Their Soil Toxic, 1,100 Indiana Families Scramble to Find New Homes highlights Housing Complex residents living near and on a Superfund site. In a detailed and emotional article, Abby Goodnough gives voice to families economically trapped in an Indiana public housing complex. She even notes Pence’s visit to Louisiana but not the West Calumet Housing Complex.
However, this quote jumped out at me.
But the most pressing question for residents is why they were not informed until last month that even the top six inches of soil in their yards had up to 30 times more lead than the level considered safe for children to play in, and that it also had hazardous levels of arsenic. Farther down, the contamination is much worse.
Intellectually I understand environmental racism. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s easy to see
which residents live near the Bay Area Refinery Air Pollution Corridor, the Brownfields and Superfunds, and Lead Painted Homes. But I focused on the economic opportunity available for cleaning up those sights, especially after Hillary (hopefully) wins election. I didn’t remember the victims.
Does this make me and everyone else complicit in harm done to these children and families? Each day spent breathing the foul air, playing in contaminated dirt, or scratching at paint flakes is one more step toward Irreversible Harm
It made me think of the Tuskegee Experiment
The men were never given adequate treatment for their disease. Even when penicillin became the drug of choice for syphilis in 1947, researchers did not offer it to the subjects. The advisory panel found nothing to show that subjects were ever given the choice of quitting the study, even when this new, highly effective treatment became widely used.
In a sane society we would immediately remove those families from the area, without fighting over who is going to pay for it. We would not let the EPA continue to use “outside contractors” who fail to provide results. We would pour money into toxic cleanup the same way we fund wars. We would not let a relatively small, but high paid, union workforce join with corporations in keeping dangerous refineries open.
This is not a Utopian ideal. The canaries' job is to warn you may be next. Not allowing children to die for us should be enough motivation. But if nothing else, rely on naked self-interest.