EiJ Hazard: PFAS
FOR ECOGOVLAB/CCEJP CURRICULUM: Use this as a research resource during 11th and 12th Grade Lesson 2 on Hazards.
FOR ECOGOVLAB/CCEJP CURRICULUM: Use this as a research resource during 11th and 12th Grade Lesson 2 on Hazards.
I hope to be involved in projects that aim to gather scientific evidence to inform environmental decision making and advocate for greater equity and justice in environmental governance. Through this work, I hope to learn the skills needed to engage in community based research and leverage community knowledge as expert knowledge. In my department, things are often siloed and issues are only seen through one perspective. I really want to gain more experience in collaborating with a wide array of stakeholders to come up with approaches to mitigate the environmental injustices experienced in under-resourced communities.
The main point of the article is to report a conflict of opinions between the NRC and the Disaster Accountability Project on the safety of the communities surrounding the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant. The NRC and the company running the plant, Entergy, state that those communities within a 10 mile radius are required to have emergency evacuation plans in place should a nuclear emergency occur; those outside this radius, however, are not at as large of risk. The nonprofit, however, cites the NRC's report on the Fukushima disaster, where it recommended the US citizens within 50 miles of the plant should evacuate the area, and suggests that communities within a 50 mile radius of Indian Point have specific nuclear emergency plans at hand and prepared for use. Entergy says that the radius "provides a robust safety margin", and the NRC replies to the Disaster Accountability Project's statement by saying that the incident at Fukushima is not comparable to any nuclear power cite in the US, due to the size and number of reactors in the Fukushima plant.
In the College of New Jersey Hurrican Sandy oral history, The oral collected some information about residents affected by Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey. All the stories about the effects of such a hazard include all groups and classes of people, such as poor or rich, young and old, and families and single people. Hurrican Sandy's damages were distributed among all groups of people, by destroying houses, drowning people, and lost of electricity and water for days and months. This oral history shows the different stories and events of all the different groups that were affected really bad in the Hurrican
"The risk for commuicable disease transmission after disasters is associated primarily with the size and characteristics of the population displaced, specifically the proximity of safe water adn functioning latrines, the nutritional status of the displaced population, the level of immunuty to vaccine-preventable diseases..., and the access to healthcare services"
"...natural disasters (regardless of type) that do not result in population displacement are rarely associated with outbreaks"
"When death is directly due to the natural disaster, human remains do not pose a rise for outbreaks"
the vulnerabilities of Hurricane that are affecting community are destroying homes and landscape, which impacted the whole community, included children who need to feel safe and have homes to stay in. Providing any event of arts for the Hurricane victims will help them recover from such a terrible experience.
The author contacted both the NRC and the nonprofit Disaster Accountability Project for statements and information on the safety of the plant and if emergency plans were in place. The NRC gave statements and information on their discussions with the Disaster Accountability Project, and the nonprofit described their process of sending freedom-of-information requests to 20 jurisdictions in NY, NJ, and CT located up to 50 miles from Indian Point, in order to determine if they had emergency plans related to the power plant and what they might be
1: Crowding is shown to be common in displaced populations, and local overpopulation/crowding often facillitates the transmittion of disease
2: Natural disasters that do not cause a displacement of a population are rarely associated with disease outbreaks
3: There is little or no evidence that dead bodies, as some believe, pose a epidemic risk for a population of survivors after a disaster has struck
A GoogleDoc link to a bibliogrpahy about PFAS in Santa Ana and community-led responses