Environmental Justice | Why living in USA is increasingly hazardous to health
Moderator’s Note: One of the hallmarks of neoliberalism is the dismantling of the so-called regulatory state. Abolishing rules that protect health and the environment is one of the targets of neoliberal deregulation. There are some states where the threats posed to public health and the environment by pollution and toxins are by far greater. Texas and West Virginia come to mind as places where recent industrial accidents illustrate how deregulation creates an even more hazardous set of conditions that increase risk for all communities and especially the most vulnerable (typically, low-income or people of color). On January 10, at a West Virginia tank farm owned by a corporation known as Freedom Industries , a 48,000-gallon tank began leaking 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol, or MCHM, a compound used to wash coal of impurities. The leak spilled into the Elk River upstream from Charlestown, W.Wa and has so far left 300,000 people without safe drinking water supplies. As I monitored this inc...