On January 30, 2000, a toxic chemical spill destroyed wildlife, devastated fish stocks and threatened the water supplies of nearly 2.5 million people in central Eastern Europe.

Romania’s Somes River, Hungary’s Tisza River and Yugoslavia’s Danube River, which is Europe’s largest waterway, were each catastrophically polluted. The toxic spill eventually reached the Black Sea and affected Romania, Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Serbia and Montenegro.

The spill began when the dam containing toxic waste material from the Baia Mare Aurul gold mine in North Western Romania burst and released roughly 3.5 million cubic feet (100,000 cubic metres) of waste water, heavily contaminated with cyanide, into the Lapus and Somes tributaries of the river Tisza, which is a tributary of the great Danube River.

Cyanide is extremely toxic and lethal to humans and animals, even in very small doses. It works by making the body unable to use life-sustaining oxygen. The cyanide-laced water continued to flow and soon reached the Danube, which flows through Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania.

At this point, the cyanide reached a deadly density of 800 times the accepted maximum safe level. The situation was going from bad to worse because Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania all get drinking water from the Danube. (As a point of reference, the American standard as regulated by the Environmenal Protection Agency allows 0.2 parts cyanide per 1 million parts water (0.2 ppm) in U.S. drinking water.)

Loyola de Palacio, the European Union Commissioner for Transport and Energy, called the cyanide spill “a catastrophe of European dimensions.”

Officials from Hungary called the spill Europe’s worst ecological disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant calamity in the Ukraine. Shortly after this disaster, Hungary’s Tisza River was officially declared a dead river.

In fact, Hungarian towns along the Tisza were forced to ban the use of water, fishing and the selling of fish. While this move seriously threatened the livelihoods of many fishermen, authorities appeared to have no other choice. For the townspeople who lived along the Tisza, large amounts of emergency water had to be brought in because of the deadly contamination.

At the time of the spill, Serbia’s Environment Minister Blazic was quoted as saying, “The Tisza has been killed. Not even bacteria have survived.” Although the chemical was gradually being diluted by the river water and was beginning to lose some of its lethal effect, over the next weekend hundreds of dead and dying fish were reported collecting at the junction of the Danube and Tisza. This is an area just 50 kilometres upstream from the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade.

The allowable maximum of cyanide per liter of water is 0.1 milligram. By this time, at the Hungarian town of Szeged, which borders Yugoslavia, the cyanide level was 1.1 milligrams per liter. Roughly 300 tons of dead and dying fish were removed from the river and disposed of.

However, Hungary estimates that the overall fish kill throughout Hungary was 1,240 tons. Other wildlife, including Mute Swans, Black Cormorant, horses, foxes and various other carnivores as well as other domesticated animals were also affected by this toxic spill.

Following the Baia Mare cyanide spill, various environmental assessments were carried out by several international organizations to determine the affect this spill had on the Tisza River and its tributaries.

According to these reports, acute effects were noted wherever the cyanide plume passed along the Tisza river system. Along with the dead fish, plankton and macrozoobenthos were also discovered.

The spill also drastically increased the existing heavy metal contamination of soil sediment, especially including copper, lead and zinc.

Despite the increased heavy metal pollution, it does appear that the Tisza River Basin’s ecosystem is trying to regenerate itself, and much of the wildlife is also recovering along the Tisza and its tributaries.

According to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), more dedicated action is necessary in addressing the environmental “insecurities” and threats to the region, which includes Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro.

The report also points specifically at the mining industry. In the wake of the Baia Mare cyanide spill, the mines, both active and inactive, are still considered sources of potential accidental pollution. They are singled out by the new UNEP report for special and close monitoring and attention.

Despite a recovering ecosystem, some of the pollution and heavy metal contamination along the Tisza River still remain and more needs to be done to clean up the water as much as possible.

International experts indicated that the main cause of the Baia Mare cyanide spill is a combination of design defects in the facilities, unexpected operating conditions and bad weather. Whatever the cause, this toxic spill certainly exacerbated the serious pollution problems this region has been facing for years.

Gary Works is an extensive steelmaking complex that sits on approximately 3,000 acres along the south shore of Lake Michigan just 15 miles southeast of Chicago. It is known as the number one polluter in the Lake Michigan basin and the third largest throughout all of the Great Lakes. In fact, U.S. Steel reported dumping more than 1.7 million pounds of pollution into the Grand Calumet in 2005, the last year for which figures are available.

Federal regulators sent Indiana environmental officials back to the drawing board to make sure Gary Works, U. S. Steel Corp’s largest manufacturing plant, reduces the amount of heavy metals and other toxic chemicals that flow directly into a Lake Michigan tributary. As it turns out, Gary Works is one of the largest polluters in the Great Lakes basin, which makes the company an extremely important environmental factor.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) blocked Gary Works’ proposal for a new water permit for its massive steel mill. This new permit would scrap, relax or omit the limits on the pollution that the U.S. Steel mill dumps into the Grand Calumet River. This is especially important because the Grand Calumet empties into Lake Michigan transmitting pollutants directly into the lake.

The EPA blocked the permit issued by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management in a letter dated October 1. The letter informed Indiana regulators that the EPA will not allow any new permit for Gary Works until significant pollution problems are remedied. As stated in the Clean Water Act, because the USEPA has authority over state environmental regulators, Indiana’s hands are tied.

The EPA’s letter rebuked the Indiana Department of Environmental Management for giving U.S. Steel five years to limit several extremely toxic and potentially deadly pollutants, including mercury, lead, cyanide, ammonia as well as a known cancer-causing chemical – benzo(a)pyrene.

The EPA also condemned Indiana for failing to impose more rigorous environmental pollution standards that would help clean up the Grand Calumet River. Hoosiers, especially those living around Lake Michigan or near the river itself, know that Grand Calumet is one of the most contaminated waterways in the Great Lakes region.

As written in federal law, states are required to renew water permits every five years in order to meet the Clean Water Act’s goal of limiting and eliminating pollution. However, Indiana has not reissued a water permit for U.S. Steel’s Gary Works since 1994.

Indiana officials now insist that this new proposed permit will do more to protect the environment than the old documents did. While officials are not answering many questions, they have promised that they will not finalize the permit until public concerns regarding Gary Works’ pollution problems are addressed.

In a document previously posted on the Internet, Indiana regulators stated they had removed some of the more stringent pollution limits from the old U.S. Steel permit because they did not believe the mill was that likely to exceed these limits in the future.

Environmental advocates, including the City of Chicago, dispute this logic. They say that having a lack of specific limits only clears the way for U.S. Steel to dump unlimited amounts of dangerous and potentially deadly pollutants, including oil and grease, lead, arsenic, benzene, fluoride and nitrates, directly into the water. This is the same water that will eventually end up in the drinking water system of countless people.

Critics of U.S. Steel’s Gary Works also remember that this mill has frequently has been cited for violating the Clean Water Act. Just one example – As part of a legal settlement with the EPA and United States Justice Department, U.S. Steel is attempting to dredge millions of cubic yards of highly contaminated sediment from the Grand Calumet River because of years of past environmental abuse and irresponsibility.

This latest fight involving a well-known Lake Michigan polluter comes just three months after Indiana regulators gave a BP refinery, in nearby Whiting, permission to significantly increase the amount of pollution it dumps into the lake. This is huge considering Lake Michigan is THE source of drinking water for Chicago and numerous other communities.

As a result of widespread public protest and even threats of legal action, BP later decided to step back and even promised to meet the more stringent pollution limits as stated in its old water permit.

U.S. STEEL Corp.
CHEMICALS RELEASED INTO the Grand Calumet/Lake Michigan – 2005
 

At the junction of the Mantaro and Yauli rivers in Peru, over 12,000 feet up in the Andes, is a small city of about 35,000 people. It is a community built on the mineral wealth of the mountains and exists only to serve the mines and the smelting company that processes the ore. In 1922 the Cerro de Pasco Corporation, A US-owned company with operations in South America, built a smelting plant in La Oroya, Peru. It was part of the expansion of North American and European corporate expansion into the resource-rich continent. A town grew up around the industrial complex.

The plant has changed hands many times over the years, including being owned by the Peruvian government from 1974 until 1997, when it was privatized and purchased by the Doe Run company of Missouri.

The plant gives off a list of toxins that includes high levels of lead, arsenic, cadmium, and zinc. A 1999 study of school children in La Oroya found that 99 percent of them were suffering from lead poisoning and 20 percent were so contaminated that they should have been hospitalized. They couldn’t be hospitalized because the facilities do not exist to treat such a large portion of the population, unfortunately.

Doe Run has taken some measures, though they are largely insufficient and seem more related to public relations than improving the lives of residents. Children under six years of age and having more than 45 micrograms of lead per decilitre of blood are bused to Casaracra, a 30 minute bus ride away, for eight hours a day. The World Health Organisation limit for lead is 10 micrograms per decilitre of blood, so to qualify the children have be 4.5 times the acceptable limit. Being removed from the environment for eight hours a day may reduce exposure somewhat, but the children still spend two thirds of their lives surrounded by emissions known to be toxic. The program also applies only to those six and under, leaving school-aged children exposed to the toxins 24 hours a day.

“Exposure to lead is more dangerous for young and unborn children. Unborn children can be exposed to lead through their mothers. Harmful effects include premature births, smaller babies, decreased mental ability in the infant, learning difficulties, and reduced growth in young children. These effects are more common if the mother or baby was exposed to high Center for Disease Control

Other pollutants, most notably cadmium, arsenic and sulphur dioxide, are also well above the acceptable limits set by the WHO. Children are not only more susceptible to the effects of exposure, but more likely to be exposed because they play in the dust and tend to put contaminated objects, such as toys, in their mouths.

As part of the privatization process, Doe Run was supposed to reduce toxic emissions and clean up the facility. In May 2006 Doe Run received its fourth extension to reduce toxic emissions and now has until 2009 to meet its targets. Given the lackadaisical attitude the company has exhibited so far, it is unlikely that it will do so without some sort of outside intervention.

Photo credit: Matthew Sully

The 2006 extension came in the wake of a civil court suit in which the Peruvian government was found at fault for failing to comply with the National General Health Law, the National Air and Environmental Quality Standards, and a Supreme Decree regarding declaring States of Emergency in cases of contamination.

Carlos Chirinos, the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (SPDA) attorney who handled the case said, “This decision confirms the urgent need to implement measures to protect the health and lives of the people in La Oroya that are affected by the smelter. We will closely monitor compliance with the court order, to ensure improvements in the quality of life and health for the populace, and the economic benefits that this will bring to the region.”

The Peruvian government has little power in their relationship with large companies. Not only does the government desperately need the revenue such companies provide, but the development and jobs are all that stand between many of the citizens and destitution. La Oroya is a perfect example of this kind of catch-22.

The land surrounding the complex is incapable of supporting crops. It is high in the mountains, where few crops can survive. It was marginal before the toxins released by the plant were a factor and is now incapable of supporting any sort of crop. The jobs that aren’t directly related to mining and smelting are spin-offs of those industries. Without the Doe Run plant, there would be no stores, schools, daycare, or medical facilities.

Photo credit: Matthew Burpee

La Oroya supports about 35,000 people locally but it also supports many more in various other parts of Peru. Office workers, executives, hotel and restaurant workers and a variety of others across the country depend on the mining and smelting industry for their incomes. To close down a major facility would be a severe economic blow and is not a viable option. So when Doe Run asks for an extension from the Peruvian government, it gets an extension.

Doe Run has also arguably made things better than when the plant was run by the Peruvian government. Lead emissions have been reduced by 35%, sulphur dioxide emissions by 5%, and waste water treatment has been improved. There have been attempts to recover land formerly contaminated by slag heaps.

Photo credit: Matthew Burpee

Emissions are still well above limits set by the WHO and the Peruvian government though. If Doe Run’s La Oroya operation were subject to the same laws they have to comply with in the United States, they would be forced not only to drastically reduce their emissions, but to clean up the surrounding area to a much larger degree than they already have.

Given the greatly reduced costs of operating in countries such as Peru, with their reduced wage and operating costs, there is little excuse for the continued contamination of La Oroya and its citizens. The kind of procrastination and evasion practised by companies like Doe Run in the developing world would never be tolerated in the developed world. Doe Run was forced to clean up its Herculaneum, Missouri operation. Why not La Oroya?

Ground water near this former smelting operation in Midvale, Utah is contaminated by the 2.5 million tons of slag, containing dangerous heavy metals like lead, arsenic, chromium, and cadmium.

According to the EPA plan, the land will be beautified, but the groundwater will probably remain contaminated.

Open this location in Google Earth

The Midvale Slag site, a former smelting facility, covers 446 acres in Midvale. A small portion of the site extends into the city of Murray. The site contains slag and hazardous smelting wastes, posing a threat to human health and the environment. It was added to the Superfund National Priorities List in 1991. It is next to Sharon Steel, another Superfund site that has been cleaned up, which contained former ore-milling facilities.

The discovery that the Sharon Steel Corporation was polluting the environment came in 1982 when the Utah Department of Environmental Quality tested some Midvale children’s sandboxes which contained tailings from the plant. Upon testing, they discovered high levels of lead in the sand. Later, the US Geological Survey tested the town’s water supply and found high levels of arsenic as well as iron, manganese and zinc.

Smelting operations began in the vicinity of the site in 1871. Since then, five separate smelters have been located on or near the site. The smelters treated ores from Bingham Canyon and other mines.

Studies begun in 1984 found that ground water and soil are contaminated with heavy metals. Today there are 2.5 million tons of slag containing lead, arsenic, chromium, and cadmium, along with other smelting wastes. Potential human health threats include drinking contaminated shallow ground water, or swallowing, inhaling or handling contaminated soil and wastes.

Testing by the Utah Department of Health indicated that the slag contains high concentrations of arsenic and heavy metals. The slag is found on the surface and down to a depth of 20 feet. Hence there is a potential for ground water contamination. Several municipal wells serving an estimated 440,000 people are within 3 miles of the site.

The superfund clean-up plan states that the remedy will result in hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants remaining on the site. The groundwater will remained contaminated.

The City understands that the plan involves limited action on the ground water which includes ongoing monitoring of the plume and the levels of contaminates discharged into the Jordan River. Midvale is supportive of this alternative believing that it strikes the appropriate balance between the impacts of contaminated ground water on human health and the environment and a cost effective method to move the site forward to reuse.
–JoAnn B. Seghini, Midvale City Mayor source

The proposal contemplates virtually no action with respect to contaminated ground water on the east side of the Jordan River, but anticipates that the contaminated ground water will be allowed gradually to migrate into and be dispersed by the Jordan River over time. The proposal completely fails to account for the changes in ground water dynamics which will be caused as the uncontaminated portions of the shallow aquifer are developed over the next few years.
–Robert P. Hill, Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District source

The proposed plan naively assumes that flow rates and patterns in the shallow aquifer will remain unchanged for the next 300 years, notwithstanding the substantial development of drinking water wells in the aquifer that is already under way.
–David G. Ovard, Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District source

If this continues to remain a polluted area it not only harms the health of everyone, but also will continue to downgrade the area. This is not fair to anyone who believed Midvale as a vital part of the Salt Lake City Valley, and still believe could be a hub of the Valley, with various contributions from not only business, but from a lovely place in which to reside.
–Russ Becker, Ball Feed & Horse Supply

Open this location in Google Earth

additional source

Swoop down over Minneapolis-St. Paul, and in the midst of all the urb and suburb, you’ll see 2300 acres of scrubby land that was once the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP). Built in 1941, the plant made munitions through World War II and the Korean War. The munitions included landmines, grenades, and cluster bombs that required Uranium-238 – depleted uranium. The plant was decommissioned some time between 1974 and 1985 (depending on who you ask). In the mid-1980s, under the Reagan administration, the government decided it was time to off-load the land.

Depleted uranium sounds really impotent but it really just means uranium waste “depleted” of one particular isotope of uranium. Of course, it’s not even completely depleted of anything.

It’s incredibly toxic and incredibly radioactive. If you were to breathe any bit of this stuff into your lungs, you’d be completely screwed. Lots of this stuff is made into ammunition.

Reclaiming the land sounds easy – remove the buildings, let the land go back to woodland scenery and blue lakes. End of story. But under the surface, things aren’t so idyllic.

Like active-duty soldiers, military installations rarely make seamless transitions back to civilian life. The TCAAP transition had quite a price tag: somewhere between $150- and $300- million dollars. It was the number-one Superfund project in Minneapolis, and one of the largest military site rehabilitation projects anywhere.

TCAAP had been a breeding ground for grenades, missiles, single-user armaments, and armor, and each left its own ugly afterbirth. The TCAAP site was littered with “disposal” sites for the materials left after the bombs and grenades rolled off the line: open burn and salvage pits, burn and burial areas, solvent burning areas, and a landfill and sludge containment area. Burning, burying or dissolving the materials used in ammunition production creates a host of nasty by-products.

Bottom line? “Disposal” released a wide variety of contaminants into the soil, water and atmosphere around TCAAP, including:

• Lead
• Chromium
• Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), like trichloroethylene (the solvent TCE)
• Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
• Cyanide
• And, of course, depleted uranium (DU)

The effects of this stuff read like a “who’s who” of medical nightmares.

Cyanide keeps your body from getting oxygen, suffocating you from the inside out.

In kids, lead poisoning can cause mental retardation, seizures, and, in serious cases, coma and death (source). In adults? It trashes your kidneys.

Solvents like TCE can cause “neurological problems” – faulty vision, dizziness, and nerve damage. Eventually, it can give you liver and kidney cancer (source).

Large doses of chromium can damage any surface of your body it comes into contact with, and then cause lung cancer (source).

Depleted Uranium of course can make “dirty bombs” as well as bullets that shoot through tank armor.

The Clean-Up

When VOCs were found in the drinking water of the nearby city of New Brighton, the EPA launched an investigation on the impact of all the munitions by-product manufacturing. Contaminants were everywhere: the water, the soil, and the atmosphere. Both the Mississipi and Minnesota Rivers, which flow nearby, were at risk for contamination. Worse yet, a plume of groundwater containing TCE had spread as far as six miles outside of the TCAAP site and contaminated local water supplies.(source).

“Containment” was followed by trying to get the contaminated water out of the ground and processing it until drinkable, avoiding drainage into local lakes and rivers. Some wells had to be abandoned altogether.

Cleaning the water was just the beginning . Each toxin, in each different hiding-place, had to be removed in a different way. Tons of soil went through leaching and washing; unreclaimable soil went straight into landfills. All water sources in the area had to be tested; all topsoil had to be tested; even the ground around TCAAP sewage pipes had to be checked, since TCAAP personnel had used them for dumping everything from grease to organic toxins and put the surrounding soil at risk.

And coordinating clean-up techniques was nothing next to coordinating the people involved. The site was owned by the Department of Defense and run under the aegis of Alliant Techsystems, Inc, the largest supplier of munitions to the DoD. When the TCAAP was no longer needed, about half the acreage was turned over to the National Guard. The rest was slated to go to nearby cities and counties, but the DoD and Alliant were still supposed to be responsible for clean-up.

To complicate matters, the EPA had given a Superfund grant to foot part of the bill. And of course, the State of Minnesota has an interest in seeing the job done right, so Minnesota’s Department of Health and its Pollution Control Agency, among others, have joined what’s already a pretty packed party.

Then there are the people who will get the land. It’s being parceled out to different communities and groups: some to the city of New Brighton, some to Ramsey County, some to the nearby city of Arden Hills .

Integrating the needs of these groups requires aeons of meetings, tons of paperwork, and more than 20 years (to date) of negotiation.

The Future

If you’re looking for the happy ending, it’s that the land is returning to the community, and to the wildlife that originally depended on it. A 113-acre portion went to Ramsey County for use as a wildlife preserve and much-needed park space. The Vento Plan (named for its sponsor, Senator Bruce Vento) is creating a separate wildlife refuge.

But it’s not a perfect ending. . .The DoD and Alliant have been fined for environmental violations in the site since the clean-up started (source 1,source2). And the Restoration Advisory Board (the citizen’s group which provides local resident input) is still concerned about the transparency and completeness of the clean-up process (source).

The land reclamation is going to be a long, slow process – and a pretty pricey one. Not just that multi-million dollar price tag, but the fact that, even when the toxic stuff is contained, it won’t be gone. The lead goes to landfill, the DU heads to nuclear waste dumps or Iraq, the wells nearby have to be watched for years to make sure that the trace-level toxins aren’t oozing into the water people use every day. And no one knows yet what the long-term effects will be on the people who worked in and lived around that plant for the 30 years of its active duty.

So it’s less like a fairy-tale and more of an object lesson – the next time your community lobbies for a local munitions plant, don’t just think about whether you want it in your backyard. Think about what the makeover’s going to cost someday.

So much lead dust blows from the giant tailings piles that cover the landscape that most of the county’s children have learning disabilities. Cave-ins have forced the abandonment of the Pitcher, Oklahoma town center. Map of these chat piles

"For several decades, hazardous materials have affected several towns in a 40 sq. mile area located in the extreme northeast corner of Oklahoma – Ottawa County – near the borders of Kansas and Missouri. Towns experiencing the most impact include Pitcher, Cardin, North Miami, Miami, and Quapaw. The Quapaw Tribe owns 70 percent of the land in this area." OGHS

"In the late 1960′s many homes were built on the land due to reduced property costs. Soon after, incidents of collapsing homes and fish kills in nearby waterways, including the Grand Lake of Cherokee, prompted a federal investigation."

Among all residents of the area who live off the land to varying degrees, the native tribes who are settled in the region are particularly vulnerable.

"The tribal populations may use biota (i.e., plants and animals) for food and for cultural, ceremonial, and religious practices. The tribes would use biota as food probably in amounts much greater than amounts used by other area residents. Native populations can use plant materials for medicine regularly, further increasing consumption rates for lead. Tribal members who practice crafts such as basket weaving may spend most of their day sifting the plant through their teeth, a practice that means they can easily inhale contaminated dust and small soil particulates bound to plant materials. The biota used and the cultural, ceremonial, and religious practices may differ among the 10 tribes in the Tar Creek site area." Superfund report to congress

"How can the government turn its back on so many people who live on what the EPA describes as the "worst toxic waste site in the nation," an area described in the federal Tar Creek Restoration Act as a site that "…can never be made safe for human habitation?" mindfully.org

It’s fascinating to see the transition between the smaller tributaries, underground rivers, and the larger surface waterways.

It looks green and blue in the false color of the satellite image, but large areas the watershed remain irrevocably contaminated with lead. Eating the catfish is a serious mistake.

Ongoing cleanup efforts produce a bewildering collection of pdf progress reports. However the prevailing wind blows the dust from the white mounded piles you see into the air, until the lead and zinc dust settles somewhere else, somewhere downwind, somewhere downstream.

Thanks to Nat Vaprin.

No, seriously.

As though the terrain wasn’t inhospitable enough, industries have managed to poison it.

You’d figure it would look like Israel, in that the desert would be green, desalinized, all that. There are lots of similarities between the two places, but agriculture isn’t one of them.

Instead of fertility, see if you can spot the Amax magnesium plant in this photo of Rowley, Utah, about 60 miles upwind of Salt Lake City. Hint: It’s a superfund site.

Tooele County is home to other non-military hazardous industries which some residents believe have affected their health and which threaten to give the region a reputation as a hazardous waste mecca. During 1988, a 100 square mile part of the West Desert was set aside as the West Desert Hazardous Industry Area. Three hazardous waste companies have set up operations since then. A low-level radioactive waste disposal facility is owned by Envirocare. Two hazardous waste incinerators, one run by Aptus and the other by United States Pollution Control, Inc., are currently burning (Bradbury, et al. 1994, Appendix G). The operations of Magnesium Corporation, known as MagCorp or AMAX and identified as the number one toxic air polluter in the US, annually spews 25 tons of chlorine and approximately two tons of hydrochloric acid into the air of Tooele County.

I guess one benefit of this is lower housing costs for the residents. As well as a shorter lifespan.

Here’s what open air storage of nuclear and toxic materials looks like, if you’re curious.

Notice the air force base right next to where they store the poisons. Planes fully loaded with fuels, bombs, and ammunition take off from that airport all of the time. From time to time they have accidents, and it would seem an unnecessary risk to store all of that stuff right next to the airport. The fate of military bases in the area is still being decided. If I lived there I’d decide to move away.

Speaking of toxins, it seems like some folks in Utah would rather spend their time stealing souls, a kind of posthumous spiritual baptism for nonbelievers. Souljacking, you could call it. Or at least mass identity theft.