As climate change pushes the governments to seek effective solutions and invest in cutting-edge technologies, more and more people become aware that what we have done until now to lessen the impact of this crisis is not enough. Individuals and communities are being severely affected by prolonged exposure to heavy metals, pollution, and radiation coming from fossil fuel-using companies. The impacts of climate change are everywhere, affecting not only the planet as a whole but the survival of communities and minorities that suffer the most.
While more and more actions are taken to act effectively on the already existing evidence of rapid climate decline, some of us still hope that things will get ‘back to normal. This kind of thinking is not only paralyzing but leads to denial of a worldwide reality that needs our undivided attention.
Environmental Justice for Severely Affected Communities
Naturally occurring elements, heavy metals have five times the density and the atomic weight of water. Due to having multiple uses in industry, agriculture, medicine, domestic use, and technology they’ve become widely used and distributed in the environment. More and more concerns are raised as to how they affect human health and the environment. There are various ways through which heavy metals can become dangerous depending on the dose, route of exposure, and chemical species, as well as age, gender, genetics, and nutritional status of each individual or group of individuals.
The climate crisis led to prolonged exposure of vulnerable communities to heavy metals such as lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium which are known to have serious effects even at lower levels of exposure. They are also classified as human carcinogens (known or probable) according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The most vulnerable are the marginalized groups who are living in poor conditions, lacking resources and job opportunities while being forced to drink polluted water and ingest contaminated food. Prolonged exposure to heavy metals leads to poisoning which can have disastrous effects not only on the physical health but also on mental health, leading to behavioral and personality changes, sometimes causing hallucinations.
In 2019, the National Poisoning Data System (NPDS) of the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) reported 8,039 single exposures to heavy metals. Of those exposures, 2497 were in children younger than 6 years, and 3534 were in patients older than 19 years. Multiple industrial facilities operate with specific heavy chemicals which are not as easy to trace and regulate, such as dioxins and PCBs, both extremely dangerous chemicals. According to World Health Organisation (WHO), long-term exposure to dioxins is linked to impairment of the immune system, the developing nervous system, the endocrine system, and reproductive functions.
Seeking Legal Support
Communities who are forced to live close to fossil fuel using companies are finding themselves debating issues that make them feel as if they have no control over the conditions of their livelihoods. It’s important for such communities to seek legal support which could bring them monetary compensations for the health issues they are facing due to forced toxic exposure.
Communities in Birmingham and Florala Alabama settled multi-million dollar cases resulting from industrial facilities and wood treatment facilities which released high levels of toxins in the air to which thousands of residents were exposed.
One of the most encountered and therefore, most affecting metals, is mercury. Up to 90% of the mercury in the human body is the result of eating contaminated food, fish and shellfish in particular. Metallic mercury is used to manufacture chlorine gas, caustic soda, thermometers, dental fillings, switches, light bulbs, and batteries. Multiple heavy metals can be found in our day-to-day use of batteries. Coal-burning power plants are the biggest source of mercury in the United States of America.
Environmental pollution is extremely prominent in areas where there is great mining activity, foundries and smelters, and other metal-based industries. Living in the proximity of such source points results not only in occupational exposure to mercury of employees but of their families and communities forced to live in the area.
Whom to blame and what to do
Vulnerable communities are the communities that are forced to live in precarious life conditions, without any real support from local authorities or employees. Communities that live close to fossil fuel using companies are permanently and ruthlessly exposed to toxic heavy metals through daily water, food, and air inhalation. In many areas of metal pollution, even permanent low dose exposure to multiple metals is a major health concern. It is essential for such communities to inform themselves about the risks and if severely affected to seek legal help even if it is hard for them to hope that they have any chances of winning against such massive, careless opponents. It’s important to try, especially when the evidence is impossible to ignore.
