What You Can Do to Prevent Toxic Exposure

By Rachel Jilek, Sam Goetze, and Kay McDowell.

Each quarter, a group of students, faculty, and staff at WWU join together to read and discuss recent environmental justice texts. In Spring 2021, the group is reading Harriet A. Washington’s A Terrible Thing to Waste. This post reflects and extends our discussion.

After extensive analysis of the disheartening physical and mental effects of environmental toxin exposures that disproportionately impact nonwhite communities, Chapter 6 of Harriet Washington’s A Terrible Thing to Waste turns to the long-awaited topic of solutions. Titled Taking the Cure: What Can You Do, Now?, this chapter details actions that individuals can take to protect themselves and their families. The beginning of the chapter touches on systematic changes that can be driven by political solutions (such as the precautionary principle, regulation and enforcement, reducing the evidence for action threshold, and eradicating poisons as opposed to reducing them) partnered with community organization and advocacy. Only this, Washington argues, “will create a safe environment for all, not only the wealthy and powerful” (p. 242). She then outlines actions that can be taken on the individual level that may not impact large-scale change, but can empower people by giving them some control over their protection from exposure and success in the face of environmental injustices. These actions include enrolling children in pre-K; fighting contamination in schools; poison-proofing one’s home, water, and food; eating nutritional foods; avoiding heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and those found in pesticides; and making safe household purchases. Washington provides specifics for each action and offers many resources that can help to inform individuals about reducing exposures to—and mitigating effects of—environmental toxins.

Chapter 6 of Washington’s book was very necessary after all the “doom and gloom” of the preceding chapters. After reading about all the dangerous toxins surrounding us every day of our lives, it is nice to have a bit of hope about actions we can take as individuals to reduce toxic exposure. One critique that some students had, however, was that this chapter seemed a bit inaccessible for the very groups these issues most affect. For example, Washington suggests actions like buying certain water filters or enrolling children in Pre-K, which can be difficult for marginalized families who have limited money, time, and access to achieving the suggested solutions. Adding to the burden is the fact that these people are already more likely to suffer from dangerous environmental exposures. Washington does make suggestions for change, though, such as offering universal free Pre-K and a few cost-effective options that can add some much-needed hope to the situation. Despite a few issues of inaccessibility, this chapter does a great job of succinctly rounding up the science on a variety of toxins and letting the reader know how they can avoid them.

After reading Washington’s chapters on lead exposure and its impacts, it felt important to then do research beyond the individual and look at different organizations that are addressing this issue. One organization in particular that is taking big initiatives to educate communities on lead is The Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning. They provide resources and information on how to manage the presence of lead in your home. They also educate families on how to protect children pre-birth and post-birth from lead toxicity. One key thing that organizations emphasize through their work is policy change. They are aware that structural change is key in bringing justice to all communities, so they are vocal about policy changes in local and state governments. They also post varying municipality resources so that people can read and understand what the lead regulations are depending on where they live.  Overall, this organization is making big strides in reducing lead exposure to innocent lives.