
If you live in Los Angeles, I’m begging you to watch or listen to this and share it with everyone you care about, especially if you/they live in or near ash zones.
Audio versions of the show are here, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. If you prefer video, watch it on YouTube:
My guest on this week’s Rapid Response is Jane Williams.
Jane Williams serves as the Executive Director of California Communities Against Toxics (CCAT). A network of local environmental justice groups in California, CCAT works to protect communities from industrial pollutants. Jane carries on the tradition of her mother, environmentalist Norma “Stormy” Gail Williams, working to protect the health of people and the environment as a common cause. Her mother, Norma, had launched a campaign that sought to identify toxins causing a brain cancer cluster among children in her small town of Rosamond, California.
Ms. Williams is also the chair of the Sierra Club’s National Clean Air Team, and works on federal policies on clean air, water, and soils. She has helped organize dozens of communities to successfully fight the building of facilities that would pollute their environment, such as incinerators, landfills, nuclear waste dumps, and industrial plants. Jane has also served on a number of federal and state advisory committees that study the effects of toxic chemicals on children and public health.
Wildfire smoke and ash are devastatingly toxic, and can produce short- and long-term health effects. It’s not just vegetation in this smoke, it’s asbestos, lead, formaldehyde, and all sorts of other nasty plastics, heavy metals, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These can lead to cancer, respiratory disease, dementia, PTSD, and more.
Unfortunately, even though the fires have been considerably reduced (huge, huge thank you to the firefighters and everyone involved in the containment effort!), these microparticles can persist in the air and in ash—which can travel for hundreds of miles—for years afterward. And this has ripple effects in regional soil and water supplies.
For the latest Rapid Response episode, I was lucky to secure a little of Jane Williams’ time to cover the basics of what folks in Los Angeles need to know, and the steps they should take to protect themselves and their loved ones. In her words, we are now in the “disaster after the disaster,” and unfortunately this is something we’ll be contending with to varying degrees for years to come.
Jane also reveals the systemic obstacles Los Angeles faces—notably the immense cost, time, and infrastructure that will be involved in cleaning up the ash. This is an important signal that other cities, counties, and states should heed; fragility and unpreparedness—beyond putting citizens danger—are astoundingly expensive. Plugging our ears and fantasizing that disasters won’t hit creates a cascade of consequences, some of which are avoidable.
Wildfires may be more prevalent in the southwestern United States right now, but as the 2023 Canadian wildfires reveal, as the world heats up, nobody should assume they are immune—and the effects aren’t only felt by local populations (see: New York air quality).
I recommend you read two books:
Fire Weather by John Vaillant and The Heat Will Kill You First by Jeff Goodell. Get your copies here and here. Together, these books help clarify the root causes of increased fire danger and the cascade effects of rapid planetary warming (and more).
Past Rapid Response Episodes:
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CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.
Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with professor, author, and Awakening from the Meaning Crisis creator John Vervaeke:
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