National Nurses United

and explosions that drove thousands of local residents to emergency rooms, the most recent one in 2012, Chevron this summer sought approval to expand operations over the objections of the largely lower-income African American community and nurses. Adding to the danger, one of the area's main hospitals, Doctors Medical Center of San Pablo, is in financial distress and on the verge of shutting down. Though the refinery ultimately got permission to expand, many of its worst environmental impacts were reduced because of community and nurse pressure and involvement in the process. Mary Roth, a Kaiser telephone advice RN who lives close to the refinery and works in nearby Vallejo, has spoken multiple times against the expansion. She remembered how the phones were "com- pletely overwhelmed" after the 2012 fire with patients complaining of breathing problems, dizziness, and burning eyes as a result of the toxins spewed into the air. "Chevron's environmental practices are creating health issues for the community, and then when a crisis happens, we are overwhelmed because there is not enough health service capacity to handle it," said Roth. "These are our neighbors. When people call and say they can't breathe, and their children can't breathe, it's painful to hear." Roth said that government officials, the public, and even some Chevron workers definitely paid attention to what nurses had to say about the refinery project. Even though they didn't get the outcome they wanted, "it makes a difference because it shows that there are nurses out there who care about their commu- nities and will step up to be patient advocates." In Southern California and North Carolina, nurses have been vis- ible in opposing fracking, which is the process of extracting natural gas from the earth by drilling down and pumping a mixture of water, chemicals, and sand into the ground to "fracture" the rock. Maria Vazquez, a telemetry RN who works at Providence Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance, has lived in the city of Car- son since she was 4 years old as do her three children and most of her extended family. She never paid much attention to fracking until she learned through her union that companies wanted to frack in Carson and the city council was debating a moratorium on such activity. Puz- zled, she began investigating the practice of fracking on the Internet and was shocked by what she learned about the process and the chemicals involved. "I thought, Hold on! Oh my god, we're going to have all these chemicals here? This is where my kids are living. This is where I am living. We don't want anything to hurt our environ- ment," said Vazquez. In March, she banded together with other Los Angeles-area RNs to attend council meetings and argue that the moratorium should be kept in place. They won, but it is an ongoing fight as the temporary moratorium was lifted at the end of April, and Occidental Petroleum continues to push forward with plans to drill. In North Carolina, Veterans Affairs RN Heather Ebert was very upset to learn that natural gas companies wanted to frack in her state and were furiously lobbying lawmakers to lift a state moratorium. A lover of the outdoors and an avid hiker, camper, and kayaker, Ebert had watched the movie Gasland and feared that fracking would con- taminate her state's waterways with toxic chemicals. So when National Nurses United asked nurses in the state to speak up against fracking, Ebert volunteered. She ended up appearing in a public serv- ice announcement against fracking this year. "I know the community trusts us to have their best interests in mind," said Ebert, who lives in Durham and works in a primary care clinic at the Durham VA. "And, as nurses, we have a responsibility to protect our community." In Chicago, nurses have fought the storage of uncovered moun- tains of petroleum coke, an oil refining byproduct, near low-income neighborhoods on the city's southeast side. When the winds kick up in the Windy City, petcoke dust flies off the piles and settles over everything—playgrounds, houses, schools. "The kids know if the air looks dusty that they can't go outside and play. I've heard of people trying to have picnics, but they're eating food and tasting the grit," said Rolanda Watson-Clark, an RN who works at the Robbins Clinic of the Cook County Health and Hospitals System. In June, NNU Chicago nurses toured these petcoke piles—some six stories tall and four blocks long—and are demanding that Mayor Rahm Emanuel ban their storage. "Being a nurse, our patients come first and their health comes first," said Watson-Clark. With the advocacy of registered nurses, some communities have had great success in combating the wholesale poisoning of their resi- dents by corporations looking to make a profit. In Minneapolis, when operators of a mass garbage incinerator in 2009 sought per- mission from the city planning commission to burn an additional 212 tons of garbage per day, about a 20 percent increase, RN Norkus-Crampton, a commissioner, did her homework. Reviewing all the studies she could find, she concluded that the incinerator was a hazard to her state's health, spewing mercury, dioxins, lead, cadmi- um, and other carcinogenic chemicals and particulates directly into the air. She and the commission voted against expanded operations and now, as a citizen activist, she is working with others to help the city establish a zero-waste trash program and ultimately shut down the incinerator after its contract expires in 2018. "These ultra-fine particulates can cross the blood-brain barrier and deliver toxins deep into your body," said Norkus-Crampton. "The more I study, the more scary it is and the more irresponsible it is for policymakers to bury their heads in the sand. If you have nurses willing to step up and get involved, there are some real things we can do." Besides caring for patients sickened by pollution, RNs have shown that they are also ready and willing to respond to the large- scale disasters that inevitably lie at the tail end of this chain of envi- ronmental destruction. Through the Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN), a project of National Nurses United, nurses have been deployed to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf states, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, Hurricane Sandy in New York City, and the South Asian tsunami in Sri Lanka. The program continues to organize a volunteer reserve of nurses to help during disasters and to educate the public about the true, man-made causes of these catastrophes. "RNRN work clearly resonates with nurses," said Roemer. "It really connects the dots. We have these bubbles where people can believe they are insulated from the effects of climate change and global warming, but the reality is they are not." J U LY | A U G U S T 2 0 1 4 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 17

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