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Analyze

Childhood Lead Poisoning

margauxf

 In 1991, the Public Health Service articulated a vision for primary prevention in Strategic Plan for the Elimination of Childhood Lead Poisoning, a departure from previous federal policy focused on finding and treating lead-poisoned children. This publication detailed a 15-year strategy for primary prevention and offered a cost-benefit analysis to demonstrate the monetized benefits of this approach. A strong national effort to follow this strategy developed but was eventually abandoned.

The organized campaign against universal screening began in California, where letters questioning the reported prevalence of elevated BLL began appearing in pediatric journals and newspapers. These letters acknowledged receiving editorial assistance from Kaiser Permanente Foundation Hospitals and argued that money spent on screening, treatment and abatement would be harmful to more worthy public health efforts. The AAP president took up this attack on universal screening as well, and efforts for universal screening were gradually eroded. 

Needleman identifies racism and the belief that lead poisoning “is a product of poor mothering, not of environmental pollution” as a driving factor shaping lead detection and prevention efforts (or the lack thereof) … “this weighting of personal choice or behavior over environment is a tool used to shift responsibility away from health authorities or polluters and onto the victim” (1875).

A People’s Orientation to a Regenerative Economy

Yvonne

The Grassroots Global Alliance provides a strategy for just transition to a regenerative economy. For the policy makers, this organizations has come up with these questions as guidance: 

1. Who tells the story? 

2. Who makes the decision? 

3. Who benefits and how? 

4. What else will this impact? 

5. How will this build or shift power? 

Framework: Protect, Repair, Invest, Transform. Under each category, this organization presents their demands and solutions. 

Five points of intervention: the Narratives, Base Building and Organizing, Policy Development, Electoralization and Implementation, Direct Action. 

TS: Changhua County Media and NGO Coverage

tschuetz

Media coverage of the exhibition "Where the South Wind Blows"

Interview by PTS- Our Island (link1) (link2)、THE REPORTER (link1) (link2)

2012: PTS  photographer 鍾聖雄came to document village in the shadow the factory

 

TS: Changhua County Stakeholder Actions

tschuetz

Smelling the pollution 

Government initiated monitoring infrastructure not from the very beginning but only after the explosions

Ms Hsu’s family is respected, leading the talks between villagers and company  

Support by Mayor Ko

Asked the local councilors to take action (2002)

Protests

Photo collection, press conference, organized villagers to go to Taipei (they were more excited about the high speed rail?); visit and signature by the Vice president Chen 陳建仁

Ask the EPA to set up monitor (moving) 

“Number” system for reporting explosion/illegal emission

Witness Theatre

Exhibition in national museums 

Protest against the No. 8, especially after two  2010 explosions 

2005: Prof. Chang swimming naked; publishing 

Formosa Plastics: released two press releases after the exhibition, arguing that 1) people live long and 2) blaming individual behaviors (smoking? Drinking? betel nut?)

2010: Formosa starts investing in Mailiao 

2020: investigation into the reg

 

TS: Changhua County Stakeholders

tschuetz

No action by locals before the proposed No. 8 complex

Old Villagers (farmers, 100/280+ more than 80 years old.

Department of Hygiene

Young population moving to the city, and thinking about compensation

Formosa Plastics: You see the light, you see the money

Changhua Environmental Protection Union (彰化環保聯盟): learning about Formosa pollution issues after  a tour of the No. 5 complex