America’s Fears About Pollution and the Future
Troubling signs relating to chemical industry regulation, severe proposecutbacks in oversight agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and appointments to head agencies with questionable ties to industry have emerged since the November 2016 election. All are attacks on science and threaten to significantly endanger public health.
According to a recent study published in the journal The Lancet, air pollution is linked to 6.5 million deaths, water pollution is linked to 1.8 million deaths and workplace exposures are linked to nearly 1 million deaths in 2015. Globally, deaths caused by these exposures are 3 times higher than deaths from AIDs, tuberculosis, and malaria, combined. Air pollution is linked to more than 155,000 deaths in the United States in 2015. But researchers admit that it is difficult to estimate the magnitude of deaths related to exposures to other environmental toxins, such as perfluorinated chemicals, other endocrine disruptors and pesticides, therefore, the problems are likely to be greatly underestimated.
Researchers are beginning to study and understand the impacts of climate change on public health. As global temperatures rise, more extensive geographic areas are favorable for tropical illness and vector-bourne diseases, such as hand-foot-and-mouth disease, Dengue fever, and Zika virus. For example, the geographic extent of reported cases of Lyme disease and tick-borne diseases have significantly spread across the state of New Hampshire between 2002 and 2014 as average annual temperatures across the state have warmed. This is particularly concerning when on June 1, 2017, President Trump declared he would pull the United States out of the Paris Accord, which is a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet environmental issues occupy several places in the top 10 list of American fears in the Trump era. Also in the top 10 are fears about medical bills and not having money for the future; two issues which are directly related as Americans often face bankruptcy from crushing medical debt and public health impacts from exposures. The World Health Organization estimates that at least 1 in 4 global deaths in 2012 can be attributed to living or working in an unhealthy environment and are related to environmental risk factors such as chemical exposures and air and water pollution.
These issues translate from the global and federal level to critical issues we face at the state level. In 2016, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, in concert with the Centers for Disease Control, determined the existence of a pediatric cancer cluster in a 5-town area of the Seacoast based on higher than expected rates of two forms of rare cancers. While the cancers are genetically based, it is thought that there may be an environmental trigger for disease onset. A Governor-appointed member of the Seacoast Cancer Cluster Commission was removed from the commission after continued denial of the science that resulted in the cancer cluster determination.
An EPA official also recently tried to slide a determination past the Task Force that no action is necessary to mitigate contamination stemming from an aged and discounted Superfund site (Coakley Landfill). The brook flows through three seacoast towns. This is in direct conflict with the state determination that it needs to be addressed. Senators Shaheen and Hassan question the timing of EPA’s decision on this very important issue.
Electing Donald Trump to the U.S Presidency has had a very real impact and has real consequences globally and for the American people. It is now estimated that 625 Department of Defense bases are suspected sources of perfluorinated chemical impacts to drinking water pollution in the United States. Electing federal and state officials has very real and tangible impacts on public policy and public health.
