Avoidable Harm

I have been preoccupied lately with the many threats to home and health over which we have little control. The harms that we can see and feel, but cannot on our own avoid.

I see this type of heart-wrenching threat in Katie Myers’ story about a recently-revived prison project in Letcher County, Kentucky (“Prison County Coming soon!”). The prison, should it be built, would sit atop a former mountaintop coal mine in a part of Kentucky that has lost some 300 mountaintops to mining. Its construction would release dangerous contaminants buried in the soil of the abandoned mine, compounding the toxic harms foisted on a community that has long suffered the environmental ravages of extraction.

This prison would not just impact local residents. It would expose those locked within its walls — predominantly poor and BIPOC men who have no say in where they sleep, what water they drink, or what air they breathe — to those same contaminants. Prison abolitionists, environmental justice activists, and community members have for years called-out the dangers that this prison — which was first proposed nearly 20 years ago — would pose. But, ultimately, the decision lies with the federal government.

There are other harms that are less obvious but even more pervasive. As I write in “Parenting in the Plasticene Coming soon!”, we all know how plastic trash is impacting our ecosystems, but the quieter, unavoidable threat plastic poses to our own health has not yet captured public consciousness in quite the same way. The rising rates of chronic kidney disease in Sri Lanka, which can be both helped and made worse by drinking water, offer another example (“Sri Lanka’s Catch-22 Coming soon!”). Widespread chemical spraying on farms has contaminated much of the country’s groundwater and is likely contributing to high incidence of disease there.

It is impossible right now to ponder these kinds of all-encompassing threats without thinking of the people of Gaza, Ukraine, and other war-torn countries. People who, caught in the middle of armed conflict, have already lost so much, and will continue to face relentless threats to their lives, and communities, in the aftermath. War, after all, leaves behind massive environmental damage that can worsen our health and that of other species for years to come.

These dangers, though vastly different in scale, can all feel inescapable at the individual level. But many of these harms are avoidable in the broader sense. America does not need to build another prison, much less atop a toxic mine. We need not allow the fossil fuel, petrochemical, and agrochemical companies free rein to endanger our water, our land, and our bodies for the sake of higher profits. We need not accept the loss of entire cities as the inevitable cost of war. In fact, we not need accept violence as a means of resolving conflict.

We must continue to stand up against these avoidable harms. There is still time to write a different future.

P.S. As part of our intentional work to share leadership, moving forward, the Journal editors will be taking turns writing these letters.