by bfp

Speaking of possible environmental reasons why little girls would get breast cancer, I have to wonder what the health conditions of women and girls are in this region.

Massey Energy Begins Blasting Coal River Mountain

In West Virginia, Massey Energy has begun blasting operations on Coal River Mountain despite deep opposition from environmental groups and critics of mountaintop removal mining. Coal River Mountain is the last intact mountain on the historic Coal River Mountain range. All of the other mountains have been blown up by coal companies.

Jeff Biggers, author of the book The United States of Appalachia: “Residents in the Coal River Valley in West Virginia were shocked last Friday to hear the rattle of explosives and see plumes of smoke rise above Coal River Mountain. According to news reports on Monday, Massey Energy has clearcut the lush forest and blasted part of the historic ridge in the first leg of a 6,000-acre mountaintop removal mine. For advocates across Appalachia and citizens group across the nation, the impending mountaintop removal operation on Coal River Mountain amounts to a final showdown between out-of-state coal companies and the state of coalfield residents.”

Activists had proposed to save the mountaintop and turn it into a wind farm, a proposal which was seen by many as a model for sustainable green economic development. Anti-mountaintop removal activists are now calling on President Obama to halt the mining operation and save Coal River Mountain.

Well, turns out that it’s not so good. From the Huffington Post:

“Twenty-two year old Josh McCormick is dying of kidney cancer. Twenty-six year old Tanya Trale has had a tumor removed from her breast; her husband has had two tumors removed from his side and both have had their gallbladders taken out. Rita Lambert has had her gallbladder removed; so has her husband and both parents. Jennifer Massey has a mouthful of crowns and so does her son after their enamel was eaten away, and six of her neighbors – all unrelated – have had brain tumors, including her 29-year old brother, who died. Bill Arden is one of those neighbors. He survived his brain tumor, but Arden’s eight-year old boxer named Sampson did not. What do all of these people have in common? They all live within a 3-mile radius of Prenter Hollow in Boone County, West Virginia. And all have well water.”

This reminds me of the wise words of my acupuncturist: treating individual health in an individual setting is simply a part of the unsustainable model of health we have in the U.S.

If you treat all these people as individuals, what you have is a bunch of individuals with cancer looking for help. Maybe you refer them to a cancer treatment center–or maybe you look at it as a fabulous opportunity to start your own treatment center.

If you treat all of these people as members of communities–if you treat them WITH their community members (think: community acupuncture models), then–you have ten people on one block with the same sickness sitting in the same room talking to each other. Then you have an acupuncturist/doctor saying, you know, you might find it useful to talk to Jean, who is already talking with Tom. Then you have a whole bunch of people wondering why every woman and even some girls in their families have breast cancer.

Is it really because they didn’t take the precautionary measure of preemptive mastectomies? Or–is there maybe *literally* something in the water?

And what might happen when all these people who’ve held hands of dying loved ones and had to wives and can’t even count on the presence of a dog in their loneliness and had to explain what dying might feel like to a ten-year-old–what might happen if all those people get a hold of that righteous wood quality that promotes the movement of anger and action?

Would we still be so confused about why little girls are getting breast cancer? Would little girls still be getting breast cancer?