What the Rivers Remember
By Isabel Inés
This submission is part of a series by McGill students who were in the Fall 2024 course, Fundamentals of Global Health.
The Cases
As I write this, today marks 40 years since the Bhopal Gas Tragedy––one of recorded history's most destructive instances of corporate environmental contamination. The 1984 methyl isocyanate gas leak from a pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide in Bhopal, India resulted in immediate fatalities estimated between 3,787 and 16,000, and with subsequent morbidity, affected over 500,000 people [1]. Long-term epidemiological studies have revealed persistent health effects, including respiratory, neurological, and reproductive disorders, among the exposed population and their descendants [3]. Groundwater contamination from abandoned chemical waste at the site continues to pose health risks to local communities, with studies detecting elevated levels of heavy metals and volatile organic compounds in drinking water sources to this day [9].
In Ontario, the province in which I grew up, mercury contamination in Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek (Grassy Narrows First Nations) which occurred between 1962 and 1970, when a pulp and paper mill released approximately 10 tonnes of mercury into the English-Wabigoon river system [7] is, decades later, still seen in the community's blood work. Recent studies have shown that 90% of the population exhibits signs of mercury poisoning, including neurological symptoms and cognitive impairments [11]. The persistent nature of mercury in the ecosystem has resulted in intergenerational health effects, with elevated mercury levels detected in the umbilical cord blood of newborns [5].
Heavy metal contamination due to the prioritization of profits over people extends globally; a study in the Madre de Dios region of Peru found that 78% of adults in native communities had hair mercury levels exceeding the WHO threshold [16]. Mercury contamination, as a result of gold mining, bioaccumulates in the food chain, with fish consumption being a primary route of human exposure. Neurological symptoms, including tremors, ataxia, and sensory impairment, have been observed in exposed populations [17]. The cross-border nature of waterway pollution (particularly in massive waterways such as the Amazon basin) complicates mitigation efforts, with contamination affecting multiple countries and ecosystems [4].
Change in mining over eight years in Madre de Dios, Peru. Image taken from The Devastating Costs of the Rush for Gold in Madre de Dios, 2012.
Globally, air pollution is a leading risk factor for mortality and morbidity. Only 6% of the global population is exposed to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) at concentrations lower than the WHO annual limit (5 μg/m3) [19]. In 2019, ambient air pollution alone was responsible for approximately 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide [14]. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study reported that the combined effects of ambient and household air pollution were associated with 6.7 million premature deaths annually [6]. More recent data from UNICEF indicates that air pollution accounted for 8.1 million deaths globally in 2021, making it the second leading risk factor for death, including for children under five years [13].
These examples are not isolated incidents but representative of a global pattern of environmental injustice and governmental inaction. In the United States, research found that, on average, Black and Brown communities, immigrant communities and low-income communities are exposed to 1.5 times more particulate matter than the overall population averages [12]. This disparity is not coincidental but the result of systemic policies and practices, such as redlining. Redlining, a practice of the systematic denial of financial aid programs, such as mortgages and insurance, to residents of specific neighbourhoods, has, in the U.S., created segregated neighbourhoods, often placing minority communities in areas with higher environmental risks [8]. The practice is global. For example, it can be seen in Italy, where Roma communities are often relegated to areas with higher environmental contamination [10].
Environmental hazards being disproportionately concentrated in areas inhabited by marginalized communities is not a phenomenon that just happens to be observed across different countries and continents [2]. Rather, it is a reflection of the colonial histories of nations. This systemic neglect and intentional placing of pathogenic materials on the most marginalized communities is not a "systemic failure, " as is often argued, but the intended functioning of governments built off a "logic of elimination" [15]; this is where social, political, legal, economic, and ideological structures are designed to compliment settlers' claims to sovereignty through the dispossession of Indigenous claims to land. From the construction of pipelines through Indigenous territories in Canada to high-volume lithium mining to fulfil wealthy nations’ consumption desires in South America [20] to the (British-led) deforestation of native oak and deodar forests, [21] this ongoing process of elimination and dispossession is exemplified globally.
But why am I writing about this to make us hopeful for the future of global health? Well, if when you speak of hope, you mean optimism––a gossamer-thin belief that tomorrow will somehow be better than today––then I think you need to redefine your hope––and the following examples exemplify how.
The Hope
My mother and her family fled South America during Operation Condor: the repressive rule and systematic persecution by eight right wing dictatorships across South America, which ended tens of thousands of lives and displaced many more. In the 70s and 80s, optimism in South America was not plentiful––but hope was a necessity. So, when I think of hope, I think of people like Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a group of mothers who showed up, week after week, with a determination to demand change and a steadfast refusal to exhibit indifference to state violence. People and groups like Las Madres teach us that hope doesn't require optimism about outcomes. Further into the Reorganization Process that took place after the overthrow of the junta, many dissidents, including the leaders of Las Madres and other prominent activist groups, knew their disappeared friends and family were already dead. Their hope lay in collective action––making the disappeared visible and advocating for accountability for the people.
Las Madres and the similar solidarity many others have shown in the face of persecution has taught me that hope is not about wanting for better days. Hope does not reside in institutions that were built to exclude. Hope is a practice of collective resistance. It lives in the courage of those who refuse to accept injustice as inevitable and in the wisdom of those who understand that all of our liberation is bound together. This is the hope we need––not the fleeting comfort of optimism, but the enduring power of solidarity. Across instances of environmental contamination, I also see that deep, practical hope that propelled Las Madres and sustained families affected and exiled by Operation Condor. Not the shallow optimism that things will simply improve with good intentions, but faith that through informed collective action, we can create change. This is hope as a praxis––hope as resistance.
When Union Carbide’s compromises on safety precautions led to the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, the people of Bhopal did not just become victims––they became organizers. They formed groups like the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh (Bhopal Gas Affected Women Stationery Workers' Association) and the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha (Bhopal Gas Affected Women and Men's Struggle Front). Together, they organize protests, document health impacts in their communities, run their own health clinics, and conduct their own research on the ongoing effects of contamination.
Women organizers from the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh. Photo taken from bhopal.org.
When Reed Paper Company dumped mercury into the English-Wabigoon river system, it was an act of desecration; a violation of the Ojibwe’s deepest values and a poisoning of Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek’s primary water source. Elders passed down traditional knowledge while youth led new forms of resistance, combining direct action with scientific documentation of ongoing contamination. Despite government claims that the water was safe, community members conducted their own health surveys, documenting how mercury poisoning affected multiple generations. When the majority of the population showed symptoms of mercury poisoning, they launched legal battles, organized protests, and built a movement that brought national attention to their crisis. This is hope.
In Peru's Madre de Dios region, similarly to the Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek’s territory, mercury accumulates in fish––a primary food source. Here, they've created their own monitoring systems, documenting how 78% of adults in Indigenous and Mestizo communities have dangerous blood mercury levels [18]. Working across national borders, Indigenous organizations track the spread of contamination throughout the Amazon basin. When government agencies fail to act, these communities build international networks of solidarity, sharing strategies of resistance with other Indigenous peoples facing similar threats. Their organizing shows hope; it shows how local knowledge and collective movement-building can challenge the corporate forces that treat their territories as sacrifice zones.
The context. Illustration by Isabel Inés.
The same systems that disappeared thousands in South America also enabled Union Carbide to escape accountability for the deaths of thousands in Bhopal. The same colonial logic that deemed Indigenous lives expendable in the name of profit continue to shape global health inequities today. The mothers who gathered in Plaza de Mayo understood that their children's disappearances were not isolated crimes but symptoms of systemic repression. Similarly, we must understand that global health crises are not natural disasters but products of political choices that consistently sacrifice some communities for the profit of others. Communities generating their own solutions, their own science, their own paths to wellbeing––this is where I locate hope for transforming global health. Not in top-down interventions, but in the wisdom of communities who have long understood that health is inseparable from intersectional justice. Their struggles show us that improving global health requires more than new medicines or policies. It demands recognizing how colonialism, white supremacy, and militarization create and perpetuate health inequities. Real hope in global health means supporting communities' right to determine their own solutions while confronting the systems that create illness. It means recognizing that the knowledge needed to heal our world already exists in communities that have long resisted destruction. This is the hope I have––not in institutions, but in people's capacity to generate collective solutions. So, today as I study, research and, hopefully, eventually work in environmental health, I carry with me the lessons of Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh, of the Asubpeeschoseewagong Netum Anishinabek. This is where my hope is rooted.
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