502 Oil, Illness, and Human Rights
Here are the steps we followed to do our study,
so you can do the same thing:
1. We gathered information.
We collected information about the type of oil
exploitation in our area, the chemicals used,
and the health effects of these chemicals. We
learned that the chemicals were known to cause
miscarriages, birth defects, cancer, and other
illnesses. We also learned that people get these
illnesses by drinking water polluted with these
chemicals.
2. We chose which communities we would study.
We chose 7 communities that had water polluted because of oil
development and extraction. Choosing polluted sites was easy, because
nearly every community in our area is polluted by oil wells, waste ponds,
or pumping stations. We also chose 3 communities that had no oil activity,
but that were similar in all other ways to the first 7 communities.
3. We collected medical histories from people in these communities.
We collected information from 4 years past to see what illnesses were
most common from one year to the next. We learned that many, many
people suffered from accidents and illness.
Until we collected this information, we did
not know so many of us were sick!
4. We contacted scientists to help us... but they would not help.
We went to a local center of health studies and asked for a class in
popular research methods. They were interested at
first, but in the end they would not
help us. Then we asked for help
from the medical school nearby,
Nobody wanted to
help us do the study.
and they would not help us either.
The students there recommended
So we decided to do
the study ourselves.
that we study the chemicals in
our drinking water. Since this was expensive, they
suggested we try to raise money in other countries.
A Community Guide to Environmental Health 2012