Sugar plantations, Chemical Plants, COVID-19
The chemical plants in Cancer Alley are built where there once were sugar plantations. Descendants of enslaved communities still live nearby.
The chemical plants in Cancer Alley are built where there once were sugar plantations. Descendants of enslaved communities still live nearby.
Join us for the Disaster STS Network’s Fall 2021 virtual tour of Louisiana's Cancer Alley, a corridor of chemical plants along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans with shockin
The author is Sonja D. Schmid, an associate professor at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and Technology in Society. She specializes in STS (science, tech, and society) analysis, nuclear industries, and energy policies. In respect to emergency response, Schmid is able to use her knowledge of previous disasters, current energy technologies, and societal influences to address what we need nationally/ internationally for how we should respond to emergencies. The ability to identify the multifaceted levels of what causes disasters is important to properly responding to them- by changing technologies, training and education of communities, and changing energy policies to avoid and handle more disaster.
Publications relevant to the DSTS Network: "Evacuation from a nuclear disaster" (http://www.jstor.org/stable/214548?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents), "A comparative institutional analysis of the Fukushima nuclear disaster: Lessons and policy implications" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421512009433)
Research focusing on nuclear waste management, developments for safer nuclear energy and studies of the nuclear arms race are also relevant to DSTS Network.
1. USAID and their contributions to Haiti
2. The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and their impact
3. The United Nations and if they've been sued by Haiti for cholera epidemic
The report implies that technical professionals have to be more careful when responding to large scale disasters; staff responding to emergencies need to have more training for the many internal challenges that would lmit care and assistance to victims. MSF discussed how they had limited man power, labs, and resources.
Disaster investigations look at the emergency response that followed the incident, either the timing or actions taken to save human lives. There's more about the investigations calling for improved emergency preparedness; policies and technology development to prevent disasters such as the Hague Street Explosion (1850) which involved a faulty boiler (and other factors) and the Iroquois theater fire (1903) which led to changed theater building policies.
The policy is a disaster relief act aimed to provide governmental aid/ assistance at the local, state, and national levels for emergency preparedness and response in the event of a major disaster.
The policy is to extend Good Samaritan laws to first responders so that they would not be liable for "spreading contamination while attempting to save lives."