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Protecting the Environment is a Health Care Issue
Diane MacEachern, Big Green Purse
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The current debate about health care seems seriously lacking in one important way: there's no focus on the environmental problems that make so many of us sick.
Just scan the front pages of this week's The New York Times if you need to be convinced. "Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells," documents instances of children contracting serious ear infections, some requiring surgery, from bathing in polluted water. "Toxic Waters: Clean Water Laws Are Neglected at a Cost in Suffering" focuses on scabs and rashes being inflicted on children because their tap water contains barium, lead, arsenic and many other toxins that cause cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system. "A Fight Grows Over Labeling on Cleaning Products" addresses consumer concerns that the chemicals in common household cleansers are giving people asthma, acne, nervous disorders, and more.
Maybe it's time fror Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to put their heads together and realize that America could reduce health care costs significantly if we focused on cleaning up the planet. And get some of those polluters to help foot the bill. The cleaning products industry alone is a $14 billion/yr enterprise.
This post originally appeared on Diane's blog, Big Green Purse.
The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of Healthy Child Healthy World.
Posted by shannon on 10/06/2009 at 09:34 AM
I’ve been seeing this idea that the current health care debate needs to include environmental issues on blogs like yours quite a bit lately. I think that it is a very simplistic and ignorant way to view these issues. These are two huge issues; two issues that are so large in of themselves that they simply cannot be combined as as you are suggesting.
There is the issue that so many people in America do not have health coverage in America and people are dying TODAY because of it. People are dying of curable illnesses that were not caused by environmental issues because these people do not have health insurance. This is something that can change immediately if we are able to give every American health care coverage.
And then the issue of environmental problems causing illnesses is such a large problem in of itself that it simply cannot be combined within the current health care debate. If the two issues were combined as you are suggesting then I have no doubt that both would drown and there would be no changes on either front. Further, this isn’t to say that we need to put off educating people and working to make change on the environmental part of health care in America, it just needs to be dealt with differently and separately for the time being. I think that your and others calls to talk about environmental issues within the current health care debate is simply taking attention away from other very important issues, and I say that as someone that has been working to bring about change in our environmental problems since I was 13 years old. These are issues that need to be worked towards alongside each other for now, not necessarily together in one debate.
Posted by Denzel on 10/02/2009 at 08:41 AM
How many chemicals are in our food and water today which were not found 30 years ago? There must be lots.
You might want to add aspartame to the list. There is a whole lot of concern about this artificial sweetener.
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Posted by Janelle Sorensen on 10/06/2009 at 12:17 PM
Shannon- you make a very valid point. It’s hard to know sometimes how exactly to package legislation. I think the larger concept here is starting to think of things more holistically, even if we don’t spell out legislation that way. In all actuality, health care reform, chemical policy, and climate change are all interconnected. Hopefully, we see significant improvements in all areas very, very soon. Thanks for your thoughtful comment.