Warning: rant coming. I just read the Politico article in the post I just shared about how Big Oil used their clout to stand in the way of safer fuels so that they could protect their profits and keep leaded aviation fuel as the standard for airplanes with piston engines. Which, by the way, is used in New Zealand too. And every neighbourhood and school within a kilometer of an airport should absolutely be concerned about their children’s lead levels, if anyone was paying attention.
This comes on the back of the region where I live being plagued by catastrophic floods, made exponentially worse by forestry slash being washed down rivers en masse which destroyed bridges, and caused our area to be entirely cut off geographically by road as well as complete communication darkness with no internet or phone for 5 days. Our main water pipe was damaged by floods and slash in several places, putting us all at critical use warning for possibly months until the pipe is fixed. This slash washdown happens every time we have heavy rain, which is very frequent lately. It covers the beaches in woody debris and a boy was killed while playing on it last month.
Then I just watched an Australian 60 minutes about workers getting a deadly disease from cutting engineered stone, which the manufacturer knew about and didn’t disclose. And I’ve been reading papers about arsenic where they discuss higher rates of lung cancer from builders cutting treated wood, as well as calculations of children’s arsenic exposure from decks and playgrounds in comparison to their likelihood of getting cancer from it.
And I’m just struck by this stunning fact: we are all just numbers in calculation sheets where human disease AND environmental destruction are a side effect of corporate greed. Sanctioned by our governments and politicians. Where economic growth and corporate profit trump EVERYTHING, with a certain amount of acceptable contamination and illness being just a part of the deal.
Of course I already knew this, but as I experience it again and again, in my vulnerable emotional state from our recent disaster, I’m just completely disgusted all over again. When will we ever stop accepting this?
