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From the NY Times

WAYNE MANN, a member of the Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation, has heard the jokes and the chuckles and does not think they are funny.

The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services issued a warning last month to residents here to reduce the amount of squirrel meat they eat because the animals might be contaminated with lead from a nearby Superfund site. Residents and their eating traditions have since become fodder for late-night comedians and prompted laughter from newscasters reporting the story.

“It’s not a joking matter,” said Mr. Mann, 47, who is the president of the Ringwood Neighborhood Action Association. “It’s a food source for us. And, you know, there are many other cultures that eat things that aren’t found in the general consciousness, and there is nothing wrong with that.”

After residents asked the Health Department to check for toxins in the area, the department made the announcement about squirrel meat in mid-January after a squirrel tested positive for lead. In a letter to Ringwood residents, the department said the animal came from around the Ringwood Mines/Landfill Superfund site.

Many local residents, including the Ramapough, have fished and hunted there for generations. But the Ford Motor Company used the area decades ago to dump paint sludge from its Mahwah plant. In the most recent testing, environmental officials found levels of lead 70 percent higher than what is acceptable.

“Our food is poisoned,” Mr. Mann said. He said residents were waiting on tests of other animals, like deer, but were assuming that if squirrels had unsafe levels of lead, the same results would be found higher up the food chain and in local fauna.

Health officials say children should not eat the meat more than once a month, pregnant women no more than twice a month and all other adults no more than twice a week. The recommendations are based on one-quarter pound of squirrel meat per meal.

“It’s more precautionary than problematic,” said Elaine Makatura, a State Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman.

But Roger DeGroat, a father of eight from Upper Ringwood, who said he had hunted squirrels, rabbits, deer and wild turkey in the area, said he would no longer eat squirrels because of potential long-term health problems.

“Who knows what this is doing to them?” he said of his children. “They are so young, and no level of lead is acceptable in the human body.”

High levels of lead in the bloodstream can lead to kidney problems, affect reproduction and development and damage the nervous system, the Health Department said.

The Ringwood site was taken off the National Priorities List for Uncontrolled Hazardous Waste in 1994 but was put back on in October. Mr. Mann said that politicians and environmental officials had promised a real cleanup, but that this site — one of several dozen Superfund sites in the state — often gets overlooked and neglected.

Mr. Mann said he hoped that a cleanup would occur and that nature would restore itself, but that he did not think it would happen in his lifetime, and possibly not in his children’s.

Vivian Milligan, who has spent her whole life in Ringwood and grew up “eating whatever was put on the table,” said that of course those on the reservation shop at grocery stores and use hunting more as a supplement and a sense of tradition, but that the presence of lead in game caused more than just environmental worries.

“Something we have always had, always relied on, can’t be trusted any longer,” she said. “That is one of the hardest things.”

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