We Share the Air

I am unable to overcome the shock of learning that VDOT is aware their pesticides drift and make people sick up to 10 miles away. Is anywhere truly safe? Even if an entire neighborhood hypothetically becomes a Spray-Free Zone, its residents are still exposed to pesticide drift from any upwind direction.

Does anybody else remember when the SWVA skies were gray with wildfire smoke that blew in from the West Coast wildfires? At that time, some of my friends and clients were wearing masks and staying indoors to evade the inevitable breathing problems and dangers posed by this plume of smoke.

It is reasonable to assume that other forms of pollution act similarly and travel long distances, even though they cannot be seen or smelled. Have you ever smelled your neighbor's laundry vent when you were downwind? Have you ever inhaled entirely too much secondhand cigarette smoke at a concert or other public location?

When I was a small child -- about the age of 7 -- I had severe depression and I could not figure out why. I specifically recall being in my room and having an extraordinary thought: What if there is something invisible in the air around me that we do not know about yet which is causing me to feel this way?

In recent years, it has come to light that scientists and doctors do not actually know what causes depression, or why medications like SSRI's work to relieve it. The question I asked myself as a 7-year old has actually turned out to be a valid scientific hypothesis yet to be disproven. In fact, this hypothesis has been proven a thousand times over, with the current trend in disease being a mainly location-based phenomenon. Pollution from industry and agriculture create clear trends in the data that show modern-day diseases are mostly location-based.

This gives new meaning to the phrase "pick your poison." If you want cancer, move close to a place where plastics are manufactured. If you want Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, move to the countryside near a RoundUp-Ready monoculture site.

If we stick to scientific logic, we must concede that location plays the most important role in disease, and that tools like GIS will be invaluable in the search for answers to current gaps in data.

However, it may become tedious to weed out the environmental factors that contribute to human health outcomes, considering that we share the air. Water sources and food sources tend to be more localized factors unique to each area. Air, on the other hand, flows across countries and oceans in ways that are difficult to predict. We do not yet realize the ways in which we are like corals existing in an acidifying ocean.

My 7-year old self was able to hypothesize something that mainstream medicine is yet to factor into its dogma. Outdoor air may no longer be the "fresh air" that we once used to heal our bodies and souls. The entire paradigm of science must shift to accommodate the true reality of anthropogenic pollution.

It is for these reasons that I aim to keep the spraying as far from Floyd as we are able to accomplish. We live in this pastoral paradise for its natural beauty and fresh, mountain air. It would take nation-wide or worldwide action to fully protect Floyd's soils, waters, people, and air.

Sources:

Chandran A, Roy P. Applications of geographical information system and spatial analysis in Indian health research: a systematic review. BMC Health Serv Res. 2024 Nov 21;24(1):1448. doi: 10.1186/s12913-024-11837-9. PMID: 39574096; PMCID: PMC11580228. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11580228/