oh man I love talking about this
short version: Trichloroethylene is a carcinogenic industrial pollutant that happened to be one of the primary water pollutants at a Superfund site near where I grew up.
long version: I have a long-running fascination with New Jersey's Superfund sites. Despite not being a very large state, NJ has more EPA designated toxic waste sites than any other US state. (Not per-person or per-area: just the most in general). Probably just due to being a densely populated industrial area back when environmental regulations were often even worse than they are today.
also heres me wearing the shirt i designed with all of new jersey's superfund sites on the back :)
but why trichloroethylene specifically? why "trichloroethylene queen"?
well. it is clear and colorless with a cyanide-like sweet smell. it has a history of being used as an anaesthetic, up until the 1960s. so, it feels fitting to use as a cultural signifier: the grease of our postindustrial sins, the cost of progress. (certainly I am not against progress in any sense of the word. i am probably more for the nebulous idea of "progress" than I should be.)
the history of large-scale industrial pollution haunts the Rust Belt. over decades, billions of dollars have been spent on remediation, but we're still not "done": like Lady Macbeth washing the blood off her hands, we never really will be.
that's why. trichloroethylene queen... maybe as some sort of weird coping mechanism for my sometimes very difficult to cope with chronic GI pain, I blame things that I am 99% certain are unrelated, but at least give me something to point the finger at other than random chance.
If nothing else, there are certainly many other people who are more clearly affected by the health affects of exposure to certain industrial chemicals. including my own family members.
(not trichloroethylene in particular in that case, but who could blame me for choosing the one with the catchy six-syllable name?)
