I studied the medical literature and learned about the allergens, gases, bacteria, and viruses released by these facilities – all of them capable of making people sick.
Image from FEP Food Empowerment Project
Excerpt from The Guardian...A million tons of feces and an unbearable stench: life near industrial pig farms
Research published by the late Steven Wing, a professor of epidemiology at
the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health,
linked similar health concerns to proximity to hog farms.
Wing, who passed away in November, described his research in a 2013 TED
Talk: “In 1995, I began to meet neighbors of industrial hog operations,” he
said. “I saw how close some neighborhoods are to hog operations. People told
me about contaminated wells, the stench from hog operations that woke them
at night, and children who were mocked at school for smelling like hog
waste. I studied the medical literature and learned about the allergens,
gases, bacteria, and viruses released by these facilities – all of them
capable of making people sick.”
Wing’s research showed a correlation between air pollution from hog farms
and higher rates of nausea, increases in blood pressure, respiratory issues
such as wheezing and increased asthma symptoms for children and overall
diminished quality of life for people living nearby. “Air pollutants from
the routine operation of confinement houses, cesspools, and waste sprayers
affect nearby neighborhoods where they cause disruption of activities of
daily living, stress, anxiety, mucous membrane irritation, respiratory
conditions, reduced lung function, and acute blood pressure elevation,” Wing
and fellow UNC researcher Jill Johnston wrote in a 2014 study.
They also found that the state’s industrial hog operations
disproportionately affect African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans.
That pattern is generally recognized as environmental racism.
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