/

Nuclear Flashback Part two: https://www.akaction.org/publications/nuclear-flashback-part-ii-the-threat-of-the-u-s-nuclear-complex/