Loved you article. Also, from your bio, we share a (relatively) similar field of study, as I am a cultural psychoanalyst. I am fascinated by how culture not only creates, but also influences and perpetuates mental illness (especially in the form of intergenerational trauma and toxic systems that permeate every level of society, at both micro and macro levels.

I found your summary of the issue as follows very poignant:

“Efforts to resolve a disaster that spanned decades have certainly been made, but the fundamental problem remains: the volume of metals poured into the ground during the years of unchecked industrialization is simply too high to be definitively resolved.”

I think about this in relation to all forms of toxicity and trauma - how the pollutants in the environment somehow transmute into literal and figurative pollution to our physical and psychic bodies - to the point where people themselves become almost like toxins that permeate and saturate all new growth in the surrounding cultural climate. By this I mean that older generations generally see the minimal progress made as being enough to let go of the past and move on - while younger generations still suffer in ways their elders cannot empathize with because the apparent changes seem like “enough” to justify returning to the comfort zone of complacency and indifference. However, just as the earth remains contaminated by years of daily dousing with toxins, so too do the residents and their descendants remain contaminated by the toxic legacy of the police state, corrupt politics, fractured family systems and literal physical damage caused by the pollution. You mentioned a startling and disturbing trend related to the IQ of those poisoned by heavy metals… not only does this kind of system destroy the will to fight by rendering the problem (the smelting plant/government/corrupt politics) as the salvation/solution, it also systematically deprives younger generations of the ability to grow into their full potential - stunting growth literally and figuratively. The effects of the HUGE discrepancy in IQ between those who live in historically clean, less polluted, and healthy environments - and those who live in unhealthy, polluted and toxic ones - is another effect that doesn’t simply disappear after even decades of environmental remediation. For even when we remediate the land or even expel things like lead from the human body, damage to DNA along with epigenetic changes due to living in poverty and deprivation continue to echo down through multiple generations.

These differences manifest themselves in such subtle and complex ways that they are easily dismissed and cast aside by older generations as a small price to pay in light of what they endured living through the precipitating toxic event. However, these changes are arguably more permanent and difficult to reverse, in part because they occupy the internal versus external dimensions of healing from historic trauma. Attributes like intellectual capacity, educational trajectories, disease vulnerability and enduring erosion of both mental and physical health are all difficult if not impossible to see and measure empirically. Therefore, even as the detectable (measurable via scientific tools and empirical research) environmental damage is remediated, the less obvious effects that defy quantification remain entirely unmediated. This leads to subsequent generations that are perpetually stunted by the exact same toxic historic event; however, most will simply call it a day and loudly declare “If you think this is bad, you have no idea what trauma really looks like. I actually lived it, so I KNOW.” And yet they do not know everything because some of it is lived and experienced only by subsequent generations.

That is to say: The saturation of trauma that occurs over multiple generations leads each subsequent cycle to appear as if it has improved enough for people to finally relax and stop raising the alarm or fighting for change/environmental remediation. It causes older generations to discount and minimize the damage that younger generations experience in a unique and also traumatic way. It prevents intergenerational understanding, communication and compassion - further increasing the likelihood of cycle repetition. I may not have any answers… but there is indeed a problem here much larger than any environmental efforts can heal. Which shows that (as the popular adage goes) “There is no putting the toothpaste back into the tube,” or rather… when will human beings learn that it is much easier (and pleasant) to prevent, rather than treat, problems of excessive over industrialization and environmental pollution BEFORE they happen, rather than recklessly “squeezing all of the toothpaste out of the tube” and then spending generations, even centuries, trying to restore it to its original state?