Exhibitions: This Lead Is Killing Us: A Century of Citizens Fighting Lead Poisoning in their Communities”

Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disasters in America by Ted Steinberg

Oxford University | 2000 | ISBN: 978-0195309683 | 336 pages | College/adult | Nonfiction

Genre: Politics/environmentalism/climate change/government/urban planning/race

As the waters of the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain began to pour into New Orleans, people began asking the big question--could any of this have been avoided? How much of the damage from Hurricane Katrina was bad luck, and how much was poor city planning? Steinberg's Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disasters in America is a provocative history of natural disasters in the United States. This revised edition features a new chapter analyzing the failed response to Hurricane Katrina, a disaster Steinberg warned could happen when the book first was published. Focusing on America's worst natural disasters, Steinberg argues that it is wrong to see these tragedies as random outbursts of nature's violence or expressions of divine judgment. He reveals how the decisions of business leaders and government officials have paved the way for the greater losses of life and property, especially among those least able to withstand such blows--America's poor, elderly, and minorities. Seeing nature or God as the primary culprit, Steinberg explains, has helped to hide the fact that some Americans are simply better able to protect themselves from the violence of nature than others.

Fresh Air, Clean Water: Our Right to a Healthy Environment by Megan Clendenan

Orca Book Publishers | 2022 | ISBN: 9781459826793 | 102 pages | Ages 9-12 | Nonfiction

Genre: Children/environmentalism/nature/science/social justice/activism

Everyone depends on clean air to breathe, safe water to drink and healthy soil for growing food. But what if your drinking water is dangerous, your air is polluted and your soil is toxic? What can you do about that? Do you have the right to demand change? Fresh Air, Clean Water: Our Right to a Healthy Environment explores the connections between our environment and our health, and why the right to live in a healthy environment should be protected as a human right. The book features profiles of kids around the world who are taking action and important environmental rights court cases. Hear the powerful stories of those fighting for change.

Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America's Children by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner

University of California Press | 2014 | ISBN: 9780520283930 | 326 pages | College | Nonfiction

Genre: Public health/environmentalism/toxic chemicals/politics/race/social sciences/government

In this incisive examination of lead poisoning during the past half century, Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner focus on one of the most contentious and bitter battles in the history of public health. Lead Wars details how the nature of the epidemic has changed and highlights the dilemmas public health agencies face today in terms of prevention strategies and chronic illness linked to low levels of toxic exposure. The authors use the opinion by Maryland’s Court of Appeals—which considered whether researchers at Johns Hopkins University’s prestigious Kennedy Krieger Institute (KKI) engaged in unethical research on 108 African-American children—as a springboard to ask fundamental questions about the practice and future of public health. Lead Wars chronicles the obstacles faced by public health workers in the conservative, pro-business, anti-regulatory climate that took off in the Reagan years and that stymied efforts to eliminate lead from the environments and the bodies of American children.

Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: The Failure of Healthcare in Urban America by Laurie Kaye Abraham

University of Chicago Press | 1993 | ISBN: 978-0226623702 | 288 pages | College/adult | Nonfiction

Genre: Politics/health care/government/social science/urban studies/race

The book immerses readers in the lives of four generations of a poor, African-American family in the neighborhood, who are beset with the devastating illnesses that are all too common in America’s inner-cities. Headed by Jackie Banes, who oversees the care of a diabetic grandmother, a husband on kidney dialysis, an ailing father, and three children, the Banes family contends with countless medical crises. From visits to emergency rooms and dialysis units, to trials with home care, to struggles for Medicaid eligibility, Laurie Kaye Abraham chronicles their access—or more often, lack thereof—to medical care. Told sympathetically but without sentimentality, their story reveals an inadequate health care system that is further undermined by the direct and indirect effects of poverty.

Paradise Falls: The True Story of an Environmental Catastrophe by Keith O'Brien

Vintage | 2023 | ISBN: 9780593312094 | 496 pages | Adult | Nonfiction

Genre: History/biography/activism/social justice/women/environmentalism/toxic chemicals

Lois Gibbs, Luella Kenny, and other mothers loved their neighborhood on the east side of Niagara Falls. It had an elementary school, a playground, and rows of affordable homes. But in the spring of 1977, pungent odors began to seep into these little houses, and it didn’t take long for worried mothers to identify the curious scent. It was the sickly sweet smell of chemicals. In this propulsive work of narrative storytelling, NYT journalist Keith O’Brien uncovers how Gibbs and Kenny exposed the poisonous secrets buried in their neighborhood. The school and playground had been built atop an old canal—Love Canal, it was called—that Hooker Chemical, the city’s largest employer, had quietly filled with twenty thousand tons of toxic waste in the 1940s and 1950s. This waste was now leaching to the surface, causing a public health crisis the likes of which America had never seen before and sparking new and specific fears. Luella Kenny believed the chemicals were making her son sick.

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Hiding in the Walls directed by David Sebastiao and Angel King Wilson

Silent Media Group | 2022 | 57 minutes | NR | Documentary

Genre: Environmental justice/activism/pollution/urban studies/politics/investigative

This documentary unwinds the fraught history of lead poisoning in Baltimore and follows the adult survivors who are on a mission to reclaim the narrative.

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