The idea at the heart of the Urban Health Council Community Health Impact course is to raise a moral highground of reciprocity and accountability in all kinds of planning and service delivery so that everyday people across society can help each other improve the quality of their lives.
The intention is to distribute knowledge, research and insights to people so that we can work together to improve the culture and environment we are born into, are educated into, learn and work in in a way that encourages innovation, creativities and a sense of the really varied experiences, lives and histories of the local area.
Centric Lab has been working with community group, Clean Air for Southall & Hayes (CASH): over the last six years:
Clean Air for Southall & Hayes (CASH) are a grassroots community group from west London fighting for their rights to clean air.
Householders came together through a shared experience of tainted air in their streets, homes and schools through excavation of contaminated land around the Old Southall Gasworks.
There are 2,149 former gasworks in the UK that over the last forty years have been slowly disposed of by National Grid: (more in the last fifteen years):
Although Developer Berkeley Group said they recognised that when they started to move the land that contaminants were released, they believed their soil remediation project had completely resolved the problem. Yet when work began on a the Gasworks site householders had to live with a suffocating petrol-like odour, many people having breathing difficulties, chest pains, as well as cancer diagnoses and other symptoms consistent with chronic exposure to benzene.
The soil has been found to contain benzene, a carcinogen, and other harmful chemicals:
Yet the development, where people are now settled into, with its landscaped gardens that noone will ever plant anything into, is advertised as bringing water, transport and fresh air to its householders. 2,500 homes were planned in the first three phases and the developer plans a further 5,500 in the next phases which haven’t properly considered schools, surgeries and other services.
In this case you can see how the lack of democracy and accountability, the lack of ability to see the existing lives, the existing economy, the existing culture of the area as valuable. What can people begin to do?
How do you educate massively profitable development companies who think they know it all, they’ve got the T shirt and everyone should just let them continue to get away with blue and green murder?
Session 1 Araceli Camargo Centric Lab. Through the practical way she applies knowledge, learning and insight, Araceli brought home to us a deeper understanding of health and what it means to be here, alive, now.
Looking at the wrongs, such as building on contaminated land (there’s a great BBC Sounds series on contaminated land in Northern Ireland).
What I realised though is that in a way we’re all shocked and awed into forgetting that we do live in a democracy and everyone in our democracy is accountable, including commissioners and developers of our land. We’ve got into the habit of believing their mantra that we live in a supply chain (that they manage), not a country with great people in it who want long, happy, prosperous lives.
We know this is wrong when we see people across society normalising a transactional rather than a reciprocal understanding of the context they’re living and working in so they accept a high level of moral stress (finding out, for example, as a homeless housing policy worker living in an owner occupier home next door to an HMO that the water pipes to the houses on the road contained lead: she and other home owners collectively shared the cost of replacing their section of the water pipes into their homes but felt no outwardly expressed motivation to inform the householders who lived in the HMO, nor the landlord).
I think we need to put this sense of social reciprocity back: this moral obligation to share information that needs to be in the public domain. The why things are the way they are and the answers everyone feels need to be publicly debated.
Centric Lab showed how neuroscience and environmental data can provide a framework and catalyst to unlock the energy of community insights, understanding and narratives that are powerful and full of detail. When you’re an individual in a group in a community and realise that the people around you are really feeling the impact of poor services, discrimination, lack of accountability and access to remediation, it’s motivating. Yet in a professional and working context this sense of morality has itself been marginalised.
In this first session someone from SINE (Greenpoolie) expressed concerns about an incinerator’s impact on community health and sought advice on engaging the community in Health Impact Assessments (HIAs)/ action against this. The discussion explored demonstrating impact in HIAs with limited community involvement and pressuring developers to consider community perspectives. Further, others gave advice on ways in which to seek involvement from the community.
These included trying alternative venues already frequented by the community, building relationships and getting to know trusted community members.
Course participants looked at terminology in groups:
· Inequities in health (not inequality)
· Effects of air pollution don’t affect us all equally
· Illnesses vary – symptoms and diagnosis, depending on susceptibility
· “Health” = the ability to be in, or return to “wholeness” i.e. to be yourself / act to full potential
· Wellbeing resources we need for this like housing, energy are being taken from us
· (83% of rivers in England are now highly polluted)
· Out time is also being taken from us – zero hours contracts
· The systemic taking away from us = “structural violence” Johan Gultang (Norway)
· Reframing Trauma — Urban Health Council
· We aren’t just getting sick by chance, it’s because we are being denied x, y and z
· Being gaslit by developers, governments etc is a form of violence
· WHO guidelines/recommendation are just that, not legally binding
· Poorer communities which have other issues causing stress, trauma etc are adversely impacted by pollution etc MORE than more affluent areas, at lower levels
· Stressors & the Stress Response — Urban Health Council
· Communities which are being oppressed and suppressed are the most vulnerable. “We cannot take any more” there’s only a certain amount that the body can take over a long period of time
· Homestasis vs Allostasis — Urban Health Council
· Then there’s housing conditions – mould, poor air, multiple occupants… all contributes to a magnified effect in the home
· Polluted journeys to polluted workplaces to a polluted home = way more susceptible
· Susceptibility is key to understanding what is “safe” and what “tolerances” may or may not exist
· For things like air pollution PM2.5 is just a figure, there are nuances like heat that make it more or less harmful
For South Sefton (Incinerator SINE)
· So… the smell in Bootle and surrounding areas aren’t something we should just be putting up with. It’s systemic violence. Our bodies “know” we shouldn’t be inhaling this stuff… so why does it become the norm?
· Public health bodies (Sefton) will say “it’s OK it’s permissible levels”
· Results are skewed for a borough as diverse as Sefton – rural, urban, industrial
· CAZ = generally poor areas. An apartheid inequitable way of framing it. So the clean air zone implies there can be a dirty ones
· The polluters all use the same vocabulary “you’re the only people experiencing this”
· Leader of Ealing council says “there are VOCs in paint, car fuel, cleaning products” etc. painted community as unreasonable
· When it comes to gathering data, don’t rely on air quality monitors – run a survey and ask the questions you want to ask, not the public health body
· Ask about headaches, asthma, shortness of breath etc
· How we document our lived experience
· Empowering and we build our own evidence base – e.g. anglers association noticed dead, sick fish and did their own survey
· Robert D. Bullard – Wikipedia
· The Father of Environmental Justice Exposes the Geography of Inequity (nature.com)
· Coined the term Environmental racism = African American communities living close to landfill
· Gaslighting Communities — Urban Health Council
· The origins of environmental justice—and why it’s finally getting the attention it deserves (nationalgeographic.com)
· Move from the establishment’s definitions and terminology and make our own
· Make it personal and tell your story
· Angela (CASH) “Air pollution is an intruder” It IS an intrusion and the experience of it is exactly as if it were a person
· Josh – air pollution trespassing from the polluter to homes and schools etc
5 points to community led HIA
· Role of governance – who owns it?
· What data do we capture? Just health stats or personal experiences
· The use of language/definitions, susceptibility
· Accountability
· Services –what do we mean by services now, in 2024? How can we think about health if there are no resources around?
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