Small communities, unique cultures, and isolated single-industry towns may be uniquely vulnerable to the health risks posed by polluting industries. Under these conditions, destruction of the local environment – ecocide – may lead to severe damage to the community or culture.

To mention one example, Aboriginal communities in the circumpolar North are heavily reliant on hunting and fishing for their food and cultural practices. This lifestyle has been threatened by a host of intrusions to their world, ranging from pollution due to local oil and gas operations, to volatile persistent organic pollutants (for example, DDT, dioxins, toxaphene, and others) used farther south such as in the US, Europe, China. These volatile pollutants travel northwards through the atmosphere to settle permanently in the fatty tissues and breast milk of people and mammals of the circumpolar region.

The result has been that critical food sources including seals, walrus’, polar bears, and other mammals, are so heavily contaminated with toxic pollutants that their very bodies qualify as biohazard waste under US laws. The same applies for/happens with human breast milk from mothers in the arctic regions. In this case, industrial pollution has poisoned the environment to such a large degree that cultural eating and hunting practices have had to be either abandoned or limited.

Some communities are vulnerable to environmental pollution because they are isolated and/or economically distressed, and often dependent on the local polluting industry for jobs and infrastructure. In the town of Libby, Montana, failure of the asbestos mining company (WR Grace) to control contamination has resulted in an asbestosis death rate among the town residents that is 40-60 times above the state and national averages respectively, according to a government report. In Libby, the tailings from the mine were falsely promoted as so ‘safe’ that they were used to line roads, school grounds, and driveways. In this case, an entire community, including its children, has been negatively impacted by the deadly negligence of the town company.

The Lloyds of London Insurance company has compared nanotechnologies now in development to the asbestos hazards of the last century, stating that “some [carbon] nanotubes, are similar in form and size to asbestos fibers….There are indications that certain nanomaterials are potential health hazards….The danger is most probably of a chronic nature and it could be some time before it manifests itself.”

The asbestos example is an important lesson. NRDC is advocating for protective new laws before new and potentially harmful technologies and materials are introduced into widespread industrial and commercial use.