Environmental Health and Disaster Recovery

If you live in Los Angeles, I urge you to listen to this and share it with everyone you care about right now—especially if you/they live in or near ash zones. Even though the AQI is low again, the impacts of wildfire smoke are still here. Loads of nasty pollutants like asbestos, formaldehyde, lead, and other heavy metals, plastics, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are still in the air and ash—and can travel for hundreds of miles.

My guest on this week’s Rapid Response, Executive Director of California Communities Against Toxics (CCAT) Jane Williams, has deep experience in these situations, and in her words, we are now in the "disaster after the disaster."

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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.

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).

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.