Alyssa Carpenter knew the doctors were wrong. The growing nodules on her thyroid were not caused by “poor life choices” or other personal factors. The love for the outdoors that was fostered from her childhood spent on Bent Mountain stayed with her into her early 20s as she continued biking, hiking and staying in good physical condition. So the sudden lack of energy and inability to keep up with everyone around her had to be caused by something external.
The nodules had swollen to the point she could see them bulging out of her throat by the time she returned for a six-month check-up. Just one month later, she underwent a surgery to remove her entire thyroid gland that had rapidly turned into goiter. Carpenter’s health has stabilized since her thyroidectomy, though she will remain dependent on synthetic thyroid medication for the rest of her life.
No one was providing her with any conclusive answers why her life had suddenly been turned upside down at such a young age. She realized she’d have to solve her own medical mystery. She didn’t have to look far. Only a couple of miles from her home of the past five years stood the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, also known as the Radford arsenal.
Carpenter’s experience is not unique to the area. Her story is featured in a new documentary, FALLOUT, which recounts the health issues suffered by Carpenter along with Kathy Pfaff Bowman and Bill Laws, who all lived near or worked at the Radford arsenal. The first screening of FALLOUT was held April 7 at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art. There are also plans to submit FALLOUT to several regional film festivals including the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, Health in Focus Film Festival in Boston, Bedford International Film Festival in Bedford County and Sidewalk Film Festival in Alabama.
“I knew our community needed to hear the narratives of the people whose lives have been negatively impacted by this in devastating ways,” said Carpenter. “[It might be] the only way people would open their eyes.”
The arsenal did not respond to Cardinal’s questions, but in a ProPublica article released in 2017, J.C. King, the director of munitions in the office of the assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and the environment, sent in a statement regarding the arsenal’s open burn permit, “State and federal regulators and DoD [Department of Defense] scrutinize these operations to ensure the installation is operating in compliance with permits in a safe and environmentally responsible manner.”
Not long after her diagnosis in July 2020, Carpenter was reflecting on some of the information she learned through the environmental coalition she was a part of during her time as an undergraduate student at Virginia Tech. A community member had brought the open burn practices of the arsenal to the group’s attention, as the industry had been burning the chemical components of bombs, bullets and other explosives for years. This inspired Carpenter to co-found Citizens for Arsenal Accountability, whose purpose was centered on stopping the plant from releasing toxic chemicals that had been seeping into the surrounding air, water and soil since World War II.
While speaking with a friend about this activism work around the time of her operation, Carpenter recalled hearing about the noxious fumes – particularly with the compound perchlorate found in rocket propellant and explosives – and thyroid issues, even among the young, healthy college students living nearby.
This toxic relationship was not a rumor. The 2017 investigation conducted by ProPublica on the Radford Army Ammunition Plant found “the rate of thyroid diseases in three of the surrounding counties is among the highest in the state, provoking town residents to worry that emissions from the Radford plant could be to blame.” No official source or statement has established the connection between the arsenal’s open burning and local thyroid complications. However, the report includes medical professionals making the link between local air samples measuring levels of perchlorate and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s study of the rocket fuel’s effect on the thyroid gland.
Carpenter emerged from her surgery feeling hurt and angry about what she had to go through, but also what was unfolding in a place she loved dearly. As she began revitalizing her work with Citizens for Arsenal Accountability to raise awareness and also looking for a way to find her voice again, she received a phone call in October 2020 from an old Tech friend, Madison Hill, who was interested in filming a documentary about the arsenal as the thesis project for her master of fine arts in experimental and documentary arts at Duke University.
“It all came together perfectly because we were looking for each other at the same time to work on the same thing,” Carpenter said.
Over the following year, the two researched, developed relationships, interviewed and filmed to tell the story. With only a $1,000 grant from the Duke MFA in experimental and documentary arts program, most of the production costs, including the $10,000 equipment and additional $5,000 to 10,000 in expenses, came out of the pockets of the young filmmakers.
“I knew our community needed to hear the narratives of the people whose lives have been negatively impacted by this in devastating ways,” said Carpenter. “[It might be] the only way people would open their eyes.”
Flickers of black and white flame as well as varying filters are woven into the three interviews throughout the 20-minute documentary. These unique qualities of the film are more than just artistic preference.
Hill hand processed and then conducted a variety of experiments with the analog components to produce the filters and other visual features of the documentary. After determining exactly what was being released in Radford’s environment, she immersed the film in these same chemicals such as ammonia and chlorine. The different properties of each substance create “their own visual motif,” as Hill explained, and each are distinctive throughout the documentary.
As explained at the end of the film, “all analog components featured in this film have been hand processed with constituents present in the air, soil and water in the region surrounding the facility including variations of dioxins, chlorine, ammonia, and sulfuric acid.”
Given their corrosive effect, she had to manipulate multiple other factors from exposure time, temperature and dilution in her experiments.
“My whole idea is that contamination is so invisible so how do I make invisible contamination visible,” Hill said. “I wanted to process it [the film] with chemicals from the facility to visualize the effect of the chemicals on the film in comparison with the damaging effects it has on the human body.”
“[Producing FALLOUT was] empowering, but cut with the reality that the work we’re doing about that facility is making people sick,” explained Carpenter. “We’re doing this work for a good reason but knowing it’s hard work to do but also that something to take into consideration is that telling stories over and over again can be traumatic. These are not easy stories to tell, you’re putting your life story and sensitive things you’ve been through out into the public eye.”
Hill and Carpenter were especially conscious of all they were asking of those they interviewed. The months leading up to the actual interviews were spent traveling to Radford and West Virginia to begin laying a foundation of trust and compassion with each individual. Hill went to see Bill Laws, the final story told in the documentary, while he was receiving cancer treatment at a hospital in Durham. Together, the two producers even journeyed to his home to visit him in hospice to speak with him during the last few days of his life.
“It was devastating that he lost all of his time with grandchildren and family that we could tell he loved dearly,” said Carpenter about the time they were able to spend with him. “We wanted to make sure we were doing his story correctly with his experience in mind and letting him share and being grateful he was willing to share with us.”
Laws’ account revealed another aspect of the story about the town’s complicated relationship with the arsenal. He spent over a decade working directly with the incinerator and mentions in the film how his family was most likely slightly more financially stable than the majority of locals due to his position.
“I don’t know how much we’re giving up for the cash we’re getting,” he said with a small smile in the documentary.
Because many in the community quickly rise to the defense of one of the area’s biggest employers, Hill and Carpenter emphasized that their focus is simply providing an opportunity for people to open up about their experiences and bring awareness to what is taking place around the arsenal. Hill intentionally does not point a finger directly at the piles of burning ammunition throughout the film, rather letting the interviewees allude to the toxic water and air as some of the B-roll includes shots of the plant itself.
“People feel nervous to engage with our work,” Carpenter said. “When they hear we want open burning to end, they might conflate that with ‘they don’t deserve a good job’ or ‘they want to shut down the facility,’ but we want both safer work practices and a good job to take care of one’s family.”
Hill and Carpenter’s FALLOUT is intended to function as a platform, but also a call to action. In the summer of 2021, environmental regulatory agencies renewed the arsenal’s permit for the incineration of explosive and other ammunition materials for the next 10 years despite the 1984 congressional ban preventing U.S. industries from disposing of hazardous waste through open burn pits. Citizens for Arsenal Accountability already have their eyes set on the date in 2030 when the permit will be back up for evaluation. They are focused on initiating community discussions about what is taking place in their backyard, hopeful that increasing awareness and education will encourage more support when the time comes to fight again.
“[We are] also creating a lot of networks to connect with other communities dealing with the same issues to nationally end open burning and change the course of health and safety of people in all communities,” said Carpenter. “We want to be able to be a catalyst and work together and make as big of an impact as we can.”