Lead Babies and Poisoned Housing (eBook)

Environmental Injustice, Systemic Racism, and Governmental Failure

Carolyn R. Boiarsky (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
372 Seiten
Purdue University Press (Verlag)
978-1-61249-948-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Drawing on historic sources as well as present-day interviews, Lead Babies and Poisoned Housing is a story about systemic racism, environmental injustice, and the failure of government.

In 2016, 1,100 mainly minority residents of a low-income housing complex in East Chicago, Indiana, received a letter from the city forcibly evicting them from their homes because a high level of lead was found in the soil under their houses. The residents were given two months to move. Many could not find safe housing nearby. The site was designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as a Superfund site because of the large amount of toxic material on it. More than 1,300 similar sites are located throughout the United States. Over 70 million people live within three miles of one of these sites.

Five years later, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General charged three federal agencies—EPA, HUD, and CDC—with causing the lead poisoning of children living in the complex. The EPA, responsible for the cleanup, had been aware of the situation for 35 years. The director of the local housing authority admitted to building the complex over a demolished lead smelter. When health issues arose, the housing authority blamed the residents’ sanitary habits rather than its own failure to maintain the structures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s testing of blood lead levels was revealed to be faulty. In short, the very agencies that were supposed to protect these people instead neglected, ignored, and blamed them.

But this isn’t just a story of victimization; it is also about empowerment and community members insisting their voices be heard. Lead Babies and Poisoned Housing records the human side of what happens when the industries responsible for polluting leave, but the residents remain. Those residents tell their stories in their own words—not just what happened to them, but how they acted in response. We should listen, not only for justice, but as a cautionary tale against repeated history.

Inhalt

List of Characters

Prologue: Akeeshea’s Kitchen Table

Dave Perez’s Story: Living in East Chicago

The Neighborhood

PART 1. THE CAUSES

Akeeshea Daniels’s Story: Living at the West Calumet Housing Complex

1. Geological Conditions

Phil Ponce’s Story: Working at a Steel Mill

2. Industrialization

Todd Dornick’s Story: Working at a Lead Smelter

3. The Workforce

PART 2. THE PROTECTION AGENCIES

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA)

Maritza Lopez’s Story

4. Establishing EPA: An Oxymoronic Structure

Carole Dougherty and Barbara Hanna Moore Have a Conversation: Pollution

5. How EPA Failed the People of the West Calumet Housing Complex, 1970–1985: Industrial Indifference, Ducks and Swans, Game of Tag

Mary Irizarry’s Story

6. How EPA Failed the People of the West Calumet Housing Complex,

1986–2012: Living with Lead

Liduvina Espinosa’s Story: Lead Houses

7. How EPA Failed the People of the West Calumet Housing Complex,

2013–2016: An Archaeological Discovery

DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT (HUD)

Clamae Bullock’s Story

8. Establishing HUD: Urban Displacement, Housing Shortage, Government-Sanctioned Segregation Sherry Hunter’s Story: It’s Not a Project

9. Something Rotten in the City of East Chicago: The Politics of Housing

Dante Dinkins’s Story: Lead Babies in Lead Houses

10. Building the West Calumet Housing Complex: Kickbacks, Cheap

Construction, Low Maintenance, Negligent Reporting

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION (CDC)

Carole’s and Barbara’s Stories, Continued: Racism

11. Establishing CDC: Community Health vs. Politics

Nayesa Walker’s Story

12. Lead Poisoning and Racial Injustice: Researching the Causes

and Symptoms, Searching for Treatments

Julius Morris’s Story

13. Arsenic and Old Lace in East Chicago: Faulty Analyses,

Invalid Reports, Misleading Results

PART 3. THE LEAD CRISIS

Demetra Turner’s Lament

14. Eviction

Jalen’s Story

15. School Closin

PART 4. AFTER THE EXODUS

16. Demolition

17. Redevelopment

Afterword

Author’s Notes

Glossary and Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

About the Author

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.9.2024
• Zusatzinfo: 2 b/w maps, 3 color maps, 4 b/w photographs, 21 color photographs
• Verlagsort: West Lafayette
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Staat / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: East Chicago, Indiana • environmental justice • Environmental Protection Agency • Environmental Racism • lead poisoning • lead pollution • pollution • Racial Justice • Racism • structural racism • Superfund • Superfund cleanup • Systemic Racism • USS Lead Superfund • West Calumet Housing Complex
• ISBN-10: 1-61249-948-1 / 1612499481
• ISBN-13: 978-1-61249-948-2 / 9781612499482