The Health segment will chronicle the many stories of ordinary people awakened to the knowledge that toxins in their environment are poisoning their children, their community and themselves. Virtually since the beginning of the industrial revolution, people have suffered the effects of the by-products of industry and environmental abuses, including deaths from smog of tens of thousands of Londoners throughout the 19th century, child lead poisoning which was first connected to the use of lead-based paints in 1904; The death by radiation of the first of the “Radium Girls,” and in 1956, in Japan, the diagnosis by Dr. Hajime Hosokawa of “Minimata” disease to describe the symptoms affecting local residents’ central nervous system that the doctor eventually traced to mercury dumping by a local chemical company. But it wasn't until 1962, when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring that the link between industrial/agricultural practices and human health became widely recognized. The work of current scientists such as Theodora Colburn and her research on “endocrine interrupters”, and marine biologist, Sylvia Earle, among many others, will bring into focus present day concerns for our environmental health.

In this segment we will highlight the story of Lois Gibbs who fought to save the lives of her children and her neighbors from the leaking chemical waste in the now infamous Love Canal and who went on to create the Center for Health, Environment and Justice. We will also explore the subject of Environmental justice through the struggles of individuals whose stories are not as well known but no less courageous, including the stories of such people as Aurora Castillo, a Mexican-American in East Los Angeles who formed The Mothers of East LA (MELA) which successfully barred an oil pipeline from its community, and JoAnn Tall of the Olglala Lakota tribe who prevented the construction of a nuclear weapons testing site on the Lakota’s sacred land. From Nogales, Arizona where Latino residents sickened with cancer and lupus fought against the pollution of nearby maquiladores to Anniston, Alabama where an African-American community fought against the sickening fumes of a pesticide company to an Idaho reservation where residents were dying from the noxious by-products of local silver mines, the work of grass-roots activists will be documented. Tracing this history, we will show how the struggle for better environmental health has inspired action and created heroes of ordinary citizens in communities everywhere.