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Backyard Talk

The Rachel Carson Amendment

Our colleague and friend Lou Zeller at the Blue Ridge Environmental League (BREDL) shared an article he wrote a few years back about the great pioneer Rachel Carson who wrote in her epic 1962 classic Silent Spring that “If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem.”
Lou continued. “The public outcry created by Silent Spring led to a ban on DDT from agricultural use in 1972. However, today the industrial use of poisonous substances continues almost unabated, based on regulatory risk assessments and legally acceptable death rates. For example, retail shops are still permitted to dry-clean cloths with perchloroethylene, a carcinogenic solvent, even though non-toxic alternatives are available. Household hand cleaners laced with toxic Triclosan contaminate wastewater and sewage sludge deposited on farm fields as fertilizer. Nuclear power plants routinely spew radioactive Tritium into the air and water. And chemical giant Monsanto sells the weed-killer Roundup to farmers and homeowners—components of which are carcinogenic and known to damage the liver, kidney, brain and lungs. The list goes on.
“How can it be that after the passage of two generations we have let this continue?  Worse, a new natural gas extraction industry—cracking underground rock with high-pressure chemicals and water—exempts itself from the few environmental, public health and safety laws still on the books. It is indeed a strange blight creeping over the land.
“The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution states, ‘No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’  The Fourteenth Amendment adds that the States may not, ‘deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’ Rachel Carson’s Fable for Tomorrow painted a grim picture, but it was meant to prompt action.  In part, she succeeded.  But it remains to us to ensure that the next forty years complete the changes necessary so our legacy to future generations is not a silent spring.  Either the fundamental principles established under the Constitution mean what they say, or Rachel Carson’s admonition should become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.”
I think Lou is onto something. What do you think?

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Backyard Talk

Residential Segregation and Disproportionate Exposure to Airborne Carcinogens

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis published a paper late last year that found carcinogens present in the air of the St. Louis metropolitan area to be highly concentrated in Black and poor neighborhoods. They found that approximately 14% of the census tracks in the city had elevated cancer risk due to exposure to toxic chemicals in the air and that these air toxic hots spots were independently associated with neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and unemployment, and low levels of education. Census tracks with the highest levels of both racial isolation of Blacks and economic isolation of poverty were more likely to be located in air toxic hot spots than those with low combined racial and economic isolation.
This paper is important because the authors used an innovative geospatial approach developed by other researchers to identify spatial patterns of residential segregation in their study area. This approach captures the degree of segregation at the neighborhood level and identifies patterns of isolation of different metrics, which in this study was black isolation and poverty isolation. This approach differs from tradition methods that looked at the percentage of blacks or poverty in a neighborhood.
The authors used these two segregation measures – Black isolation and poverty isolation – to identify neighborhoods segregated by race and income in the St. Louis metropolitan area and evaluated the risks of exposure to carcinogens in the air in these areas. The cancer risk data came from the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Air Toxics Assessment and the census track sociodemographic data came from the American Community Survey. All spatial analyses were conducted using Arc GIS software.
These researchers found that census track levels of poverty, undereducation and unemployment were associated with toxic hot spots, while factors such as per capita income and median household income were inversely associated with toxic hot spots. These findings support other studies that identified disparities in exposures to ambient air emissions of toxic chemicals and that raised questions about whether residential segregation leads to differential exposure to air pollutants.
While the authors discuss a number of possible pathways connecting segregation and health, the relationship between segregation and exposure to air toxics is unclear. They discuss various factors that result in segregation leading to the “cycle of segregation” that includes neighborhoods with low social capital, few community resources and low property values which tends to attract more low income and minority residents and exposures to unhealthy air toxics.
The authors concluded that this study provides strong evidence of the unequal distribution of carcinogenic air toxics in the St Louis metropolitan area and that residential segregation leads to differential exposure to chemicals in the air that cause cancer.

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Homepage News Archive

Polluters Are Winning Big on COVID-19 Recovery Efforts

Polluting industries, such as coal power plants, mining, and oil and gas corporations are receiving financial and regulatory relief across the globe, but specifically in the US, as governments aim to provide relief during the pandemic. These moves threaten progress that has made to combat polluters over the years and puts the globe at risk for rapid deterioration caused by climate change. Read More
Photo by Mike Marrah on Unsplash

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Homepage News Archive

Monsanto to Pay D.C. $52 million Toward Chemical Contamination Cleanup in Local Waterways

For over 50 years during the 20th century, Monsanto produced and sold products that contained polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) which have been known to cause severe health problems in humans such as cancer and liver damage and kill wildlife. After many decades of polluting into local waterways and communities, Monsanto will be held accountable by paying the city of D.C. $52 million in order to help clean up chemical contamination that they caused. The majority of the money will go towards cleaning up polluted waterways with high PCB concentrations, specifically in the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. Read More
Photo by Desmond Hester on Unsplash

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Homepage News Archive

$550M Settlement with Monsanto Includes the Cleanup of Contaminated Baltimore Waters

Bayer, the current parent company and owner of Monsanto, has reached a $550 million settlement with 13 governmental entities in order to clean up contaminated Baltimore waterways. Bayer officials claim that Monsanto legally manufactured PCBs until 1977. PCBs were widely used in paints, lubricants, and electrical equipment until they were banned in the US in 1979. Waterways in the Baltimore area have been greatly polluted by past PCB contamination. The national class-action settlement aims to make Bayer pay for the pollution caused by Monsanto’s use of PCBs. Similar Monsanto-related settlements involving PCB pollution have been reached in New Mexico, Washington, and the District of Columbia. Read More

Photo by Mabel Amber from Pexels

 

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Backyard Talk

If You Care About the Economy, You Should Also Care About Pollution

By: Sophie Weinberg, Intern
Money is the driving force behind many industries in the United States, and those that pollute are no exception. It is a common perception that those industries, such as coal mining, are vital to the economy, when in reality pollution that results from those industries is detrimental to economic success. Particularly, the burden of disease that comes from pollution has an immense price tag. Despite the real reason, the costs of these diseases are not typically attributed to pollution and are instead lumped in with general health expenditures. Beyond the direct costs of caring for patients who are battling life-threatening pollution-related diseases, there are also the indirect costs of decreased productivity associated with those employees missing work which then lowers the GDP of a country. This loss of GDP is estimated at $53 billion in higher income countries. That is an incredible sum of money that could be used in a wide variety of programs to build up vulnerable communities. Currently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the EPA has decided to not enforce environmental regulations in order to give polluting industries an economic break. This decision will not only add more pollution to the air, but more people will suffer the effects of coronavirus as it is a respiratory illness. The economy will ultimately become more damaged as all industry remains closed to respond to the large amount of sick people.
Beyond the cost of disease, governments also must contribute large sums of money to mitigate environmental threats that could have been prevented originally. The Michigan government, for example, settled on setting aside $97 million in order to replace corroding lead pipes in Flint, when the decision to switch water sources in the first place would only save the city about $5 million. That estimate does not include the nearly $400 million lost to the city in social costs, since so many children will suffer for the rest of their lives due to lead exposure.
Despite public belief about rolling back environmental protections in order to boost the economy, the enormous economic benefits of environmental regulations and sustainable technology are rarely discussed. Renewable energy, for example, creates jobs and also utilizes resources already found in the United States. This boosts the economy by bringing in revenue rather than relying on fuel imports. Regardless of these positives, society is not willing to uproot their livelihood to make changes, even if those changes are for the good of everyone involved. Overall, the price of sustainability may seem high at first glance but will always be worth it in the end when the environment is protected, human health is promoted, and the economy is thriving.

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Homepage News Archive

Polluting Companies Turn to State Environmental Regulatory Agencies to Lower Regulations During Covid-19

While the EPA continues to cut environmental regulations, the country’s most polluting industries are now turning their focus to state environmental regulatory agencies. Many companies have recently asked state regulators to relax or delay pollution monitoring requirements, claiming that Covid-19 has made them unable to comply with laws that protect the public from the health hazards of pollution. The majority of states do not publish any information about companies that say they are struggling to comply with environmental laws, meaning that most Americans that live near large polluting factories, refineries, and farms are unaware whether the pandemic has led to more pollution in their areas or not. Read More

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Homepage News Archive

Louisiana Further Criminalizes Stepping onto Oil and Gas Industry-Owned Lands

Current legislation in Louisiana makes it a felony to trespass on the lands of oil and gas facilities, which are considered “critical infrastructure”. Louisiana is currently working to expand these laws to make these trespassing charges include those of flood control infrastructure and to stiffen the penalties of jail time from 3 to 15 years if the area is under an emergency order. This legislation criminalizes protests against large oil, gas, and levee infrastructure projects and have made it much more difficult for environmental justice organizations to protest against large and harmful infrastructure projects and sites. Read More

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Homepage News Archive

Air Pollution Rates Remain Steady in Pittsburgh Despite Less Driving During the Pandemic

Many people largely associate air pollution with emissions from cars. However, if this was the case wouldn’t fewer cars on the road drastically decrease air pollution? As seen in Pittsburgh, PA, driving has largely decreased due to Covid-19 but air pollution rates have not. In contrast to driving, many industrial activities have continued at similar rates as before the pandemic. NPR and Pittsburgh’s Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP) largely tie steady air pollution rates to the continuation of coal-fired power plants and coke production in Western Pennsylvania. According to a senior scientist at the Clean Air Task Force, John Graham, cars only contribute about 5-10% of emissions in Western PA. Therefore, in order for Pittsburgh to have significantly cleaner air, emissions from industrial plants must be curbed. Read More

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Backyard Talk

A Pandemic of Pollution

The death toll due to Covid-19 passed the 90,000 mark in the United States this week. This is a truly staggering if not sobering number that raises many questions about how we as a nation respond to this incredible loss of life. These are not just numbers, but people – someone’s mother, father, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, friend, lover, child… The daily news boils this down to statistics. Numbers of new cases and deaths are reported each day before the newscaster moves on to the next story. Are we normalizing this staggering loss of life? Even worse, are we accepting it?
Yet I look at the leadership of this country and I don’t see people who empathize with those who have lost someone to this deadly virus. I don’t see people who are taking steps to minimize the impact of this insidious virus.
There is still much that we don’t know about Covid-19 and its effects on people, but it is becoming quite clear that low income residents and people of color are disproportionately impacted by exposure to the coronavirus. It’s also become clear that underlying health conditions, such as respiratory problems like asthma and COPD; diabetes, high blood pressure, immune diseases like lupus multiple sclerosis make people more vulnerable to covid-19, not just among the elderly, but among people of color and others with these diseases.
Why then is the USEPA doing all that it can to dismantle (repeal or weaken) regulations that protect people’s health. A report released today by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee describes how specific actions taken by EPA to weaken or repeal air pollution rules and regulations will “harm public health and potentially add to COVID-19 risks.”
The report specifically points to seven rules that were initially designed to remove greenhouse gas, soot, mercury and other pollution from the air that the agency has targeted and proposed or finalized actions since March 1st that “will result in increased air pollution and could cause tens of thousands of premature deaths. EPA has, in short, unleashed a pandemic of pollution in the middle of an actual pandemic, the respiratory effects of which may be amplified by pollution exposure.”
The committee is clear that the agency should reverse its deregulating efforts and strengthened rather than weaken the country’s air pollution laws and regulations, and take steps to address the Covid-19 specific risks posed by air pollution. In the committee’s words:
“EPA should re-focus its enforcement, compliance and monitoring activities in a manner that prioritizes the early detection of high exposure to air pollutants in communities that have both historically experienced such exposures and those at greatest risk of adverse outcomes from COVID-19.”
This and other recommendations made by the Senate Committee offer hope that we will not accept 90,000 deaths and counting as the cost of doing business in the United States. There are steps we can take to reduce and minimize the impacts of Covid-19.
Read the full report here.