Essay about The Factory on the Hill

Submitted By alexiskobayashi
Words: 491
Pages: 2

1. What was the important thing(s) you learned from this article?
The most important thing I learned from this video is the fact poor people were pushed into a situation where the only place they afford to live is next to factories. And they are paying the cost in their health. I’ve heard many stories about pollution issues in Richmond, and I always wonder why these residents decided to live there at the first place and why they still live there. I learned from the article the reason was much more historical than that I thought. People started to move to Richmond before WWII. There was racism and people in color especially African Americans could not live in certain neighborhoods. Simply they did not have a choice. Also from this article I saw that because Richmond is such a poor neighborhood, it seems like the society even don’t care about the fact so many residents are suffering from pollutions. After some toxic air pollution incident, no one came to check up on their health. It looks to me that the society don’t value the residents’ life or health. In addition, this article reminds me of the news report that I’ve read a while ago. It said that it’s very expensive for factories to reduce pollutions so large corporations chose to pay fines to the government instead of solving these issues. I understand businesses are always looking for ways to reduce expenses, but these unethical behaviors of corporations need to be stopped. And I didn’t see the companies in Richmond are reaching out to help these people who are suffering from toxic pollution from their factories.

2. How does it relate to one or more environmental health issues?
This directly relates to health issues for the residents in Richmond. The article didn’t mention about factory workers in Richmond, but I definitely think that the pollutions affect factory workers as well. I’ve never been to Richmond but I drove pass by the