The Realities of Enviornmental Racism

Harlem's Toxic Nightmare

The complex is a rodent's dream, an all-you-can-eat buffet supplied by the trash of 4,400 residents. "The whole area is infested with rats," Martin says. "And as long as they have food and water, all they do is have sex and have babies." She points out open-top trashcans overflowing with discarded food containers. Old recycling bins at the buildings' back doors have long transformed into makeshift garbage cans, also overflowing. Residents are supposed to put their trash down chutes on each floor, but the bags are often too big and thus get tossed in the stairwell. Two large metal compactors that Martin finally cajoled officials into installing as safe outdoor spots for trash storage haven't actually been turned on or emptied in a while. During the day, pigeons feast on the Wonderbread slices and McDonald's fries that are scattered around the compactors; come nightfall, the rats will dine. A coalition of state attorneys general say this is the scene in far too many public housing complexes around the country. In September, five states and the Virgin Islands sued the Department of Housing and Urban Development to change its pest control policies. Housing authorities, the suit charges, employ thousands of pounds of highly toxic pesticides in an effort to fight pests that could have been prevented in the first place. The result is a growing annual case load of childhood poisonings -- a case load that is disturbingly heavy with poor blacks and Latinos. Pesticides of all sorts are extremely toxic; one of those on the market today was previously a World War II nerve gas. Nearly 100,000 human exposures to pesticides were reported in 2003, about a fifth of those involved rodenticides, or rat poisons. Young kids, who crawl around and put things in their mouths, account for the bulk of the rodenticide exposures; they racked up 15,000 poisonings in 2003. The Environmental Protection Agency, however, estimates that all of these reported numbers represent no more than a quarter of the actual totals.

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