A Voice for Environmental Victims

“We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice.  If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.”

                                                              Hildegard of Bingen

A True Samaritan

            Jesus tells a story about the difference between energetically active and hardened non-active people.  Jesus explains that a traveling man falls among robbers and is left for dead along the road.  Jesus’ story speaks to a common problem at that moment of time in the ancient world as no one travels alone without the risk of serious injury.  Jesus notes that a Levite and, then, a priest, walk past the injured traveler and do nothing.  It should be noted that a Levite and a priest are privileged, usually well-respected religious people of the time. Following them, a Samaritan, that is, someone less respected for their religious practice at that time, notices the helpless man left for dead, dresses his wounds, takes him into town, and for several days oversees the injured man’s full recovery.

            Consider for a moment possible links between the good Samaritan story, whereby a man is assaulted and left for dead and today’s narrative that is no less eerie as great masses of people seem incapable of helping the victims who are most effected by the defaced environment.  The robbing or stripping of the environment is well documented.  In brief, I am speaking about chemical plants and industrious plants that are polluting air, land, rivers, and oceans with carbon gases and various toxic waste right under our noses.  I speak of not only the oil industry, car industry, but also the agricultural, dairy, and fishing industry for their indiscriminate use of insecticides, abuse of animals, and disturbing fish farms.  Over processed food coupled with the fast food industry have prioritized monetary profit over public health. As a result, chronic illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease, liver disease, diabetes, obesity, and others besides continue to rise.  The priceless cost of human suffering with respect to health issues and pre-mature deaths is unimaginable, as people throughout the world are adversely affected in some way, but especially those among lower economic and cultural classes.  Those people who are unable to correct the wrongs are those most affected by the deeper causes of chronic and even infectious disease. Today, victims lie along the road waiting for help, while the collective world, its powerful and respected political, economic, industrial, religious, and cultural institutions are in too big of a hurry to make a difference and choose, instead, to just move on.   

            Consider for a moment where you stand in Jesus’ story and our situation as it concerns our public and environmental health.  Imagine that you are walking along a road and you come upon a person or some people who have been robbed, stripped, and left for dead.  You notice them and you attend to their suffering and needs.  You listen to their story and they tell you that they belong to the low-income category.  They are mostly African-Americans, Native-Americans, and Latino-Americans.  They may be elderly and they may be young, too, of any color or creed.  They explain to you how they have been wronged by the covert doings of big enterprise and a corrupt system that serves some, but harms others like them.   They speak of their compromised immune systems, courtesy of the toxic environment, courtesy of the unhealthy food desert which prevents them from needed nutrition.  They have been left to suffer and die along the road and they wonder who among their people will be next?  As a concerned human being, you finally realize the magnitude and complexity of the crisis, but you are unsure what you should do.

Although many persons do not seem worried or are silent over recent environmental claims gathered from the world-wide scientific community, I see momentum growing in the other direction.  There are mysterious spiritual forces at work raising voices that cannot help from crying out, despite attempts from political leaders or public media to derail them.  Some of the voices are, surprisingly, heard around the world only to become an international movement, as is the case with the world’s youth.  People concerned and weighing in about the health of the environment come from all walks of life, learned and unlearned, the rich and famous, the continually downtrodden, religious and unreligious, various professionals, humanitarians, committed activists, as well as environmentalists, scientists, and a pope.  They are calling for awareness and immediate action.  They need the help of everyone. Will you join us?

Environmental Racism

“. . . Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” Pope Francis I, Laudato Si”

Disparities in Public Health in the St. Louis Metropolitan Region 

A.    St. Louis urban black children are 2.4 times more likely than white children to test positive for lead in their blood and account for more than 70% of children suffering from lead poisoning.  

B.    Black children are 10 times more likely to visit the emergency room for asthma, having ties with air pollution.  [Black children make 42 emergency room visits per 1,000 children.  White children make 4 emergency room visits per 1,000 children.]

C.   Mold complaints are 70% more common in majority-black areas than elsewhere in the City. 

The term “environmental racism” refers to today’s environmental irresponsibility and those damaging effects on communities vulnerable to exploitation, particularly urban black communities, who have become the prime target.  Environmental racism against blacks in St. Louis goes largely undetected in the public eye.  As unnamed, there is little chance of dismantling this social ill.  

Public Safety in the City of St. Louis 

 A. Outdoor sources of lead contamination include building demolitions and industrial fields (waste management plants, smelters, battery manufacturers, highways with heavy automobile traffic, and regional airports).  Concentrations of harmful dust can be 3 to 11 times higher than normal at sites downwind from demolitions.

B. Building demolitions pose immediate risks to area residents affecting both air and soil contamination. The most common sources of lead and which account for 70% of elevated levels of lead in children in the U.S. include lead-based paint, house paint dust, and lead contaminated soil. 

C. Inside homes children at risk reside in communities with lead-containing water service lines or poor anticorrosion control.

D. Lead-Containing House Paint and Dust. Houses built before 1978 have a high likelihood of being hazardous.  90% of St. Louis urban houses were built before 1980.

E. St. Louis tied for 6th worse major U.S. city for people affected by mold contamination.  Because one-fifth of the city’s population live below the federal poverty level, addressing mold is out of reach for those affected by it.  

 [Adverse effects of mold are sinus congestion, cough, sore throat, breathing difficulty, nosebleed, respiratory infection, headache, skin and eye irritation.] 

 [Adverse effects on children, in particular, are irreversible impaired neurocognitive and behavioral development.]

Gravity and Complexity of the Inner-City Challenge

 A. Urban dwellers’ nutritional “food desert” compounds efforts to bolster immunity and maintain physical and mental health.

  1. Disproportionate absence of grocery stores in toxic urban areas most in need of nutrition.

2. Lack of nutritional education.

3. Unaffordable pricing of nutritional food goods.

4. Depleted urban outdoor exercise space.

 B. Urban dwellers’ unraveling mental health determinants. 

1. Psychological effects of mass trash and “eye-sores.”

2. Absence of green space.

3. Limited access to mental health practitioners.

4. Incomparable cultural disorder and violence.

Enriching Our Environmental Aptitude

“Many professionals, opinion makers, communication media, and centers of power, being located in affluent urban areas, are far removed from the poor, with little direct contact with their problems. . . .   This lack of physical contact and encounter, encouraged at times by the disintegration of our cities, can lead to a numbing of consciences. . . .”   

                                                                                    Pope Francis I, Laudato Si”

  Pope Francis’ encouraging words about being in constant conversation with those who suffer coincides with the well-known American Catholic activist Dorothy Day who voluntarily lived among communities vulnerable to exploitation.

The New Creation: Environmental Healing and Restoration

A. Creation as corridor to love of God and neighbor

B. Healing power of the natural world.

C. The natural wonders and a feeling for God.

D. Environmental biblical images become our own story.

E. Prayer in the context of the beauty of nature.