A study, reportedly considered "alarming" examining the pollution of areas in the Great Lakes Basin was suppressed by the CDC for seven months.   The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the 400 page study and has a link to excerpts of it at their site.  Article excerpt, Sheila Kaplan, Center for Public Intergrity: 

"The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen “areas of concern”—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.

In many of the geographic areas studied, researchers found low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer."

 The article continues:

"In a December 2007 letter to ATSDR in which he called for the release of the study, Orris wrote: “This report, which has taken years in production, was subjected to independent expert review by the IJC’s Health Professionals Task Force and other boards, over 20 EPA scientists, state agency scientists from New York and Minnesota, three academics (including myself), and multiple reviews within ATSDR. As such, this is perhaps the most extensively critiqued report, internally and externally, that I have heard of.”

Last July, several days before the study was to be released, ATSDR suddenly withdrew it, saying that it needed further review. In a letter to Christopher De Rosa, then the director of the agency’s division of toxicology and environmental medicine, Dr. Howard Frumkin, ATSDR’s chief, wrote that the quality of the study was “well below expectations.” When the Center contacted Frumkin’s office, a spokesman said that he was not available for comment and that the study was “still under review.”

From a cursory check of the report, it looks as though the sites in Wisconsin were the Fox River and Lower Green Bay (no surprise) , Black River, Crawford Creek (Superior Township), Sheboygan River, Menominee River, the Kinnickinnic River along with several other Milwaukee vicinity sites.  The report also lists many shoreline communities and areas on each of the Great Lakes comprising, or more accurately compromising, eight states and Canada along with all their inhabitants. 

It's been well established that pollution into ANY of the Great Lakes can migrate into the others, affecting river and watershed areas anywhere within the Great Lakes Basin.  Much of this is dependent upon the composition of the pollutants themselves but either way it's despicable.  The good thing about the report is it does list the CORPORATIONS involved and the types of toxins they are releasing and how (into the air, water...etc)  and amounts of each.  At least we'll know why we're dying.  No wonder people around here are so cranky, I just thought they had a fascist bent.

It's just sickening.  Last year Lake Michigan beaches were closed to swimming from Chicago up to and including Algoma. (I don't know about the eastern shore)  In fact, I wouldn't swim in the bay of Green Bay at all.  People do (up near Sturgeon Bay), but I wouldn't.  As far as the western lakeshore is concerned I'd go to Newport State park at the tip of Door County.  I went to Whitefish Dunes last year.  The beach is still open to swimming but the water didn't look the way....you know....that I like to remember it.......it looked ....well...kinda icky.