Our Environment Our Health

In this issue I bring to your attention the very pressing issue of the relationship between the environment and human health and well being. It’s obvious to most of us that highly contaminated regions of the planet are not good places to live not only for the risks of getting sick but for the loss of their natural surroundings that would reduce one’s quality of life.

Although many places of the Earth especially in the cities of past Soviet Countries and now China are considered the most contaminated, there are 10s of thousands of small villages around the developing world whose inhabitants are suffering severe consequences of the contamination they produce, many of whom do not realize the cause of their new illnesses or even realize that they have new illnesses, since they have no access to health care.

As developing countries gain more access to modern gadgets and packaging that are packed full of heavy metals, toxic chemicals and radioactivity more and more contamination is building up within or on the outskirts of these villages. With no hope of access to modern waste management collection and / or recycling services, these non-degradable and unwanted items are simply thrown into rivers, forests or fields.

The contamination from these devices is building up to critical levels. In Las Zahinas, a village of 120 people which borders the Cocobolo Nature Reserve in Panama, a clean up of batteries from a stream in only one location yielded over 100 DD batteries that had been used for flashlights and radios. The toxic heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury from these batteries cause cancer, brain defects and fetal abnormalities to name a few. In these rivers young children play during school recess, women wash their clothes and people bring their livestock to drink.

Of course it is not just human beings that use the environment and as of yet we know nothing of the health effects of these contaminants within local wildlife. With the greater use of plastic as packaging and carrier bags, even in the remotest of villages, we are seeing a surge in plastic bag pollution. Around Cocobolo Nature Reserve discarded plastic bags often find themselves being swept downstream by the Mamoni River. The Mamoni River feeds into one of the largest Mangrove systems in Panama, the mesh like root system of the Mangroves eagerly await the nutrients brought to them by the flowing river. However now the river brings not only nutrients but chemical pollutants and plastic bags that stick on the roots.

The bags smother roots, kill plankton, small invertebrates and fish that feed on plastic fragments. Plastic bags that make it out to sea, are often swallowed by larger sea animals including turtles, suffocating them in the process. No matter where we live the contamination produced by villages like Las Zahinas affects you, and your contamination affects them. Our environmental health is our health , let's take care of them both.