HUMAN CONSEQUENCES OF CONTAMINATED WATER ON THE NAVAJO NATION

This presentation will use first person narratives and video interviews to share the lives of people for whom access to safe water is a struggle, often with deadly consequences. Our organization, Forgotten People, works in the remote western areas of the Navajo Nation, where few people have running water. Most of the people in these communities herd sheep in a subsistence lifestyle that has changed little in hundreds of years. We will follow families as they travel long distances over difficult roads to haul water that is often obtained from unregulated contaminated wells. The extreme poverty in these communities limits their options in addressing these challenges and makes them more vulnerable to the health effects discussed throughout this presentation.

In the communities where we work, the primary challenge to people’s physical health comes from historic unsustainable mining of coal and uranium. Over 500 abandoned uranium mines are potential sources for contamination of surface and groundwaters by toxic chemicals and radioactive materials ⁽¹⁾. Exposure to uranium contamination has been associated with intergenerational health effects, such as birth deformities and developmental delays⁽²⁾. Their subsistence lifestyle elevates the exposure risk to the deadly toxins. The presentation will introduce families where the children may have been exposed when they ate sheep that had been drinking from tailings ponds at abandoned uranium mines. We will hear from people who have been exposed to high concentrations of uranium and arsenic by drinking from unsafe wells. We will meet coal miners with black lung disease and uranium miners with kidney disease and cancer. The people will speak to your heart and hopefully allow the scientific community to put a human face on this unsustainable and deadly legacy of resource extraction.

Moving forward, we need more studies conducted to examine the relationship between environmental exposure and health outcomes, as well as increased access to safe drinking water.

1) Hoover, J., et al. Expo Health 9, 113–124 (2017

(2) Nozadi, S.S., et al. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19, 425