A daily threat
Emissions pose health risks to frontline communities
I am an organizer with Citizens Caring for the Future in Southeast New Mexico. Citizens Caring for the Future is a group of engaged citizens in the Permian (Basin) that seeks to find an informed and safe path to ensure protections for our community in the face of rapid oil and gas development. I was born and raised in Carlsbad, and I’m here to tell you that life in the middle of one of the most active oil fields in the world is absolutely a harrowing experience.
Just this month I was out in the oil fields of the Permian with Earthworks looking for emission events. It was upward of 105 degrees every single day. Prior heat records were being broken. It was something else to quite literally be feeling the effects of climate change while also seeing through a FLIR video camera the emissions that are significantly contributing to that climate change. It was memorable to say the least.
As I drove home from the oil fields each night, I thought about how scared I was that my community is breathing the emissions I had just seen into our lungs every single day. I thought about how so few people in my tiny hometown realize what danger our health is in. The risks are not communicated by industry or the agencies that are supposed to protect us. I thought about the oilfield workers who are directly exposed to this pollution every single day, and how their lives may be upended by disease in the future. I thought about how many emissions events I had seen in just one day, and then I shuddered remembering there is only one air monitor in my town and no air inspectors in New Mexico who live in the Permian.
I thought about how cancer runs in my family, and how the pollution I’m exposed to may ensure I die young. I thought about my 51-year-old mother who has just finished treatment for ovarian cancer, and how terrified I am that pollution could contribute to the recurrence of her cancer. I thought about how everyday I am learning my community is a sacrifice zone.
I naively thought I was being protected by federal and state environmental agencies. I blindly trusted my government and I blindly trusted industry, but sometimes the truth slaps you in the face and wakes you up. I am involved today because living in a frontline community has awakened me to the fact some communities, some families, some human beings really are seen as disposable. I’ve seen firsthand a culture that values the state of the economy more than a child’s life. I realized something was wrong when I pieced together that I knew more young people with rare and aggressive cancers than the total number of people my 80-year-old grandmother has known throughout her life that had cancer. This is reality for young people on the front lines. Whether or not they realize that the devastation they face in their life could very well be attributed to pollution caused by emissions does not change the fact the devastation exists.
Methane rules are more than just rules. These rules could mean a mother doesn’t have to watch her child go through leukemia. They could mean a young man doesn’t lose his hardworking father at a young age. They could mean a grandmother can breathe easy into her old age. They could mean a young couple’s dream of a family isn’t dashed by reproductive issues.
Frontline communities suffer the most when common-sense action isn’t taken, but because of climate change everyone in the world is essentially living in a sacrifice zone in one way or another, whether their community is constantly threatened by natural disaster or riddled with disease. Methane emissions affect us all. I hope the EPA chooses to take bold and swift action to make methane rules that sustain life.