What makes us sick? Who makes us sick? If we pass laws to protect ourselves from disease and illness caused by human activity, is it up to us, as individuals, to pay for the consequences when those laws fail due to a lack of compliance or a failure of the government to enforce.
If we are stricken with mercury poisoning, cancer, heart disease, retardation, birth defects, lung disease, asthma or any of the hundreds of other illnesses caused by toxics in our environment, should we have to go bankrupt or decline treatment because there is no health care available to us? If we live in poverty and industry uses our neighborhoods to site their most toxic operations, how do we pay for the illness those operations cause?
Does our concept of personal responsibility stop when it comes to corporate behavior? Corporations enjoy “personhood” under the law, but they are “persons” wreaking havoc on our natural systems, our bodies, our brains and all of the essentials we need to sustain life. Poisons and pathogens get into our air, water and food because keeping them out of our farming and manufacturing process reduces profits. All of these things make us ill. We have fought hard to pass laws to protect our communities from this harm, but they have been ineffective in reducing exposure sufficiently to keep us healthy. The spread of harmful substances is fast and wide. The enforcement of laws protecting us is slow and narrow.
Our government tolerates a system of laws and regulation that is effective only to the extent that budget priorities allow enforcement. Polluters lobby for and gain power in government and further diminish the resources and momentum for passing and enforcing laws to keep us safe and healthy. Yet we find ourselves debating whether or not the government has a role in ensuring that reasonably priced health care is available to all Americans. This is a system absurdly out of balance. We subsidize the activities that cause widespread disease and illness. We tolerate a health care system that financially penalizes the victims of this injustice. What’s wrong with this picture?
The Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts Lowell recently published a visionary work called “A Common Agenda For Health and the Environment – Goals for the Next Generation and Steps to Get There.“ The Common Agenda proposes six “Generational Goals” that we should be working toward as our legacy for a better, more sustainable and rational way of living. The first of these goals is “Safe and Healthy People.” The three objectives of this goal are
Looking at the collective value of blending these issues as a coordinated set of objectives aspiring to a common goal provides us with a framework to understand the integral nature of health care reform and environmental protection.
Mainstream media coverage of the health care debate tends to be partisan and sensationalistic. The themes promoted by the right wing echo chamber of extremist television and radio commentators are covered as if they somehow represented a critical mass of public opinion instead of the poorly reasoned ideological initiatives of fringe elements. This distorted framing of the issue does a disservice to us all and leaves very little room in the public debate for the more forward thinking, sometimes nuanced, consideration of how health, the environment, our food supplies, our water and our general economic conditions impact our ability to build a safe, healthy society that offers fair access to essential resources and services that will value human health and protect the commons.
Environmental advocacy and health care reform are two dimensions of a single issue. The time is right to de-compartmentalize our thinking about these issues and stand together in support of mutual goals.
Clean Water Action was established to pass the Clean Water Act but quickly became as much a public health organization as an environmental organization. Our work on protecting water from pollutants, pathogens, heavy metals, dioxin, Bishpenol-A and all other contaminants is done in support of the goal of preventing disease and illness. We join voices with those who would advocate a way to care for people who live in a world where illness and disease caused by a lack of care in how we conduct ourselves affects us all regardless of social class or economic status. We all need protection and treatment.
Follow John DeCock on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jdecock
Environmental toxins are easy to ignore when they don't make your life harder. Shucks, you can't even see 'em most of the time.
The are there though, and we need a change.