Overview
Racism is still rampant in our country, and it might exist in places you didn’t expect it. For example, Black and Brown populations are at a higher risk of exposure to environmental toxins and have less access to high-quality medical care or clinical medical studies on their specific populations. This is a major problem that can’t be ignored. And it’s hugely impacting our economy and the success of future generations in multiple ways. Every year we spend 50 billion dollars and lose 23 million IQ points to lead toxicity alone, which affects people of color the most, regardless of social class and income level.
Today on The Doctor’s Farmacy I sit down for an important conversation with Harriet Washington about these issues. Throughout our talk, Harriet breaks down where some of the greatest sources of environmental racism stem from. There are so many government policies and even sanctioned decisions to dump toxins that end up poisoning communities of color and stealing children’s cognition and health.
Combined with a lack of precautionary testing we are ignoring a massive health crisis. And unfortunately, not everyone has access to a doctor like me that has the resources and knowledge to get to the root cause of mysterious symptoms. When it comes to toxins one plus one does not equal two. It might equal one hundred. There is a compounded effect. Plus, many of the “safe” exposure limits for individual toxins that we’ve been told in the past have now been proven much too high. Harriet and I also talk about the major connection between environmental racism and food injustice, along with so much more. I hope you’ll tune in to learn what you can do to improve these important issues of our time.
Harriet Washington’s most recent book is A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind.