| Sumario: | Part of a special issue on health care reform. The writer, a coordinator of community and environmental health for the Highlander Center, gives an account of personal and professional experiences of health problems caused by environmental pollution. The situation in Yellow Creek Valley, Kentucky, where a leather tanning company polluted a community's water supply, is not unique. However, the victims of such practices all seem to take their problems to agencies that regulate environmental pollution—the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, or the Department of Defense—rather than to the agencies that involve health. As a result, the public health agencies do not directly experience pressure from the hundreds, or possibly thousands, of affected communities. While the nation is debating reform to the health care system, it should demand the inclusion of environmental health.
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