Netflix’s new series “Toxic Town” by Minkie Spiro is a stark reminder of the prices that ordinary citizens pay due to the negligence of authorities and private corporations and their reluctance to incorporate essential environmental safety standards in their operations, especially when dealing with toxic pollutants and their discharge in areas inhabited by lower class communities.

Toxic Town: “The British Erin Brockovich”

It is the story of 16 mothers and their fight for justice for their children who were born with significant upper limb differences in Corby, Northamptonshire, UK, who sued the Corby Borough Council for their negligence in handling of toxic wastes in the town leading to the disabilities in the children. The story begins by narrating how the town of Corby came to be built around the British Steel works and thrived as a steel making hub through the 1930s to 1960s. The town was built of people who worked in those steel plants, consisting of majorly a working-class population. However, when due to the declining profits the 680 acres Steel plant was demolished in the 1980s, the sludge that was left behind was transported to a nearby quarry by the local council planning to revamp the area of the former steel plant into an amusement part to boost tourism into Corby, a town now battling huge unemployment and bleak future prospects. The cleanup was the largest reclamation to be undertaken in Europe at that time and the Corby Council contracted with private contractors to carry it out as efficiently as possible. Needless to say, as it happens, the private party flagrantly disregarded all the safety protocols in place for transportation of the toxic waste, which included not covering the sludge while transportation causing it to spill on the roads, where it dried up and took the form of dust, which then settled over houses and cars and other surfaces all over the town. The soup of toxic materials resulted in causing the deformities in the foetus of women who were pregnant during that time, leading to the children being born with severe upper limb differences.

There are two major questions that arise from the above narration:

Why the obvious aversion towards environmental safeguards, when following them mitigates chances of future costs on possible suits and class actions?

Whether the cost of proper toxic waste dumping is so high as to completely disregard human rights?

Cost-benefit Analysis and Environmental Racism

The government and environmental administrators in any society are confronted with the choices between protecting their citizens and the environment on one hand and promoting economic growth and development on the other. Similar choices were faced by the Corby Borough Council as well. They had to choose between bringing a town on its knees back to life as fast as possible or follow the environmental regulations and spend more money and time on the reclamation, thus slowing down the development projects. Increased production costs that result from compliance with environmental regulation have been reported to reduce output, increase prices and reduce income growth. It also creates an environment which creates a disincentive for investments and production.

Complex regulations require private parties to invest a good amount of capital in compliance and so, if the returns are not great, parties would be reluctant to invest in such jurisdictions. The Council could not afford such a possibility and so, decided that not abiding by the regulations was the better option to adopt in this case.But, the question remains that it is not so that such environmental safety investments are not made altogether and that all places face the threat of declining private investment. Then, what was so special about Corby that the Council, being well aware of the threats that the citizens might face from the pollutants, continued their actions without any remorse or even an attempt at rectification?

The phrase “environmental racism” was coined by civil rights leader Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. He defined it as the intentional siting of polluting and waste facilities in communities primarily populated by African Americans, Latines, Indigenous People, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, migrant farmworkers, and low-income workers. The definition of environmental racism has expanded to include any policy, practice, or directive that differentially affects or differentiates between individuals, groups, or communities based on race.What was seen in Corby may not be a definition of environmental racism but can be termed as environmental classism, along the same vein as the former. Tax structures reflect a community’s dependence on maintaining commercial and industrial sources of money , which impacts how businesses view a community’s potential for investment. Communities of working class standing tend to offer less costly land and a political climate in which the steps taken by industrial companies is less likely to be challenged. Such communities are in desperate need for industrial investment and non-observance of environmental regulations is least of their concerns. A majority of this population is also unaware of the dangers of such avoidance of regulations and do not have the political or financial power to obtain such information. They then become fertile grounds for profit for private companies with least investment in safety measures. Unequal distribution of power is conducive to the processes that degrade natural environments largely at the expense of working class population or people of colour communities. Private corporations depend on cost-benefit analysis to base their investment decisions on. An aspect of cost-benefit analysis is that it consists of adding up all the benefits and costs and comparing the totals. Implicit in this procedure is the assumption that it does not matter who pays the costs and who gets the benefits. Totals are silent on questions of equity and distribution of resources. So, benefits are measured by the willingness to pay for them.

Naturally, as elite communities are willing to and can pay for environmental regulations as compared to poor communities, they accrue the benefits and the poor accrue up the costs. When preparing the rich communities as per standard procedures, the expenses relating to waste handling, cleaning up waste sites etc. have to be minimized to make the whole process a profitable one. Poor communities lacking control capacity provide the social conditions that are conducive to such cost externalization. Ex.- putting up a landfill in a rich area would be costly due to the severe resistance. As there is willingness to pay for the landfill to be put somewhere else, what better area than a poor neighbourhood of working class people with least resistance?

Toxic Waste V Human Rights

The matter of flagrant violation of environmental safeguards and dumping of toxic wastes in low-tax paying areas or third world countries is not just a matter of reinforcing the subordination or second-class treatment of people with less political or economic power but also a violation of human rights which are deeply embedded in every international legal consideration that the industrialized nations and communities supposedly hold so dear and take it upon themselves to protect. Violation of environmental regulations and waste dumping does not have its adverse effect on only the health of the receiving population but has implications on their right to life, liberty, security of persons, adequate housing, education and a proper chance at enjoying the true gains of development. This issue cuts across economic, social and cultural rights. There is also a possibility that the domino effect of these violations would result in a loss of productivity and in turn extreme hunger and poverty in the subsistence developing economies.The industrial community has always been obsessed with civil and political rights. In doing so, they have relegated socio-economic and cultural rights to a secondary position, where their violation is accepted and even ignored as long as the bourgeois civil-political legal rights are available to all people. What this position ignores is that these bourgeois legal rights are abstract and not based on social realities. The acceptance of a free-market as the best way to understand the needs of the population and the allocation of resources is the very manifestation of this position of considering civil and political rights as superior to welfare of general population. Market economics places a price on everything, including human safety. Willingness to be safe is measured by the willingness to pay and so, the lives of better-off communities is safeguarded by externalizing the costs of the safety measures to the less better-off communities. These communities are recipients of the cost minimization considerations of the industrial corporations which do not consider following safety protocols an efficient use of resources when dealing with toxic wastes in their case.

Conclusion

Toxic town is a poignant reminder of how human lives are tagged with a specific value by the capitalist and industrial forces; the values dependent on the paying capacity of the population and their need for industrial development. The more desperate the need for industrial development, the lesser value human rights have. This understanding leads us to a more concerning conclusion that the developing world, owing to their less political power and their need for industrial investment is turning out to be the new “Corby” for the developed world, where safety protocols can be violated and human lives discounted to justify providing speedier development at efficient prices.

**The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author.**