Disproportionate Burden of Environmental Hazards

Disproportionate Burden of Environmental Hazards
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Department of Public Health and Recreation San José State UniversityPH 172: Contemporary Environmental Health Issues
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Disproportionate Burden of Environmental Hazards
Systemic racism and the recent disproportionality in handling the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States proved to be the most tragic of the social injustices facing the global environment. Research conducted during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic indicated that the people of color were three times more likely to be victims of the virus compared to their white counterparts in the U.S., not because of their skin color but because of the social system that empowers the whites (Smith, 2020). For decades, systemic racism has been the major concern for social justice enthusiasts, leading to much criticism and push for the implementation of policies that will deter social inequality based on race. Nonetheless, people of color remain the major victims of social injustice despite the perceived development in handling social injustices. Environmental injustices, often overlooked, have become the other major crisis affecting the minority groups, as observed through the experience of the Latinos and the low-income earners in Kern County, CA.
Kern County, CA, covers over 8,000 square miles of land and stretches towards the southern end of the central valley while bordering the counties of the central coast of California. The county is credited for producing over 70 percent of the state's oil and over 90 percent of natural gas (Canon, 2021). Extraction of oil and natural gas and large-scale agriculture has been identified as the major economic activities in the resourceful county of California. However, oil and gas extraction has been executed with lots of impunity, with little or no regard for the health hazards to the less fortunate population that live close to the oil wells, majorly the Latinos. Communities living in Lost Hill, Lamont Taft, Arvin, Shafter, and Bakersfield are the ones that are greatly impacted by the hazardous effects of poorly managed oil wells in Kern County.
An aerial view of the county's landmass shows thousands of derricks erected to as close as 600 feet near to people's residences in what has been termed as neighborhood drilling (Olalde & Menezes, 2020). The oil derricks, both active and idle, pose a potential health hazard to those living in close proximity. The extraction process alone emits large quantities of dust and noise, let alone the foul smell emanating from the oil wells, making the county's inhabitants rarely see the horizon (Olalde & Menezes, 2020). The distinction between an oil field and a residential backyard is hardly noticeable, with only a chainlink fence separating large portions of the residents' oil fields. Oil wells exhume toxic fumes that are harmful to all living organisms within the proximity. As if not enough, the oil companies in Kern County are careless about the clean-up of the dried oil wells, leaving them unplugged and thousands of oil derricks idle, further exacerbating the dire environmental condition of the oil-rich county.
As of 2019, Kern County had a population estimate of over nine hundred thousand people. The Latino population estimate stood at about 54 percent, making them the largest portion of the county's population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2019). People of color, the Hispanics, in particular, largely dominate over 20 percent portion of the county's population living below the poverty line (Census Reporter, n.d.). Also, nine out of ten of the county's population living in close proximities to the hazardous oil well are people of color, predominantly Latinos (Woodcraft, 2021). Instead of the Kern's county authorities creating buffer zones to protect the low-income residents from the hazardous effects of the oil wells, they have opted to what can be termed as sacrificial zones to continue oil drilling with lots of impunity in areas inhabited by low-income earners and the Latinos (Woodcraft, 2021). The environmental injustices depicted by the oil companies in Kern county, especially to the dominant population of the county, who also doubles as the leading low-income earners, should not be overlooked, bearing in mind the health hazards that unmanaged oil extraction poses to human life and other organisms in the ecosystem.
Health Issues Associated with Oil and Gas Extraction, Kern County
There is a myriad of evidence linking unmanaged oil extraction and neighborhood drilling with serious health issues to vulnerable communities. Water, air, drilling wastes, and even the soil are considered the primary pathways in which toxic substances from oil extraction processes have the potential to enter the human body and cause health issues (Johnston et al., 2019). Exposure to fumes and toxins associated with oil drilling increases one susceptibility to cancer, respiratory illness, and even cardiovascular diseases (Bamber et al., 2019). In addition, minor health issues associated with exposure to oil drilling include frequent headaches, breathing problems such as asthma, and even nosebleeding that has become everyday testimony for residences of Kern county, where there is neighborhood drilling (Woodcraft, 2021). Air pollution rampant in places where there is widespread oil extraction also has close links with pregnancy complications and may lead to preterm births (Mendola et al., 2019). With the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been established that prolonged exposure to air pollution increases mortality rates (Wu et al., 2020).
The health issues facing the Latino inhabitants with close proximities to oil wells are quite immense, necessitating a mitigation strategy. For example, according to a California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) survey, Kern County recorded a whopping 30 percent of asthmatic kids below 17 between 2007 and 2018, a rate that is double that of the entire state (CHIS, n.d.). In addition, the city center for the Californian County, Bakersfield, has close to 70,000 people living with asthma, 40,000 battling cardiovascular diseases, and another 27,000 of the population diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (Berg, 2017). Such alarming rates of health complications affecting the dwellers of most ...