This System Poisons People Around the World

February 8, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Halfway across the world from Flint, Michigan, in a small city called Kabwe in Zambia, a country in southern Africa, people are being poisoned by lead that, for decades, was spewed out without pollution controls by a smelter. The factory was run by capitalists who left when it was no longer profitable, without any regard for the lives of the people. Cleaning up the lead poison would have cut into profits, so it didn’t happen. Health officials who measured blood levels of lead in the children of Kabwe found the levels too high to be measured by their instruments.

And that goes on all across the globe. Hundreds of millions of people, especially in the poorest regions of the world, are poisoned because of the workings of a system in which human life is worth nothing—from harmful chemicals at workplaces, pollutants in the air and water systems, pesticides in the fields, and other toxins that cause immediate and long-term harm and suffering. Estimates are that lead poisoning alone kills over 140,000 people a year worldwide.

Children are the most vulnerable. In India, three out of four children living in high-traffic areas show dangerously high levels of lead in blood because of fumes from cars running on leaded gasoline. Many children get exposed to poison at work—there are more than 350 million child laborers in the world, including millions forced into modern-day slavery. In the huge slums of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, children have to scavenge garbage dumps in order to survive—exposed to medical waste, pesticides, and dangerous chemicals from batteries and other discarded material.

The system of capitalism-imperialism is a global system, it’s a MASS MURDERING SYSTEM... and it poisons people around the world.

 

 

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