The Public Health Zine: Environmental health

THE TULANE PUBLIC HEALTH ZINE APRIL 2018

HEALTH

"We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors.

We borrow it from our children."

-Native American Proverb

I N D E X Written Pieces .

Common Ground..................................................................................................................................3 Sarah Jones, Sophomore Site Strategies.......................................................................................................................................4 Lizzie Bateman, Sophomore Environmental Health in New Orleans: A Case for Fossil Fuel Divestment.......................................5 Noa Elliot, Senior Cancer Alley: Toxic Environmental Racism........................................................................................7 Megan Plotka, Senior Not Your Land, Not Mine...................................................................................................................10 Sarah Jones, Sophomore Snapshot of Environmental Health Students......................................................................................11 Frances Gill & Lissa Soares, Graduate Students Crescent Park Analysis and Elevated Water......................................................................................13 Mark Schaupp, Sophomore Cross Apply........................................................................................................................................15 Lauren Allen, Sophomore Manito.................................................................................................................................................19 Canela Lopez, Junior Flint.....................................................................................................................................................20 Nile Pierre, Sophomore The Buzz.............................................................................................................................................21 Darcy Gray, Senior Art Darrah Bach, Sophomore............................................................................................Front/Back Cover Peri Levine, Junior.......................................................................................................................2, 5, 15 Praveena Fernes, Senior....................................................................................................Front Cover, 3 Hannah Craig, Senior.............................................................................................................................9 Zelda Kimble, Sophomore....................................................................................................................11 Julia Daniel, Junior...............................................................................................................................17 Nathalie Clarke, Sophomore.................................................................................................................19

Editors Lauren Allen Sarah Scribner

Editors-in-Chief Praveena Fernes Alexis Martin

Common Ground Common ground is an exercise done in social justice circles to find out where people stand on certain issues.

These are a few statements to prepare your brain for the topics discussed.

Flip the page if‌ You could not drink the tap water in your city for more than a day.

You ever had to go to the hospital due to toxins in the air.

Know what really happened after Hurricane Katrina.

Know people who could return to their homes after a natural disaster.

Heard neighborhoods described as dumps.

Could tell someone the geographic location of Cancer Alley.

Know that the Flint Water Crisis is not over.

Your teacher or professor has never discussed environmental justice.

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SEIGETARTS ETIS

These sketches were a study in how water and green space affect the built environment. In a class called Site Strategies, I studied things such as tree types, water infiltration, runoff and pollution, and how to build with these things at the forefront of the design. You don’t stop to think much about how much pavement is covering the earth. In reality, the pavement acts as a block to rainwater. You don’t think much about how fallen leaves, which are swept away into trash bags in the fall, are supposed to act as nutrients for the ground. Erosion control, water retention, carbon sequestration and more are benefits of planting trees, not to mention the beauty and happiness that they provide to inhabitants. We’re finally in an age when these concerns can be driving designs, instead of being ignored in the process.

Environmental Crisis in SE Louisiana: A Case for Fossil Fuel Divestment

By Noa Elliot

Across the planet, climate change is changing the way people design buildings, use water, and farm food. Some places see these impacts more distinctly than others, but nowhere are these changes, so long regarded as the scary future, going unnoticed. Climate scientists have reached near consensus that humans drive climate change largely through the combustion of fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas.

New Orleans is proximate to two environmental public health disasters: Cancer Alley and Isle de Jean Charles. Cancer Alley is an 85 mile stretch along the Mississippi River that is speckled with petrochemical refineries and hosts a majority African-American, low-income population.

Property values plummet, schools suffer, and people are trapped in a cycle of low income and poor health in part because of the environmental impact associated with petrochemical refining. Isle de Jean Charles is the small town that was home to the United States’ first environmental refugees. The impact of global climate change in Louisiana is here and now, and people are suffering.

Many believe that we need a fundamental energy system overhaul. Fossil fuel divestment campaigns, many including petrochemical refineries, have been springing up all over the world. These movements call for institutions to freeze and remove all further investments in fossil fuel.Â

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These radical campaigns bring attention to addressing environmental degradation at the intersections of social justice, labor, and health.

Divestment aims to stigmatize the fossil fuel industry for all the damage it is doing both globally and regionally. With climate change impacting so many different areas of life, divestment attempts to address the root of the problem by stigmatizing both use of fossil fuels, but also investment and profit associated them. If fossil fuel is financially disempowered, they have no leg to stand on. Energy does not have to be bad for global health! Â Â There are renewable energy sources that protect the Earth from permanent ecosystem interruption and protect life from the chemical damage to respiratory, reproductive, and other biological systems. The first step to moving toward renewables is to move away from fossil fuels, and the first step to moving away from fossil fuels is to make it a financially and politically unviable industry. For now, community organizers are bringing important visibility to the scope of the issue at the local level, but environmentalism is now, and will always be, an imperative part of public health.

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Cancer Alley: Toxic Environmental Racism

By Megan Plotka Brunetta Sims lives in “Cancer Alley,” the 85 mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. It is named for the disproportionately large concentration of industrial units in such a small area. These industrial units produce toxic chemicals that can cause cancer and a host of other health problems, including neurological and pulmonary damage and developmental issues in children.

Sims says her neighbors are slowly disappearing. They are dying from illnesses or being displaced by wealthy oil tycoons buying their land to build new factories. Others are moving away because they can’t stand the thick air or their children are getting sick.

However, many residents do not have the option to leave.

Louisiana is the third poorest state in the country and has the largest concentration of oil, natural gas and petrochemical facilities units in the western hemisphere . While “Cancer Alley” is only ten percent of Louisiana’s total area, it has approximately twenty-five percent of the public housing buildings in the state.

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1

On average, Louisiana’s public housing units are placed in close proximity to power plants and other industrial units by the government; in fact, every public housing building was built after its neighboring industrial unit.

Moving from one public housing building to another is a difficult process. You have to reapply to the housing authority of the new city or town. Waiting lists for public housing can be long or closed. The process is even more tenuous if you’re sick from pollution.

Buildings’ proximity isn’t a coincidence, but indicative of a national problem. Studies show that people in poverty throughout the United States, specifically impoverished Black residents, are more likely to live near industrial plants and be exposed to toxic pollutants than their white counterparts.

They simultaneously face the hardships of racism, poverty in the United States, and the direct consequences of pollution that degrade their health.

1 Lee,

Trymaine. "Cancer Alley: Big Industry, Big Problems." MSNBC. http://www.msnbc.com/interactives/geography-ofpoverty/se.html.

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"

Not Your Land, Not Mine

By Sarah Jones

“This land is your land. This land is my land.” You sniff the air and realize that this is not home. You look at the sky. The dark clouds forming above are not what your grandmother would describe as “God’s just having a good cry.” No, this is danger. You close your eyes to remember when the changes happened. When the water started to taste funny. When the air that was supposed to be there for your survival choked you, suffocated you, and felt like your enemy claimed revenge. You question, “When did they rob us? When did they take our land?” Sitting on the front steps of your porch, you begin to hear the sound of the school children’s precious voices: “This land was made for you and me.” You yell, “Hush! Hush! This is the white man’s land. They robbed us. They want to kill us!”

Environmental racism. With the help of Robert Bullard and Beverly Wright, Benjamin Chavis pieced these words together to describe an experience of oppression that harmed too many people of color–– environmental racism.

Defined as:

“Environmental racism is racial discrimination in environmental policy making and the unequal enforcement of the environmental laws and regulations. It is the deliberate targeting of people-of-color communities for toxic waste facilities and the official sanctioning of a life-threatening of poisons and pollutants in people-of-color communities. It is also manifested in the history of excluding people of color from leadership in the environmental movement.”

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Snapshot of Environmental Health students Ahmad Alqassim, PhD Global Environmental Health Sciences Saudi Arabia

claim to fame?

I did not expect this coming.

May be I am lucky for being a tulanian

What are you studying?

I am currently buried under piles of Environmental Toxicology work.

your existence in 30 words or fewer: Just do my job, live my life and give every thing a chance to sort itself out.

Where are you going in five years?

To be a good researcher in Environmental Toxicology and help in bridging the gap in this field

What are 3 hazards you worry about?

Meeting work targets or goals, Whether I'm a good parent and husband, and where I will be in ten years from now

What's the last book you read for fun?

War and Peace by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy.

What was your favorite class at Tulane?

Toxicology of environmental agents

by Dr. Charles Miller.

One thing to do before graduating:

Writing my dissertation hahahaha.

Any regrets?

I really do not want to talk about this.

Laura Scott PhD Nowhere, Oklahoma

claim to fame?

Imani White, MPH Disaster Management Atlanta, Georgia

claim to fame?

The girl who rides motorcycles and does ballet

What are you studying?

Antibiotic resistance in the natural environment

your existence in 30 words or fewer: I'll do it in 2: Zombie Apocalypse.

Where are you going in five years?

Hopefully to a cushy job with lots of 0's in the paycheck.

Alternatively, if Elon Musk is still looking for volunteers to go to Mars, I'm all in.

What are 3 hazards you worry about?

1) Antibiotic resistance 2) Bad drivers 3) Gypsy curses

“Back in my day…”: We were so poor we didn't have a landline, but in the 6th grade we got one AND it could do 3 way calling.

That was the highlight of elementary school. But then in junior high everyone had dial up internet so I was back to being behind the times.

What's the last book you read for fun?

Eye of the World (Wheel of Time)

What was your favorite class at Tulane?

Outbreak Epidemiology

One thing to do before graduating: Enjoy your freedom in the middle of the day on a weekday. You're going to graduate and get a full time job, and that freedom will be gone. Run errands in the middle of the day when no one else is out. Frolic through Audubon Park on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. The rest of us are working, and won't be there to harass you.

Any regrets?

Not having more clever answers for this interview. I've let you down, and I'm sorry.

Black Female Equestrian, bomb twerker (lol), “someone who will listen and won’t judge”

What are you studying?

Disaster Management Policy, Incident Management and organizational Management

your existence in 30 words or fewer:

I was placed on this earth to learn from life and nature. I am to observe it. My purpose is to listen and show others to be unafraid of themselves.

Where are you going in five years?

Hopefully I’ll be living out of the country on a military assignment with a loved one work

What are 3 hazards you worry about?

(Not sure what type of hazards you meant, soooo I ran with this lol) Having a job that doesn’t allow me to develop professionally Not taken seriously because I’m Black / Woman Expressing my concern of frustration and being labeled “ an angry/lazy black woman”

“Back in my day…”:

Kids were forced to play outside, relationships were a thing, and students were valued

What's the last book you read for fun?

The Coming by Dr. Daniel Black

What was your favorite class at Tulane?

Global Health Management and Policy

One thing to do before graduating:

Ride on a party bus

Any regrets?

I regret not directly addressing students who made comments that I found offensive or racist. Some comments were ignorant as they often tried to tell me that they knew more about MY culture than I did just because they lived in some country in Africa.

Interviews conducted By Frances Gill, Lissa Soares

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Crescent Park Analysis and Elevated Water

By Mark Schaupp There are two projects. The first is an analysis of Crescent Park, both visually and through written reflection. We focused on the entrances to the Park and whether it was effectively designed to be accessible to the community. Our collective understanding is that a public park is meant to be permeable - that is, easily accessed by the community. We found that visitors had to be funneled into three different entrances due to a need to circumvent the railroad that provided a barrier to the community.

Each approach into the park is unique, and we reviewed each in terms of how effective each approach was in allowing the community to enter the park. We understood the park as paramount to the health of those that live in the area around the park.

It’s close to a mile in between the bridges. So if you live near one, then that’s fantastic, but if not it greatly limits your access to the park and the health benefits of the park.

All things considered, the railroad and bridges were relatively effective in transporting people into the park; however, the ideal situation would be a permeable barrier around the entire park. In addition, only one bridge was ADA accessible. One bridge in particular had an additional benefit of the New Orleans city skyline. The designers took that opportunity to give the viewer cause to stop before entering the park.

The beauty of architecture is realised everyday through small things. Every time you criticize something, you realize what the creator was intending to do. This creator was trying to allow as much access to the park as possible, and I think they succeeded.

The second project is a solo project by myself and represents a desire to provide a space for the community to gather and relax with a pool; however, I also used the pool as an opportunity to teach/display a value for environmental consciousness through water retention.

A little bit about New Orleans: New Orleans is like a massive concrete bowl that now sits mostly below the surrounding sea level. The traditional approach, when water enters the bowl through flood or rain, was to pump it out as quickly as possible. This strategy is costly and relatively ineffective. Not only are we attempting to move water uphill, but we are also pumping clean water back in to consume and use. A new alternative approach is Water Retention and Detention, where we create space to hold water from rain and flood so that we don't clog our pumping systems, and then reuse that water and decrease the strain on our water circulation systems.

In my pool house, water is stored and absorbed through a detention garden at the back. This garden is designed to have an extra foot or so to store water. You use plants that can live submerged in water. Then the water is cleaned, processed, and used in the pools and systems that are spread throughout the building that I designed, the one in which the pool is housed. It is a new concept to both create a space to revitalize community gathering and health, while also educating and putting a new, more effective systems on display.

Cross Apply

by Lauren Allen

Ecofeminism is a movement that links ecology and feminism. This link is found through the Racist, Capitalist Patriarchy that marginalized people have felt for centuries. This particular brand of patriarchy is all consuming.

Literally. This ideology is the force behind the notion that if you have the capability to take, then it is your sworn duty to do so.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has said that a feminist is someone who “believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.� An EcoFeminist is someone who believes that Racism, Capitalism, and Sexism are inextricably and irreversibly intertwined with the destruction of both womanhood and our environment.

Because capitalism views everything and everyone as capable of commodification, it is necessary for certain things and certain people to be worth more than others for the sake of that commodification. This means that both things and people must be ranked. Men are worth more than women. White people are worth more than people of color. People who fall within binaries are worth more than those who don’t. Capital is worth more than our environment and the long-term sustainability of the human race.

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Men have been using she/her pronouns to describe the planet for centuries. Our planet is viewed as a woman. So, it should not surprise anyone when she is treated like a woman. Used and abused without thought for her rights or her responsibilities outside of what we want from her. Invoked only in times when it is politically convenient. Stripped of her protections by people who have no knowledge of what it takes to keep her alive.

We need to start treating women and our planet with humanity and decency and compassion. We need to stop treating women and our planet as though they are both renewable resources. Unless we wake up and smell the roses while we still have them, one day humans are going to wake up and all the women will have fled or be dead and Earth will no longer support our destruction and pain and ineptitude.Â

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A Reminder

By Julia Daniel When people are so comfortably nestled in their Uptown New Orleans Homes, they ignore the impact of the oil rigs in Louisiana. To overlook these structures is a position of privilege that is waiting to be brutally shaken when our health suffers as a result of their emissions.Â

It is often a mindless endeavor to look out onto the New Orleans Horizon;Â however, these paintings should act as reminders of their existence. Â

Manito

By Canela Lopez

En clase hoy, Mire a mi mano.

Pequeño y color de cafe.

Mire a mi mana, mano.

Brave y color de cafe.

Mire a mi alma, mana, mano.

Todavia color de cafe.

Mire a mi sangre, alma, mana, mano. ?También es color de cafe?

(English Translation) Little Hand In class today, I looked at my hand Small and the color of coffee.

I looked at my spirit, my hand.

Brave and the color of coffee.

I looked at my soul, my spirit, my hand.

All still the color of coffee.

I looked at my blood, my soul, my spirit, my hand.

Is it too the color of coffee?

This is a poem that was written in a moment of heightened racial distress during my primarily white political science class. There are so many moments throughout my day, that the very air I breathe feels toxic being on Tulane’s campus. My skin feels heavy in these white spaces, as though it was dipped in cement. When we think about environmental health, the narrative oftentimes focuses on nature, on trees, on clean blue skies. But something we fail to think of is the environments we occupy every day and the effects of their makeup on our ability to survive and thrive as people of color. Looking at my hand in class oftentimes is a reassertion of the fact that I am an alien force in this white environment, constructed against my very existence.

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Flint

By Nile Pierre Who knew the givers and takers of this life would not be some omnipotent power, some earthly force, mother nature, but your own government?

The people of Flint were killed by greed, by institutions and structures –– by racism.

Children without water while not more than an hour away, others swam in it.

It was announced that water quality was restored to Flint residents –– the government decided that it was time to give life back for a fee.

The people pay hundreds of dollars each month for all that life can afford, so that they can clean and be clean, see their children grow, clear their throats before they have to speak up for themselves again and hope that the life they bought doesn’t take life again.

And I read on the Guardian today: "Nestlé pays $200 a year to bottle water near Flint – where water is undrinkable."

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The Buzz

By Darcy Gray

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The Public Health Zine (PHZ) presents an evidence-based, comprehensive snapshot of pressing campus health issues through a monthly theme. We are a publication dedicated to creating a campus-wide conversation around student health and wellness.

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