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Katrina’s Healthy Dose of Reality
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, all of us are touched deeply by the displacement and devastation of thousands of people along the Gulf Coast, most of them African-Americans.
Like any strong wind tearing off the tops garbage cans, Katrina blew the lid off of a much more shocking reality, the magnitude of which has escaped most of us.
While Americans open their hearts, homes, and wallets to offer aid and assistance to the victims of this natural disaster, the bigger and underlying story is the systemic and institutional health disparities that were an accepted part of the lives of these victims before the disaster was brought on by Mother Nature.
First, we must understand how the majority of the people affected by Katrina lived.
People living in the path of Hurricane Katrina’s worst devastation were twice as likely as most Americans to be poor and without a car – factors that may help explain why so many failed to evacuate as the storm approached. The residents in the three dozen hardest-hit neighborhoods in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama also were disproportionately minority and had incomes $10,000 below the national average.
Let’s look at New Orleans, a predominately (70 percent) African-American community with a median income of $26,000, as an example. The amount of poverty in New Orleans is astounding, and Black residents of New Orleans bear the greatest burden. An estimated 80 percent of those living below the poverty line are Black.
New Orleans has one of the highest poverty rates of any of large city in the United States.
One can only guess that this means that upwards of 40 percent of the African-American population is on Medicaid. Children make up nearly two-thirds of Louisiana’s Medicaid population, but their care amounted to only one-third of the state’s Medicaid expenditures. Clearly, the African American community in New Orleans suffered disproportionately with poor health. In the light of this, a Bush administration commission has formally recommended $11 billion in savings to the fast-growing Medicaid program for the poor. This is on top of the fact that the Bush administration cut funding for hundreds of millions of dollars of critical work to bolster and repair the levees that keep the waters at bay of the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain.
These socio-economic conditions pale in the face of “Cancer Alley,” an 80-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La.. It contains 136 chemical plants and six oil refineries that produce millions of tons of pollution each year and represents the highest concentration of manufacturers, users, and disposers of toxic chemicals in the United States. Cancer rates in the poor African-American communities surrounding many of the largest plants are well above the average for the state.
One prominent chemical in “cancer alley’ is acrylonitrile. The EPA has classified acrylonitrile as a probable human carcinogen. The toxic effects of acrylonitrile are similar to cyanide poisoning.
Here’s what the Environmental Protection Agency says about this dangerous chemical: “In several studies, an increased incidence of tumors has been observed in rats exposed by inhalation, drinking water, and garbage.
“Tumors in the brain and spinal cord, and tumors of the ear canal have been most frequently reported, as well as tumors of the stomach, tongue, small intestine in males and females, and mammary gland in females.”
And this is just one chemical from the more than 130 plants and six oil refineries.
These types of environmental hazards are of special concern in low-income and inner-city urban areas around New Orleans, where the incidence of toxic exposure, lead poisoning, asthma, and risks from living in older homes are greater than in other communities.
How many images do we all have etched in our minds of innocent people wading through deep flood water for days, contaminating themselves, unknowingly, with this, and hundreds of other chemicals? What are the short and long-term effects on these people? God only knows.
Add to this health risk, the raw sewage, human and animal feces, rotting dead bodies, and infection from mosquito bites. Are we prepared to witness the possible outbreaks of hepatitis, tuberculosis; and any number of other infectious diseases?
With the socio-economic conditions and poor health that many of the children and elderly, who survived, were experiencing prior to Katrina, how many of them will die, or become sick as a result of the toxic and infectious exposure?
It seems that the real tragedy of Hurricane Katrina will be seeing the effects of racism and health disparities resulting from a people who had already been subjected to living as marginalized, disposable, second-class citizens.
Let me leave you with two questions: 1) How many of you know what it is like to live on $26,000 a year? and 2) Can you imagine how many other cities have the potential to become another New Orleans in the face of a natural or manmade disaster?
Glenn Ellis is a syndicated health columnist and media commentator who lectures around the country on health issues particularly relevant to the African-American community. He can be reached at glenn@glennellis.com or www.glennellis.com
