Summer Reflections

Environmental over-load and unfortunate sad stories.  Three parents of my daughter's peers  have died from cancer within the last two months.  Lovely people.  Devoted mothers and fathers.  All under fifty.  Another friend is dying of lung cancer.  Another dear friend is doing well post breast cancer treatment (radiation).  I just had a mole removed that might be melanoma.  I'm scared.  I'm hoping it is nothing, but I cannot help but worry.  I'm also due for the full round of tests--colon, breast, blood.  None of these tests are fun (blood being the least bothersome), but all are deeply nerve wracking and fear grips me right in the solar plexis.  My mind races to the worst; unfortunately, I can see the outcome of these cancers quite vividly, as I have sat near too many bedsides of the dying.

The thing is: we all know so many people in the same situation, and we're all living in this kind of high intensity state of environmental fear.  A perpetual eco trauma. 

It is in moments like these that I don't like doing this work.  When I'm in my own personal panic, I don't want to read about nuclear radiation in Japan poisoning children and leaking into the seas, or about toxics, fracking, tar sands, deforestation, and all the rest.

I want to escape into the world of Anne of Green Gables.  I want to walk in the woods, throw off my clothes, jump into a pond of cool green water. 

Maybe that is why I send my daughter to a camp that is from another time.  They don't play competitive sports, or do computer art, or put on fancy plays, or get in buses and travel the country, or learn how to make robots. Instead, they farm,  sleep outside, swim in the lake, cook in the kitchen.  They make simple crafts in the woodshop.  They put on on a play in a barn and wear costumes cobbled together by hand.  They folk dance and sing.  They go on a canoe trips and hike up a mountain or two or three.

Oh to a more simple time I long to go!

Fracking: Hydraulic Fracturing 101

Fracking: Water Quality

Fracking: Air Quality

Red Riding Hood

a hand in the dark
careful what you wish for
spoken only in sleep

wild storms wild love

you were covered in fur

tore
from me
that
crashing

what wound had you 
carried 
in your skin
what cancer burn

that love
sweet love

could
not
stick

Luminescent Motherhood

Olivia sleeps with the light on

dreaming of horses and ice skates

throws herself upside down

on bruised knees kicking  

arms locked around

this flat heart

I miss the nursing child

baby in the sling

gums on my chin

calling, Mama nuna

I thought when god gave

me a baby

she would stay

a baby

but she grows longer, longer, longer

when will she die

or leave me?

when will I die

or leave her?

have I left already?

would I feel such shyness

if I had had more children?

or if I had not

lost everything

including my

eyebrows and pubic hair?

or if my parents had

died happy deaths?

mother under serene white

lights hallow

nurse telling me to

rub her dry skin with lotion

feet peeling with disease

(for years) I could not bear to

touch or see her epidermis

waiting for my mother to die

too quickly in the ICU

asking for her other daughter

father broken head

big body no longer

wrapped but zipped and

carried off by stranger men--

after we so many hours, sung

Joel's rabid guitar

by the rivers of Babylon

where he sat down

and there he wept

how did the sun

do this?

do I cry out?

(what that spindly spider child

wove and dug

under my baby's skin

taking the prescient

precious red)

about my own cancer?

about such volumes of bluegrey bile?

Things we can do and places we can read about what to do....Optimism, focus, and effort

Several readers and students have asked that I post positive information about what we can do to take care of ourselves and our planet and make it safer for our kids.  Is this information on my blog too depressing?  I'm not sure how else to tell this story other than to say--yes--it is very depressing and the only way it will stop being this way is if each of us becomes pro-active in combating environmental degradation. Things are bad, and they probably will get much worse....unless we do something about it.  We all possess the power to change things around, but these changes will take effort and focus on all of our parts.   We don't have much of a choice.  We must participate in environmental activism, or the world will become uninhabitable for human beings and many other creatures. The time for laissez faire living is over.  We have to fix things or our heirs will be left to struggle for survival in a hot, toxic, undrinkable and inedible soup.

"What will you do with your one precious life?" Mary Oliver asks us. 

What can you do to make changes immediately in your own lives?

I'll make some suggestions.

1) Go to my list of news sites on the sidebar of this blog.  I've listed many on Nuclear, Toxics, Climate Change, and other issues.

2) Greenpeace has up-to-date information on current legislation and pertinent information about toxics, global warming, and other environmental problems. Environmental Working Group is fantastic, also.  Enviroblog (part of EWG) is great as well.  Hit these and you'll go to their sites.

3) My favorite local activists (New York) are Patti and Doug Wood.  They help towns and schools go green, and they are amazingly brilliant and generous with their time. If you live locally (as in New York City area), go listen to them talk!  Their website is: http://www.grassrootsinfo.org/about.html.   Their website offers excellent information about product safety, toxins, food, and so on.  They are also on WBAI every other Tuesday evening at 8 p.m.   Their show is called Green Street.

4) Read Silent Spring--Rachel Carson, The End of Nature, Eaarth--Bill McKibben, Living Downstream, Having Faith, and Raising Elijah-- Sandra Steingraber,  The Long Emergency --Jay Howard Kunstler, Our Stolen Future--multiple authors.  More suggestions to come.

5) Film suggestions coming up, but definitely watch Gasland, Fast Food Nation, The Cove, Rachel's Daughters, Homeland, and Food Inc.  Standard oldie "popular culture" favorites: A Civil Action, Erin Brockavitch, Silkwood, and China Syndrome.

5) Andy Revkin at The New York Times has an enormous amount of information on Global Warming (primarily) and environmental issues. He keeps a blog called Dot Earth and all of his articles are superb. I recommend that you follow him!

6) Watch Annie Leonard's the Story of Stuff.  You'll never look at the stuff you buy in the same way again. Hit the title and you'll go directly there.  She's got a bunch of new "Stories" there as well...on bottled water, and more.  Watch them and pass them along to others!

7) Pick one environmental issue (if you feel overwhelmed with the many problems at hand) and do something about it. Volunteer, stay on top of it and sign petitions, spread the word, tell your friends and family what you know and what they can do.
Key issues to focus on: toxic chemicals, global warming, fracking, nuclear power/bombs, Tar Sands, Coal/Mountaintop Removal.

The most important things you can do? Get informed. Get involved.  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  Buy less stuff!  Educate yourself about the current state of the environment. Stop eating processed foods. Eat less or no meat (meat production is a major contributor to climate change and pollution). Drive less. Drive smaller cars. Don't use pesticides and chemicals on your lawn and plants! Buy or grow organic. Eat your vegetables. Don't eat out of or cook with plastic. Don't buy water-get a filter and a reusable water bottle. Use less electricity and gas/oil.  Buy or make your own non-toxic cleaning products. Don't cook with non-stick pans.  Don't put chemicals on your body (go to Cosmetics Database and find safe body products--this goes for men, too).   Sign petitions to support environmental causes. Volunteer or work for environmental organizations! Tread lightly on the earth!

Send me your favorite suggestions and I'll post them!

More to come.... My exhaustive list of best environmental books to read.... Yes, I keep promising... it will come!

Lecture from UC Berkeley on Climate Change with some of my favorites

Take a listen to these lectures on climate change from a UC Berkeley meeting on the environment (2009).  Some of the speakers are among my favorites-- including the ecofeminist historian Carolyn Merchant (author of numerous books on environmentalism, such as The Death of Nature and Reinventing Eden), and Professor Timothy Morton from UC Davis (author of Ecology Without Nature and Ecological Thought).  Morton speaks eloquently on the grief and abstraction associated with environmental degradation and global warming, and Merchant  explains her important concept of a "partnership ethic" for sustainability.

http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/2011/06/creativity-in-face-of-climate-change.html

The Sea, part I

A fierce open sky

impossible exacting clouds

majestic/crystalline edges

against grey and deep blue

a wide wide open ocean

the silence of an

unpeopled sea—

we stand on sand dollars
he says: 'walk here and

you will feel them'

I dive under and see:

layers of cream-white circles 

softly rocking in cream sand
he tells a story of sharks

later we walk

not holding hands

he is just above my height

on the uneven beach

just there--

a changing rivulet

a sea of hermit crabs

herds and herds

emerging from their holes--

as he walks towards them

they scuttle away
in waves

'the beach is closing'

he says

‘we must go’

(what irony! closing for

whom? not the birds or crabs

or rivulets or sea)

we return to our place

quickly shake off

our blankets and bags--

rushing back to the car--

driving home in silent darkness

I wonder: 'what is it to fall in love?'

awakening in a fierce open sky

open wide in an open sea

sometimes shivering--

sometimes ecstatic-- 

noticing noticing

such small things as 

sand dollars 

beneath our

feet.

Part II.   
In january, alone--
up north--
    it snows and snows --
I dig myself out (again)--
unfold the pages of my words:
what was this day at Fort De Soto beach?
what majestic clouds?
what scuttling crab?
what sacred white beneath my feet?
what ocean man?


Part III.
spring, spring light
my garden awakens
birds--blues and reds
the wonder
the joy
the birth
I know now--

It was
the wide wide open sea
             in me
    


October/10 and June/11

Just the other day... a little bit of Hydraulic Fracking on May 26th, 2011.

I'm posting what Sandra Steingraber presented at the Hydraulic Fracking hearing in Albany on May 26th.  She sent it to me with her blessing to pass it along to others.  The material comes largely from her most recent book, Raising Elijah: Protecting Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis. 


I traveled to Albany with my friend Patti Wood from Grassroots Environmental Education, who quietly organized this hearing, along with the help of Citizens Campaign for the Environment. A host of pediatricians and scientists spoke (Adam Law MD, Kevin-Chatham-Stephens MD, Larysa Dyrszka MD, Ronald Bishop PhD, Eric London MD, Amy Freeth MD--I won't mention the names of the three who were planted by the gas and oil industry), almost all arguing about the negative impact of fracking on the environment- including noise, air, and water pollution that will destroy communities throughout New York State. So much damage has been done throughout the U.S. in places where fracking has taken place. Josh Fox filmed.  PBS interviewed Sandra.

Sandra sat behind me before she spoke.  She was dressed in black.  Sleek and grim, she carried a loaf of healthy-looking bread and a jar of water.  We said our hellos.  Sandra told me that fracking is "the single most important environmental issue on the table.  If we don't stop this, we will all die."

As I listened to over six hours of testimonies from a host of experts--without any breaks for liquid or food--I felt shell shocked and numb.  The politicians looked stupified.  They appeared to feel just as I did. What kind of government allows its corporations to poison its citizens?  How did we get to this point?  How can we be such a stupid race of beings?  What sense does it make to inject poisons into our water, to release radiation into our environment (through the fracturing of the shale--and otherwise, of course--here we are with Fukishima), or to pollute our pristine air?  What mad, mad beings are we?  For the first time, I felt glad to have only one child (me, the mama who always wanted more).  What kind of earth are we leaving as a legacy to future generations?  What kind of fools call this "natural gas" clean energy?

Grief.

Water is life.

The damage of fracking is irreversible.

Directly from the source.... a brilliant and heroic woman....

The Potential Health Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing

Testimony before the New York State Assembly Standing Committees

on Environmental Conservation and Health

May 26, 2011

Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D.

Distinguished Scholar in Residence

Department of Environmental Studies

Ithaca College

Ithaca, New York  14850

 Chairman Sweeney, Chairman Gottfried, and distinguished members of the committees:

Thank you for convening this hearing on a topic that is of urgent concern to all New Yorkers.  Hydraulic fracturing relies on pressure, water, and high volumes of inherently toxic chemicals to shatter the bedrock beneath our feet and beneath our drinking water aquifers.  Once shattered, the bedrock releases more than just bubbles of natural gas.  The rock itself releases inherently toxic materials that have been bound together with the shale for 400 million of years.  As we, in New York, consider whether to permit or prohibit this form of energy extraction, it is essential that we understand the possible consequences to public health as a prerequisite for making that decision.  Once shale is shattered, it cannot be unshattered, nor groundwater unpoisoned.

Some of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing—or liberated by it—are carcinogens.  Some are neurological poisons with suspected links to learning deficits in children.  Some are asthma triggers.  Some, especially the radioactive ones, are known to bioaccumulate in milk.  Others are reproductive toxicants that can contribute to pregnancy loss.  Cancer, miscarriage, learning disabilities, and asthma are not only devastating disorders, they are expensive.  They add rocks to the pockets of our health care system and cripple productivity.[1]  A recent analysis published in our nation’s preeminent public health journal, Health Affairs, estimates that we now spend $76.6 billion each year on health care for children exposed to toxic chemicals and air pollution.[2]  

So it is right that we ask if hydraulic fracturing brings with it involuntary environmental exposures that may increase our disease burden here in New York.  I applaud you for initiating this conversation.  It feels like an historic moment.

My name is Sandra Steingraber.  I’m a distinguished scholar in residence at Ithaca College, and my Ph.D. is in biology from the University of Michigan.  More specifically, my training is in systems ecology, which means I’m interested in understanding how a dynamic web of direct and indirect interactions—from pollination to groundwater flow—helps shape the natural world. 

Early on in my career as a biologist, I had a profound personal experience that led me to the work I do now, which is focused on understanding how the cumulative impacts of multiple environmental exposures to toxic chemicals create risks for human health.

At the age of 20, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer, a quintessential environmental cancer with well-established links to particular classes of chemicals.  Questions about my possible chemical exposures posed to me by my own diagnosing physician led me, years later, to return to my hometown in Illinois and investigate an alleged cancer cluster there.  Among other things, I discovered the presence of dry-cleaning fluid in the drinking water wells.  That was a surprise because the underlying geology of the area should not have allowed toxic contamination to happen.  But there it was.  I came to appreciate how little we really know about the unmapped, subterranean landscape below our feet, which has intimate, unseen connections to the world above ground.  It’s not just an inert lump of rock down there. 

My investigation of the environmental links to cancer became the topic of my book Living Downstream, which was released last year as a documentary film.  I’ve also published two books on pediatric environmental health, the most recent of which is Raising Elijah: Protecting Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis.  The book’s final chapter addresses the potential health threats of hydraulic fracturing, and I’m pleased to share the results of my research with you. 

I’ll begin by saying that a comprehensive study of the long-term, cumulative, public health impacts of fracking has not been done.  However, we do know quite a lot about the risks to human health posed by some of the chemicals used in the process or released by it. 

Health Effects from Air Pollution

Because breathing is our most ecological act—we inhale a pint of atmosphere with every breath—I’ll begin with air. 

Air pollution is an inevitable consequence of horizontal hydrofracturing.  It is not the outcome of a catastrophic accident.  It is not a hypothetical risk.  Compromised air quality is a certainty.  Because four to nine million gallons of fresh water are required to frack a single well and because wells must cover the landscape for Marcellus shale development to be profitable, fracking is a shock and awe operation.  77,000 wells are envisioned for upstate New York alone.[3]  Each well requires 1,000 truck trips.  77,000 times 1,000 equals a number with six zeroes after it.  This represents a prodigious amount of diesel exhaust.  And, of course, in addition to endless fleets of 18-wheelers, gas production requires generators, pumps, drill rigs, condensers and compressors, which also run on diesel.  At the same time, the wellheads themselves vent volatile organic chemicals—such as benzene and toluene—that are themselves highly toxic and can combine with combustion byproducts to create smog.[4]

This kind of air pollution is lethal.  It contains large amounts of ultrafine particles, soot, ozone, and the carcinogen benzo-a-pyrene.  In adults, these pollutants are variously linked to bladder, lung, and breast cancer, stroke, diabetes, and premature death.  In children, they are linked to premature birth, asthma, cognitive deficits, and stunted lung development.[5] 

Again, this harm comes with economic costs.  Premature birth, which is the leading cause of disability in the United States, carries  $26 billion a year price tag. The direct and indirect costs of childhood asthma are $18 billion a year.[6]

What’s more, the airborne contaminants from gas drilling travel long distances, up to 200 miles.[7]  That is to say, the health costs of drilling will be borne by children living in areas where no one is benefiting financially from land leases.  Albany will be affected.  So will New York City. 

In the gas-producing areas of Utah and Wyoming, formerly pristine air now contains more ozone than downtown Los Angeles.[8]  As the mother of a child with a history of asthma, this concerns me deeply.  New York is not Wyoming.  Our starting point here is not pristine, and our population density is much greater.  The cumulative impact of the air pollution that would be generated by hydraulic fracturing and the air pollution already here in our state is a question that, I submit, requires investigation before any permits are issued.  

Health Effects from Water Pollution

We are each of us in this room 65 percent water by weight.  As such, we enjoy an exquisite communion not only with the atmosphere but with the water cycle, too. 

Fracking turns millions of gallons of fresh water into poisonous flowback fluid that requires permanent disposal.  The technology does not exist to turn this waste into drinkable water nor remove the radioactive isotopes.  You cannot filter radioactivity.  This much we know with certainty.  The unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan illustrates the point.

We also know that there are many documented cases of surface and ground water contamination with compounds associated with gas extraction, including the carcinogen benzene.[9]  However, because hydraulic fracturing has been granted the environmental equivalent of diplomatic immunity—and enjoys special exemptions from both the Clean Water Act and the Clean Drinking Water Act—it is difficult for those of us in the research community to quantify the public health consequences.  Researchers lack knowledge about the behavior of groundwater, and, because of trade secrets, they also don’t know what chemicals to test for.[10]

We do know, from a study released earlier this month, that drinking water wells near gas extraction sites in Pennsylvania and New York have, on average, 17 times higher methane levels than wells located farther away.[11]

Other than possible explosions, what are the health consequences of drinking and inhaling methane?   For pregnant women?  For children?  For anybody?  We don’t know.  Those studies have never been done.  The federal government does not regulate methane in drinking water.

We do know that disinfection byproducts are created when water containing carbon-based contaminants is chlorinated.  These include trihalomethanes, such as chloroform, which are, in fact, linked to both bladder and colon and cancers.[12]  Can methane serve as a raw material for the creation of carcinogenic compounds during the disinfection of public drinking water?  To my knowledge, we in the scientific community don’t have an answer to that question.

I have brought with me a jar of water from my kitchen tap in the village of Trumansburg, which comes from a municipal well sunk into a groundwater aquifer next to Cayuga Lake, where fracking fluid from Pennsylvania has been dumped.  Every day, I pour this water into glasses and hand them to my children.  Every day, this water becomes their blood plasma.  It becomes their tears.  It becomes their cerebral spinal fluid.  According to the most recent annual Drinking Water Quality Report for my village, this water contains 29.2 parts per billion trihalomethanes.  That’s not in violation of regulatory limits, but it’s worrisome as there is no documented safe threshold level of exposure.  This water also contains nitrates, probably as the result of agricultural run-off.  Their presence in this jar is, all by itself, not a call for alarm.  But it is a sign that our municipal water, which draws from an unconfined aquifer, is vulnerable to chemical contamination.  It shows that there exist hidden connections between the surface of the earth and the watery vaults of groundwater deep beneath our feet. 

What would happen to this water if the fields that surround my village—many of which are already leased to gas industry—become a staging ground for fossil fuel extraction? 

This is not a hydrological experiment that I am interested in running. 

Impact on Food

I have also brought with me a loaf of bread and a bag of flour.  Both are made from organic heirloom wheat and rye that is grown in my home county and milled right in my village.  You can find similar loaves of artisanal bread—made from this same flour—in Brooklyn bakeries.  This particular loaf was created by Stefan Senders of the Wide Awake Bakery in Mecklenburg, New York.  Baker Senders asked me to submit this loaf as his personal testimony to the Assembly today.  And it comes with a message:  

“Please tell the committees that bread is mostly water.  The flour and the yeast are just a matrix to make water stand up. I can’t bake bread without a source of clean water.” 

He also told me that the farmers who grew the organic wheat to make his flour are surrounded by leased land.  He believes whole farm-to-table enterprise is threatened by fracking.

Baker Stefan and his suppliers have reason to feel concern.  Organic farmers who raise food near fracking operations are facing potential boycotts and will lose their certification if their crops and animals are chemically contaminated. 

Upstate New York was recently identified by the New York Times as a national hotspot for organic agriculture, which itself is the most rapidly expanding sector of the food production system that has continued to grow even during the economic downturn.[13]  Cows, wheat fields, vineyards, maple syrup, and apple orchards:  they are all part of a healthy human food chain.  They all require clean water, and they are all affected badly by exposure to air pollution. 

Of course, public health is also served by employment opportunities in the form of non-toxic jobs.  The above-mentioned mill and bakery are currently hiring.  They both have plans to grow their businesses as demand for locally produced, organic bread is rising.  The grain farmers, too, are seeking additional land.  However, as baker Stefan Senders informs me, concern about the area gas leases and the possible end of the current state moratorium on horizontal drilling have negatively affected plans for locally expanding organic wheat agriculture and artisanal bread baking.  This raises a question:  is the human health of New York best served by jobs that involve organic bread production or fossil fuel extraction? 

Conclusions

I fervently hope that these hearings are the beginning, not the end, of an essential conversation.  In its current incarnation, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement—on which the future of hydraulic fracturing hangs—considers neither human health consequences nor the cumulative impacts of the numerous hazards that gas drilling has brought to our doors.  

The human health impacts of fracking cannot be understood by looking at one chemical exposure by itself, one river at a time, one well pad in isolation.  We all know that it is not just the last straw that breaks the backs of camels.   I urge the Assembly to look at the all straws, employing the new tools of cumulative impacts assessment to do so.[14]  Until that work is complete, benefit of the doubt goes to New York’s children, water, cows, and wheat fields, not to things that threaten them.  

---

[1] President’s Cancer Panel, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now, 2008-2009 Annual Report (National Cancer Institute, May 2010)

[2] L. Trasande and Y. Lui, “Reducing the Staggering Costs of Environmental Disease in Children, Estimated at $76.6 Billion in 2008,” Health Affairs 30 (5): 863-70, 5 May 2011.

[3] This estimate is based on assumptions about how much of the shale will be tapped over what period of time.  77,000 wells assumes that 17 New York State counties are drilled and that the shale is 70 percent developed over 50 years at a density of eight wells per square mile.  T. Engelder, “Marcellus 2008 Report Card on the Breakout Year for Gas Production in the Appalachian Basin,” Forth Worth Basin Oil and Gas Magazine, Aug. 2009, pp. 18-22, and Anthony Ingraffea, Ph.D., personal communication.

[4] C.D. Volz et al., “Potential Shale Gas Extraction Air Pollution Impacts,” FracTracker—Marcellus Shale Data Tracking, Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds, 24 Aug. 2010.

[5] American Lung Association, “Health Effects of Ozone and Particle Pollution,” State of the Air, 2011; President’s Cancer Panel, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now, 2008-2009 Annual Report (National Cancer Institute, May 2010).

[6] American Lung Association, Asthma and Children Fact Sheet, Feb. 2010; J.M. Perrin et al., “The Increase of Childhood Chronic Conditions in the United States,” Journal of the American Medical Association 297 (2007); U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Children: National Health Interview Survey, 2006 and “Premature Birth,” 2010.

[7] S. Kemball-Cook et al., “Ozone Impacts of Natural Gas Development in the Haynseville Shale,” Environmental Science and Technology 15 (2010): 9357-63.

[8] M. Bernard, “Air Pollution Becoming a Basin Concern,” Vernal Express, 5 Oct. 2010; D.M. Kargbo et al., “Natural Gas Plays in the Marcellus Shale: Challenges and Potential Opportunities,” Environmental Science & Technology 44 (2010): 5679-84.

[9] A. Lustgarten and ProPublica, “Drill for Gas, Pollute the Water,” Scientific American, 17 Nov. 2008.

[10] For example, U.S. Agency for Toxics Substances and Disease Registry, Evaluation of Contaminants in Private Residential Well Water, Pavillion, Wyoming, Fremont County, August 2010.

[11] S.G. Osborne et al., “Methane Contamination of Drinking Water Accompanying Gas-Well Drilling and Hydraulic Fracturing,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 2011, epub before print.

[12] R.D. Morris et al., “Chlorination, Chlorination By-products and Cancer: A Meta-analysis,” American Journal of Public Health 82 (1992); H.W. Weinberg et al., “Disinfection By-Products (DBPs) of Health Concern in Drinking Water: Results of a Nationwide DBP Occurrence Study (Athens, GA: EPA National Exposure Research Laboratory, 2002).

[13] H. Fairfield, “The Hot Spots for Organic Food,” New York Times, 3 May 2009.

[14] “Cumulative impacts” refers to the combined effect of numerous adverse impacts on public health or ecosystems from environmental hazards.  The Science and Environmental Health Network has launched a new website that describes the latest science on cumulative impacts assessment:  www.cumulativeimpacts.org.  

A mother and son were checked for radiation exposure in Fukushima

Fukushima Mother of worker: 'They Have Accepted They Will All Probably Die’

     Japan nuclear crisis: Mothers-to-be flee Fukushima leak after        radiation alert
        
    Banker Matt Saunderson, 33 - among Brits determined to get      families clear - said: "I'm sending  my wife and children home. "It doesn't matter what the Japanese authorities are saying - when it comes to nuclear fallout, or the risk of it, I'm not taking chances with my kids."

Tragic ... grief-stricken Yoshie Murakami reaches out to hold her mother's hand after finding her dead in the rubble - her 23-year-old daughter is also missing  Milk contaminated  A Mother and Son
  were checked for radiation exposure

GET OUT OF TOKYO NOW 

Water contaminated unsafe for babies  

                         Mothers for Peace on alert   

Preparing for my talk on nuclear bomb films, mothers, and activism

I am going to NEMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) at the end of this week to speak on an environmental literature and film panel. My topic is on the nuclear mothers, activism and film.  The time allotted to me to speak is fifteen minutes!   It seems absurd.  I can only begin a very simple discussion--how insane at this moment in time.

I am the only person at the conference talking about nuclear issues.

For the past two years, I've been in living in my own personal bubble of strange nuclear studies, trying to pull together science, feminism, ecology, mothering, film and literature.  Watching movies in my dark living room through the afternoon and night.  Taking notes.  Reading books on nuclear history (not being a nuclear scientist by any stretch of the imagination, I have a lot of catch up work to do!).  Reading up on nuclear activist history.  Reading feminist histories of about the dangers and impact of nuclear destruction by Rebecca Solnit, Carole Gallagher, Susan Griffin, Helen Caldicott,  and Terry Tempest Williams.  Many of my friends want to hear nothing of my work, research or fears.  Many think nothing of the dangers of nuclear bombs, and they love to argue with me that nuclear power is "clean."  No one, except one of my wonderful graduate students, Nicole Buscemi-Garret, will watch the films from my collection with me.  I'm sure Nicole watched only out of obligation!

Helen Caldicott describes this dismissal of the dangers we are under as an act of suicide.  40 hydrogen bombs are aimed at New York City; we have 60 aimed at Russia.  Some crazy number of bombs are aimed at Washington, DC.  A nuclear war started whether by human error, or intention, and life as we know it would be over, for good.  Nuclear Winter.  The nuclear plants in this country are old, leaking, and dangerous---many the same model as those of Japan's and we, too could have a natural disaster, or error, and Fukishima could happen here. Our government wants to keep these plants open; they want to loan 54 billion to the nuclear industry to build a bunch more; and, they plan to dig up and poison our precious earth to acquire more uranium.  Vermont Yankee is an opportunity.  If Vermont can manage to shut their leaking nuclear plant down, this may provide a model for other states to follow suit.  Speaking of terrorism: if terrorists should hit one of our nuclear plants, the results would be devastating.  Are we prepared for this?  Caldicott says no.

Environmental friends, colleagues, so-called "experts"--oceanographers, climate change people (mostly men)  tell me that nuclear isn't the "major" or "most important" environmental issue:  it is global warming we should fear and focus on.  Most of these folks say we need nuclear to stave off climate change.  Some scoff at me when I mention my great admiration for Helen Caldicott.  Some tell me she is a nut.  They probably think I'm a nut, too.

Saving the planet seems worth being scoffed at.  Saving the human race from cancer and other horrific diseases and genetic mutations is worth fighting for.  I hope that our young people will wake up.  My students are more active than ever, and with the Fukishima disaster, suddenly more folks are paying attention to the dangers at hand.  Before the Japanese crisis of March 11, nuclear issues were absent from public discussion, and all but absent from the major environmental and activist conversation and actions.  Of course groups like No Nukes NIRS, the Baby Tooth Project, and Caldicott's groups post their information and call for petitions, but they are separate and entities, set apart from the other major environmental groups such as Sierra Club, EDF, EWG, and even Greenpeace. Now, the dangers of nuclear power and bombs are back on the table and in the press.  So, my friends, this is an important potential moment for radical change and awakening.  Ears are perked a bit.   Not surprisingly, the main voices that are speaking most pointedly against nuclear are such eco-feminist writers and thinkers as Susan Griffin, Carole Gallagher, Carolyn Raffensberger,  Alyson Rose Levy, Vandana Shiva,  Ira Helfand (and the Physicians for Social Responsibility), and of course Helen Caldicott.  Quite strikingly, these are mostly female voices. The gender divide prevails on issues of war and bombs, and nuclear power.  Why is this topic and problem so hard for people to contemplate and work to solve?

Friday, I'll talk.  I don't know how much I can say in fifteen minutes, but I'll do my best.

Afterward, I will go back to my book and work on a nuclear activist vision with my female sisters.  My parents were activists and their memory inspires me.  My white Jewish mother and her sister-mother friends in Miami in the 1950s pushed their strollers into town hall and drank with their kids from the "negro" water fountain; mom and and dad and their friends housed freedom riders and supported boats to cuba during the cuban missile crisis. My mother refused to eat in a restaurant in North Carolina because my African American nanny could not join us; and mom took the train to Washington D.C. and fought to end above ground nuclear bomb testing, along with so many women from Women Strike for Peace.  They were heard, because they were mothers. She worked at the Peace Center in Berkeley and taught methods of nonviolent protest to Mario Savio and the Berkeley students; my mom and dad took rocks from the Cubans who called them "communists" when protesting against nuclear power in South Florida, and so much more.  My parents and their friends took political action.  That was what made their lives worth living.

I have to find a way to put my own passion into more action.   I worry, though: As a busy mother and professor, how and where will I find enough hours in the day to teach, write, grade, parent, and take care of the business of life, as well as take on an activist project of such large proportions?  If I take on too much, how will this impact my mothering of my child?   I am already stretched so thin.  These are the same questions all working and/or environmental mothers must ask.

Here are a series of clips I recommend watching with a recent interview with Helen Caldicott; she fills in the blanks of what is at stake at the moment worldwide.  Her hope is in our youth.   Mine, too.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcp9J5B7l3w&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0RR6e-uySU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71O4ZpHV4ck&feature=related

A great explanation of what has happened (and is happening) at the Fukishima nuclear plants from If You Love This Planet:
http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/audio/IYLTP%20-%20Ep%20125.mp3

Tears

First there is heartbreak of the personal kind--familial, love, and this kept me from writing.  It emptied me out for a while.  Now there is heartbreak of a different sort--huge, vast, beyond comprehension--the death of thousands and thousands, disaster, nuclear madness.

It has been days and days of dismay.  Sorrow for the Japanese.  The news is profoundly alarming and everyone I meet is going on their merry way, barely noticing a country called Japan.

Nuclear madness--the words of Helen Caldicott.

I teach my classes and talk about safety and power, energy and sustainability, poetry and words.  Ironically, we just watched Silkwood and we read Terry Tempest Williams' Refuge--a memoir of cancer, nuclear bombs and Mormon downwinders.  To have this happen--to bring in newspaper clippings and have it all right in our faces--beyond shocking.  Of course there is water and walls and cities crashing and people smothered and destroyed--too much to take in--too many of all the disaster movies I've been watching these past few years--about nuclear disaster, and climate disaster.  The Day After, The Day After Tomorrow, all those last man on earth movies.  Creepy.  Haunting.

What would Rachel Carson say?  Man's hubris?

Teaching is healing.  My students--so many of them--innocent and yet not at all so.  I do feel maternal with them.  I never used to.  Maybe I'm becoming more of a mother as I age, as my own daughter ages.

In the car tonight (oh oil--!), my daughter says, "In school they said nuclear energy is renewable. Is it renewable, mom?"

Is it renewable?  How do I answer that question?  I don't know where to begin.

It was a brief moment.  (I keep listening to the radio--just an ear out to see if a plume will get to California where I have so many loved ones.)  
Charlie--he's still in Japan--I keep checking his mom's facebook page to see if he's back yet, and feeling guilty that I can't do something.

I said, "Honey, we'll go home and study up on nuclear fission and nuclear plants.  We'll talk about it. Together."

She asks, "Did they know there would be earthquakes?"  Why yes, dear, they did.

Tonight I will not sleep. 

Mama (papa) 2011

Mama I hear you

I hear you screaming out

Helen Caldicott

I hear you laughing out

loud over

that

bottle of wine

that story  

about Linus Pauling

Barry Commoner

that story

of baby teeth

strontium 90

You stood there taking

the rocks as they 

called you dirty reds 

while you tried to save

the world

pushing a baby stroller

warning

warning

about

milk

 babies

 bomb shelters

 "the fallacy of safety!"

there is 

there is

there is

no (safe) place to hide

that, my friends, was the good old 1950s

tonight, oh mom,

what are you saying

from the sky?

are you shaking your head

in dismay as 

radiation 

spews

spews

back in Japan where we blew them to hell?

       dear god, they are saying: move  

the children

  away from

the melting plants!

   but       where

oh where

can they move

them to? 

$54 billion in loans for more

of these fission monsters

and billions more for modernizing

bombs

digging up more uranium

from our mother earth

building more monsters

spewing more poisons

cancering and monstering

us all

there are a few of us talking

shaking our heads-

(mostly women)

why always women?

talking only to ourselves?

        most are sleeping

and having a nuclear love affair---

tonight I took a walk and looked at the sky

tonight I looked in the monk's eyes

       there were pools of love

words of compassion 

for the Japanese

there were pools 

    of love

at the monastery

on the hill

Winter

It is winter.  Last week, at the end of the holiday season, it snowed.  It was a large storm and all was immobilized in New York. There was so much silence.  The streets and lawns and waters were covered with snow and ice.  The mayor of New York vanished and the streets of the city were filled and filled with angelic whiteness.  Winter swallowed up human activity.  In the suburbs, we peered out from our windows at the angry storm.  The wind raged. As the wind slowed on the second day, snow covered everything—a mountainous heavy covering.  Slowly, we (suburbanites) emerged from our warm shelters and began shoveling.  It took hours.  The snow was deep and wet and thick.  Our backs ached when we had done with clearing our driveways and porches and stairs.  We returned to our warm shelters and lit fires and read books and thought about how winter changes everything.  In winter, we become internal creatures.  We return to the selves we were before the warm summer—dark and pensive and inward.   How wonderful it is to have seasons.  How simple and bland must it be to live in a place of single or only mildly different seasons. For those of us who go from a hot green summer to dark cold winter again and again, we experience death and rebirth in profound ways.  We get to be different people living in vastly different worlds—in summer, we are outgoing and free, corporeal and lush and sensual; in winter—our bodies quiet and our minds become ethereal and wordy things.   

Summer now seems like a dream.

Heart of the Goddess

Receiving the Goddess: A Call to Feminist Activism and Leadership

Last weekend, I attended the Omega Institute's Women and Power: Our Time to Lead Conference, in Rhinebeck, New York.

I was fortunate to have been given scholarships by Omega to bring six students to attend this conference.  Cherica, Saajida, Noelle, Janice, Sonia, and Anna are all passionate about ecofeminism, feminism, and/or women's history.  They are intense, smart, thoughtful, humble and loving people with high ambitions for their lives. The were so excited to join me; they each soaked up every bit of the weekend--from rowing on the lake (for several of them this was a first), to hiking, to taking yoga classes, to listening and considering all of what the speakers shared in their stories.  Several of them have spent little to no time in nature or in the country--so just getting out of the New York metropolitan area and into the beauty of the fall colors and the gardens, paths, and lake of the Omega campus, was eye opening.  It was an honor to share the special weekend in the country and the call for feminist change and power with them.

The conference organizers want/ed to raise our awareness about the denigration and violation of women worldwide.  More importantly, they call/ed on each of us to become leaders and activists in a woman's movement to end violence, to end war, to end world hunger, to end the denigration of our environment, to end religious divisiveness and hatred, to end racism, and more.  Thus, bringing young and impressionable women to learn from the feminist activist speakers, was a crucial component of the conference. 

The speakers at Women and Power included women who have established proactive women's organizations worldwide--such as Zainab Salibi's Women for Women, Jensine Larsen's World Pulse and Pulse Wire, and Malika Saada Saar's  The Rebecca Project .  These organizations successfully work to combat the trafficking, abuse and rape of girls and women everywhere.  (As an important aside, I urge you, as readers, to go to the links above and learn more about and help these organizations.  Sponsor a Woman, which is part of Salbi's Women for Women, for example, is an easy and important way to help desperate women war survivors. ) Other speakers, such as Mae Jemison, Pat Mitchell, Leymah Gboweer, and Gail Collins, spoke about women's and feminist history, the need for creating women's social and media networks (so that women's voices and needs can be heard and served), and they gave inspiring accounts of extraordinary female intellectual, political, and scientific accomplishments. All of these moving stories were interwoven with the rocking music of Retumba and Ani Defranco, as well as with movement, yoga, and meditation.

There is so much to say about all of the speeches and talks from the weekend--too much to write in one blog entry--- so, instead, I will share a few of my notes from my journal:


It is a time of action, no whining--women must lead---
It starts with a dream, 27 things you want to do with your life
Be the change you want to see in the world (Gandhi)
Dignity and Integrity
Burgha or no Burgha
It is all about women having a choice
A strong heart is a happy heart
The heart of darkness is inside us
Get off the horse and drop the sword
Strength comes from within
No longer silent
Courage and resilience
It is not just about saving the world
It is about saving ourselves
We can be the Sun--
We must be the Sun--
Building bridges
Most of the world's poor are women
Most of the world's violence is against women
500,000 women raped in Burma
500,000 women raped in the Congo
1 in 3 girls raped worldwide 
Who is listening?
Not the male dominated media
Only 17% of news sources  cover women's issues
Social media allows rural women to expose the violence
This is our new force; we need to harness and develop it
The world we are creating right now shapes are future
You, woman leader, must make yourself known
Reconciliation: stop the violence
Stop the hatred
Stop the battering
Stop the destruction
Stop the erasure 
Stop the trafficking and slavery
Love is a stronger impulse
The moment a woman comes back to herself 
The resurrection begins
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it begins
Sex Trafficking, Sex Slavery happens right here in the U.S.
Beloved: "the only grace they can have is the grace they
imagine...
They do not love our bodies...
They do not love our hands...
They do not love our children...
We must come to the field and imagine..."(Toni Morrison)
Beloved emerged to remind us
They rape/d us forever
They shackle/d our ankles during birth
We, women and men (yes, we need the men)
Must be the change
Must be the sun
Must embrace the enemy other
Weaken them with love
Weaken them with our power
Weaken them with our truth


I was so proud and honored to have experienced this weekend and to have shared it with my students.  The speakers at the conference encouraged all of us to (re)think how we can be leaders and do the right thing (the only ethical thing) on this earth, and it made us question what it means to be feminine and female and human in a patriarchal world.  Together, we all spoke of the need for women to feel our./their power, and love and respect our bodies. We must reinvent and reinvigorate a feminine belief system which honors women and girls, and  no longer accept the mysogynistic ideology of our world culture which promotes female self-hatred and self-deprecation.  Each of my students expressed a renewed desire to empower themselves, and to help others in their future work as teachers, doctors, mothers, and lawyers.

As the conference ended, on that fall day in September--the sky was grey and cloudy, but the trees were glowing in red, gold, and orange.  Before going back home, all seven of us took a five mile walk around the lake.  When we finally came to the parking lot to say our goodbyes, my beautiful women students gave me a thank you gift of a statue of an earth/woman/goddess.  As they handed me the statue, the students said that I represent the earth/woman/goddess to them.   I was stunned and moved to tears by their words!  I believe that the goddess they see in me is really a reflection of themselves--for they are the true goddesses, so full of hope and imagination-- they are the sunlight of the future.


The mother goddess's body is both tree and woman: her arms reach high in a circle above her head, as she unifies heaven, earth, and spirit.  

 

______________________________________________________________________________

Below is the response of one of my student "daughters" to the
Women and Power Conference:


 I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar!

            Anna Urazov

            9/27/2010

I am a woman.  I am a daughter.  I am a Russian Jewish immigrant.  I am an American.  I am a student, a hard worker, a lover, and a well-wisher.  I am hopeful, passionate, aggressive, energetic, opinionated, and proud. 

How did I come to know myself and accept myself?  I was always a quiet and self-judging individual.  How did I become this assertive person who looks in the mirror and says, “I’m Ok” and “I like what I see”?  While I can’t solely attribute my weekend at Omega Institute’s ‘Women and Power Conference’ to this development, for this has been an ongoing and long journey of self-improvement, it certainly molded me into a more aware, tolerant, and compassionate individual.  I am now, more than ever, aware of what it means to be a leader.  If you look up this word in the dictionary, you can see phrases that describe a leader as one who guides, influences, commands, and directs.  Other descriptions narrow this definition to being superior or having an advantage over another individual.  After this conference, after listening to some powerful and honest female speakers, my definition of a leader is this: it is a person who inspires someone to call on change, to question the norm, to fight hate, violence, and discrimination.  It is someone who is able to stir in someone’s soul a deep and unmistakable passion to fight evil with good, to change oneself and thereby change the world, to find courage and a voice, and to let that voice be heard.

If someone asks me what will forever echo through my mind after this conference, I will remember the words of some influential and courageous women: Leymah Gbowee’s phrase, “We need to redeem our time”; Malika Saada-Saar’s phrase, “Only you can tell your story”; Elizabeth Lesser’s “We are all Cassandras”; and Zainab Salbi’s “Dance, when you’re broken open/Dance, when you’re perfectly free”.  Salbi’s story and journey was particularly inspiring to me.  She is an Iraqi woman who lived in a time of war, witnessed its detrimental affects on humankind, was forced into an abusive arranged marriage, and yet survived and rebuilt her life on her own accord.  Her organization, Women for Women International, has sponsored thousands of women around the world by establishing a partnership and sisterhood between those who have the ability to help and those who need a support system more than ever.  During her speech she contrasts life in Saddam Hussein’s private circle and the misery faced by everyone else. Every woman listening to her story felt her pain.  Her face hardened as she recounted her parents’ attempt to save her by arranging a marriage in which she would move to America.  How she had the courage to rebuild her life at such a young age and channel her fears and pain into a positive way should be an inspiration to everyone.  Listening to her story was a humbling experience.  I have never experienced the traumas of war first hand, I have never been separated from my family and forced into a relationship, and I have never rebuilt my life from scratch.  And while I have all the comforts in the world, I have never done anything to not only better myself, but also to better humankind.  Salbi has inspired me to not take my life for granted.  She, along with many of the speakers, allowed me to believe that my small voice, grouped with other women’s voices, may make a change.  I logged onto worldpulse.com and signed a petition to pass the International Violence Against Women Act.  At first it seemed like a small gesture but then I realized that any action I take, no matter how small, is better than not taking action at all.

As a woman who majored in English and is pursuing a career in science and medicine, I was particularly interested in Mae Jemison’s speech.  While I sat in complete awe of this unbelievable woman, astronaut, dancer, engineer, physician, and author, I was able to take away two very important messages.  For one, she says that science and art stem from a single root, our creative instinct.  She comically says that when deciding whether to be a dancer or doctor, her mother helped her.  Similarly, my mother also helped me in deciding what profession to pursue.  She told me, you can always write or read when you doctor, but you can’t always doctor if you write or read.  I then took a moment to thank my mother, the most important leader in my life, in always helping me see clearly, make the right decisions, continuously strive to better myself, and have compassion and understanding for everyone around me.  Jemison’s second point was how precious time was.  There are 86,400 seconds in a day, she notes, and we can be doing so much with each passing second.  It is up to me how I choose to spend my time and how productive I lead my life.

This weekend retreat of learning, discovering, and uniting has changed my life and way of thinking.  I’ve never tried vegetarian food, yoga, or meditation.  While I can’t rid myself of meat, I am trying to be a more health conscious eater.  I went out and purchased a yoga mat and I’ve been doing yoga in the morning.  I am going to make an effort to be more eco-friendly.  My small step of not using water bottles will hopefully open the door to other good deeds.  I cannot thank Omega and Professor Hutner enough for this wonderful experience.  The bonds and the sisterhood I have created with all the girls I spent these days with were certainly unforgettable and hopefully long lasting.  This was an incredible intellectual and spiritual experience, and like Salbi, I would like to close with a Rumi poem:

The intellectual quest is exquisite like pearls and coral,

But it is not the same as the spiritual quest.

The spiritual quest is on another level altogether,

Spiritual wine has a subtler taste.

The intellect and the senses investigate cause and effect.

The spiritual seeker surrenders to the wonder.