There’s Something in the Water
A study guide of Ingrid Waldron’s book ‘There’s Something in the Water.’
Summary, part 3
Psychological, Physical, & Spiritual Health Effects of Living Near Toxic Waste
It is now believed that to understand environmental violence fully, we need a more holistic view of health inequalities that addresses the complex web of inequalities that renders Black and Indigenous communities more vulnerable to environmental risks. There are multiple overlapping and intersecting challenges at play.
Environmental Health Inequalities are “the health impacts associated with the disproportionate location of industries that emit pollutants and contaminants and other environmental hazards in racialized and low-income communities” (p. 122).
Studies have found that racialized communities face higher instances of cancer, upper respiratory disease, congenital anomalies, cardiovascular disease, skin diseases, and allergies.
Known effects of living near toxic waste and other environmental hazards: cancer, kidney disorders, respiratory diseases, asthma, eye irritation, skin rashes, abdominal pain, incontinence, temporary liver dysfunction, seizures, and skin rashes.
A brief history of health and race
Environmental racism is not only about a concern for profit and wealth, but also about how the bodies of “racial others” get taken up within the “white gaze” (p. 110). The placement of pollutants and environmental hazards near Black and Indigenous people shows “how little value these bodies hold in the white imagination” (p. 110). This is compounded by centuries of disinformation and myths of Indigenous and Black peoples’ pain and hurt threshold.
Additional Context
“Noble Savage:” Experiments from the 1870s on the relative “absence of madness” in African, Asian, and Native American people led scientists to believe that Black people’s “immunity” to mental illness was due to their lack of civilization (p. 111). “In other words, Black people were considered too mentally infantile and their culture too underdeveloped for them to be at risk for developing mental illness (p. 111-112).
There are persisting perceptions that Black and Indigenous people are simultaneously lacking in value and “disposable” while also being strong, invulnerable, and “superhuman” (and therefore able to endure attacks on their minds, bodies, and spirits) (p. 110). We also see this in medicine with a long history of harmful and life-threatening experiments attempting to point out the differences between Black bodies and white bodies. To this day, Black and Indigenous people are mistreated in medicine––there are still doctors who believe that Black skin is thicker than white skin and thus more tolerant to pain.
This all ties back to the intersectional violence being committed against Black and Indigenous people in Nova Scotia and the failure of environmental justice to acknowledge the vulnerability and susceptibility of these populations.
Economic determinants
Out-migration in polluted areas: those who can afford to leave do. This explains why it is less likely for Black homeowners to leave environmentally hazardous areas or buy homes in environmentally dangerous areas––it is less expensive to live in an at-risk neighborhood.
Factors and regulations such as the Indian Act and industrial development have altered the Anishinaabe people’s relationship with their land. This can be seen in the health issues with the water, food, and medicine.
Colonialism changed the way the Anishinaabe ate. Now, they have high rates of obesity, early-onset diabetes, and other chronic diseases (p. 122).
Psychological stress
People who live closer to industrial activity perceive more significant neighborhood disorder, personal powerlessness, and depression which accounts for symptoms of psychological distress in these neighborhoods (p. 126).
High rates of suicide among Indigenous peoples in Canada due to social, economic, and political stressors passed through the generations.
Cancer
There is ample research that supports the link between waste disposal sites and adult cancers such as leukemia and brain, stomach, liver, lung, rectum, prostate, and bladder cancers. For example, the cancer rates among the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation are 30% higher than average for all types of cancer (p. 127).
A resident of Lucasville stated, “...We don’t know what we’re breathing in … You know, every time we breathe that in, we’re breathing something into our bodies that’s going to manifest as cancer five years down the road … So yes, it has a health impact. It’s stress, it’s mental, it’s mental harassment. It’s harassing our health” (Waldron 2016 in Waldron 2018, p. 127).
Cancer risks associated with landfill-based disposal methods are five times higher than with waste-to-energy incineration.
Child and Maternal Health
Researchers Konsmo and Kahealani assert that “the generational inheritance of toxic contamination impacts the psychological, relational, emotional, cultural, and economic well-being of communities, and that Indigenous women’s reproductive and other bodily health systems bear the brunt of environmental violence across North America” (p125).
Gendered health effects of contamination and pollution include high rates of congenital anomalies and developmental delays. Association between high nitrate and concentrations in drinking water and incidence of major congenital anomalies in Kings County, Nova Scotia. Congenital abnormalities/ malformations include:
Reproductive morbidity, preterm births, low birth weights, small size for gestation age, intrauterine growth restrictions, neural tube defects, and congenital heart defects.
A higher percentage of kids in Nova Scotia have autism.
Environmental racism also compromises reproductive rights. Reproductive justice means that a person has the right to have children or not and parent them in a safe and healthy environment. However, this is not the case for most parents living in high-toxicity areas.
Another point worth noting is that primarily women are spearheading the efforts against environmental racism in their communities. Therefore, it is not just the chemical exposure they are dealing with but also the mental strain of grassroots organizing.
Spiritual and Cultural health
Waldron emphasizes the connection between people, land, health, the physical body, and intimate, spiritual relationships with the land. The practice of passing down knowledge through generations has been lost due to environmental dispossession in the Anishinaabe communities. In addition to that, there has been a decrease in cultural determinants of health such as fishing, hunting, trapping, and other activities because of poor environmental quality.
“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well” (Frantz Fanon 1963 in Waldron 2018, p. 118).
The decisions of colonists, industry, and government left a mark on the physical environment through toxic waste, environmental hazards, etc., and the spiritual environment in the way Black and Indigenous communities -- who have inhabited the land for generations -- can interact with their communities land. In other words, Colonialism changed the way Indigenous and Black communities ate and then trapped them in a location of an environmental hazard. Over time, this manifests as generational trauma.