In this post, I discuss how prison conditions and environmental injustice in prisons impact the health of the incarcerated population. Polluted air and water in prisons are detrimental to the health of the incarcerated but this issue at hand becomes worse specifically because prisons generally neglect the health of the incarcerated. For starters, the incarcerated population has significantly higher rates of disease than the general public (1). These overcrowded violent sites facilitate the spread of infectious diseases like tuberculosis, hepatitis C, and HIV. In fact, individuals in prisons are three times more likely to have HIV or AIDS than the general population (1).
For a minute, try to put yourself in an inmate's shoes to grasp a better idea of how one's health is harmed while incarcerated. Imagine entering a correctional facility in which the maximum capacity is supposed to be 2,200 prisoners but the population is past 3,000. This is the reality in Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, CA and for many prisons in the U.S. Now imagine the lack of ventilation in this space. Imagine being able to feel dust going in your nose with every breath you take. You want to drink water but you notice that the water is brown. You cannot sleep at night because your cellmate stays up coughing all night. What if someone near you develops an infectious disease? Considering how overcrowded these prisons are by design and the fact that your health might not be at its best due to toxic air and water, the likelihood of you catching this disease is through the roof. This is the reality for the incarcerated population across the U.S. that needs to change, for this is a dehumanizing act. While it is difficult for the general public to feel empathy for prisoners, we must remember that they are still human despite their "criminal records" and deserve basic rights.
Otherwise, toxic air, land, and water easily become death sentences for prisoners.
Some Background History
Although incarcerated populations face extreme environmental injustices that are detrimental to their health, they are excluded under Bill Clinton's Executive Order 12898, otherwise known as the Environmental Justice Act. For some background, Clinton signed Executive Order 12898 in 1994 as a way to address environmental justice in marginalized communities by demanding agencies to "implement actions to identify and address disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of their programs, policies, and activities on minority and low-income populations and federally-recognized Indian tribes" (2). What is important to remember is that a vast majority of prisoners in the US specifically come from those low-income communities that this act is supposed to protect.
As a result, Paul Wright, the Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center, called for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to include incarcerated populations in their Environmental Justice 2020 Action Agenda (3). Including them in that agenda would have protected the incarcerated population under Executive Order 12898 and Title VI. However, the EPA denied their request by stating that they could not include them because the census data they use excludes incarcerated people (3). Their decision was met with criticism from Wright, who stated:
If we can recognize the problem with forcing people to live in close proximity to toxic and hazardous environmental conditions, then why are we ignoring prisoners who are forced to live in detention facilities impacted by such conditions? (3)
In addition, the EPA recognizes prisons as sources of environmental pollution only IF that pollution affects the surrounding ecosystems and public health. Meaning that they are reluctant to interfere with environmental injustices in prisons if they only affect prisoners, even though they are aware that prisoners face extreme exposure to life-threatening pollutants.
Water Contamination
Many prisons in the US are sources of contaminated water that endanger the health of prisoners and staff. Prisons do not properly manage nor test the quality of the water and while prison guards can bring in their own clean drinking water, prisoners are forced to consume toxic water every day. In California alone, at least 8 of the 33 state prisons reported major water pollution since 2000.
In 2005, the Kern Valley State Prison in Delano, California revealed that the amount of arsenic in their drinking water was higher than the federal water safety standard (4). Arsenic is a highly toxic chemical that is well known for causing cancer and poisoning. As a result, prison officials spent $629,000 on a filtration system design which they ended up not building. Prisoners and prison staff were unaware of the arsenic in their drinking water for three years. Once the news were revealed, prison officials began to bring bottled water to work but rejected bottled water requests from the prisoners (4).
In 2019, an inmate from the state prison in Stockton, California died from an outbreak of Legionella, a bacteria that causes a deadly form of pneumonia called Legionnaires’ disease. The bacteria came from the prison's water system but the exact source is unknown (5). While there are no vaccines to treat the deadly bacteria, the best way to prevent outbreaks is to regularly assess the prison's water systems.
Below are examples of former and current prisoners that experienced health issues due to contaminated water in prison:
Eric McDavid, who served time at the Victorville Federal Correctional Complex in California, expressed that it was impossible to avoid the contaminated water in the prison because of how essential it is in everyday life. He stated that after his release, the blood analysis he got showed that his copper levels were off the charts (2)
Jessica Garza, a prisoner in the William Hobby Unit in Texas, reported serious stomach pain, dizziness, and headaches from drinking tap water. At that time, the prison experienced a water contamination crisis but rejected the lawsuit that prisoners filed against them (2).
If you need more proof, please watch below.
Air Pollution
In such overcrowded spaces, proper ventilation and sanitation are essential for the health and well-being of prisoners. However, many prisons violate environmental regulations. Gath Connor, the lead inspector of the Prison Initiative, found that prisons violate the Clean Air Act by not fixing air conditioning units that emit CFCs, a group of manufactured chemicals (2). What is shocking about that is the fact that CFCs were banned from air conditioners since 1996 for damaging the earth's ozone layer. This indicates that prisons rarely test their facilities for harmful chemicals in the air.
Furthermore, short and long-term exposure to air pollution is known to increase heart and lung disease, cancer, and respiratory problems (6). While that applies to the general public, shouldn't we also be equally concerned for prisoners that are forced to breathe polluted air in enclosed and overcrowded spaces? In fact, in 2015 the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that prisoners were about 1.5 times more likely than the non-incarcerated public to have asthma, high blood pressure, or diabetes (7). This raises a lot of questions about the conditions and violations of environmental regulations in prisons that disproportionately harm the health of prisoners at a higher level than the general population.
As a matter of fact, in 2011 the EPA exposed Pennsylvania's Department of Corrections and the Department of General Services for having boiler plants that violated the Clean Air Act. These plants contributed to respiratory problems like asthma because they released toxic pollutants like sulfur dioxide and particulate matter into the air (2). Fortunately, the four prisons agreed to fix the boiler plants and paid a civil penalty of $300,000 (2). However, the main reason why the EPA became involved is because the plants also harmed the surrounding communities. This again comes to show how the health of prisoners is taken into consideration only if they happen to indirectly cause an inconvenience to the general public. Prisoners are stripped from being human and are seen as a burden to society.
Another common air-borne disease in prisons is Valley Fever, a disease caused by a fungus in the soil that gets into the air (8). This disease is not deadly to the general public but is deadly in nine California prisons where it killed at least 50 prisoners (4). This issue relates to environmental justice because the prisons with the most deaths from this disease were those that were located in or close to agricultural areas, such as Pleasant Valley State Prison and Avenal State Prison in San Joaquin Valley (4). This shows that prison officials do little research on how environmental factors, like the land they choose to build prisons on, can affect the health of prisoners and staff in the long-term. For instance, some prison employees from the Rikers Island jail in New York eventually developed cancer (2). Perhaps that could have been avoided if the prison had not been built on an old landfill that produced methane for years.
Prison Labor as an Environmental Injustice
Prison labor is another environmental injustice that exposes prisoners to hazardous pollutants and life-threatening situations for the lowest or sometimes no pay. It is another example in which prisoners are seen as disposable beings and are forced to endure inhumane conditions that are harmful to their health.
If you happen to be from California, did you know that prisoners have been put at the frontline to fight our deadly California wildfires? There are approximately over 1,500 inmate firefighters that risk their lives for $2 a day and an extra $1 per hour when they fight fires (9). In total, relying on their labor saves California $100 million annually since the 1940s (9). These firefighters are not adequately trained for their job as they only receive entry-level training yet are expected to put out California's deadliest wildfires for the lowest pay and sentence reductions.
Apart from risking their lives, the smoke from the wildfires poses a serious threat to their health. The air from wildfires is full of billions of particulate matter that can easily enter the lungs and be deadly to anyone with pre-existing respiratory problems like asthma. Normally, the short-term effects from breathing this air are shortness of breath, throat irritation, congestion, eye irritation, coughing, and sneezing (10).
But in firefighters, the health risks are much higher and deadlier because they endure longer periods and higher levels of exposure to air pollutants. So, inmate firefighters are more likely to experience decreased lung function, respiratory problems, burn injuries, and inflammation while working to save communities (11).
Conclusion
When contaminated water, hazardous chemicals, air pollutants, and unsafe labor conditions become the norm for the incarcerated population, another thing that becomes the norm is the little consideration that prisons have for their health. The Department of Corrections is so desensitized and detached from humanity that they are okay with murdering prisoners with their inhumane facilities that are "supposed" to rehabilitate them. However, health effects do not just stop after incarceration.
Prisoners are coming out into the world in a worse state, as a study found that the mortality rate for individuals within two after of release is 12.7 times higher than the general public (1).
Prisons are weapons and public hazards to society but they have become so normalized.
Incarceration and Health: A Family Medicine Perspective (Position Paper). (2019, March 18). Retrieved from https://www.aafp.org/about/policies/all/incarcerationandhealth.html#low
Reno, J. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/enrd/legacy/2013/10/30/79647executiveorder.pdf
Pellow, D. N. (2017). Prisons and the Fight for Environmental Justice. InWhat is Critical Environmental Justice?
Anderson, R. (2017, December 5). California Prisons Struggle with Environmental Threats from Sewage Spills, Contaminated Water, Airborne Disease: Prison Legal News. Retrieved from https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2017/dec/5/california-prisons-struggle-environmental-threats-sewage-spills-contaminated-water-airborne-disease/
Venteicher, W. (2019, October 15). Millions spent at California prison with contaminated water 7 months after inmate’s death.The Sacramento Bee. Retrieved from https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article236211403.html
Managing Air Quality - Human Health, Environmental and Economic Assessments. (2018, August 15). Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/air-quality-management-process/managing-air-quality-human-health-environmental-and-economic
Maruschak, L. M., Berzofsky, M., & Unangst, J. Medical problems of state and federal prisoners and jail inmates, 2011-12, Medical problems of state and federal prisoners and jail inmates, 2011-12 (2015). Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/mpsfpji1112.pdf
Valley Fever (Coccidioidomycosis). (2019, January). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/diseases/coccidioidomycosis/index.html
Singh, L. (2018, November 18). Serving Time And Fighting California Wildfires. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2018/11/18/669088658/serving-time-and-fighting-california-wildfires-for-2-a-day
How Does Wildfire Smoke Affect Your Health? (2019, August 30). Retrieved from https://www.cedars-sinai.org/blog/smoke-from-wildfires.html#:~:text=Symptoms of breathing wildfire smoke&text=Inhaling wildfire smoke can cause,tiny particles in the smoke
Wildfires and Public Health: A View from the Front Lines. (2016, August 8). Retrieved from http://usclimateandhealthalliance.org/wildfires-public-health-view-front-lines/#:~:text=Exposure to PM generated from,and acute respiratory and cardiovascular
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