Have something you want the Michigan Journal to cover?
Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook:
Contact us:
@MichiganJournal
themichiganj@gmail.com
THE STUDENT PUBLICATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN-DEARBORN Editor-in-Chief: Kyla Bazzy | umd.mj.editorinchief@gmail.com Vol. XLIX, No. 17
@MichiganJournal | michiganjournal.org
February 18, 2020
Three cities in Wayne County make American Lung Association’s “Most Polluted Cities” list
Detroit, Warren and Ann Arbor are 12th on the list for “by year round particle pollution” By KYLA BAZZY Editor-in-Chief @kylajustineb
The American Lung Association has an initiative on their website where they report the most polluted cities by ozone, year round particle pollution and short-term particle pollution. As of Feb. 17, the Detroit-WarrenAnn Arbor area was twelth on the particle pollution list. The good news is that this trio of cities were the only cities in Michigan on any of the lists. Wayne county’s air quality has been a concern for some time, especially in Dearborn’s southend, Detroit and River Rouge where smoke and vapors from factories are almost constantly visibly in the sky. Dearborn’s Environmental Justice Town Hall held a meeting in August 2019 to discuss the pollution and air quality issues, which State. Representative Abdullah Hammoud said have “been an ongoing problem for decades.”
Pentagon diverts $3.8 billion for border wall plans
Page 2
“As you drive down Miller Road, all you have to do is open your mouth and nose and smell the iniquity that is happening in our community,” said Representative Hammoud in a seperate meeting in Jan. 2018.
Elementary in Dearborn’s southend are also concerned with the air quality, as the school is directly next door to A.K. Steel’s plant. There are currently multiple implementation plans for Michigan to
Part of Ford’s River Rouge Complex in Dearborn’s southend. Photo//Michigan Radio According to the University Research improve the air quality in the state. They can Corridor, Dearborn’s southend asthma be found at epa.gov. hospitalization rate is two times higher than Air quality all over the world can be any other area in Michigan. checked anytime on waqi.info, a non-profit Many parents of students at Salina project run by the World Air Quality Index.
WUMD’s Broken Heart Smash
Page 3
What to watch during Black History Month
Page 5
Factories can be seen behind Salina Elementary’s sign in Dearborn. Photo//Arab American News
Wolverines basketball
Page 7
Opinion: Chinese wet markets are not your scapegoat By CLAIRE KOWALEC Staff Writer @_claire.ko
When reports of the coronavirus first appeared on mainstream news outlets in January 2020, the genesis of the virus--now named COVID-19--was unclear. Some speculation suggested the virus was transmitted from animals to humans in “wet markets” in Wuhan, China, where meat and fish are sold in open stalls, according to Global News. While Global News explains that wet markets are often seen as unsanitary, they are a traditional element of Chinese culture. They allow for the exchange of fresh products and conversation between the producers themselves and their customers, and are often more popular than the American notion of a store due to their cultural heritage. “But the narrow, crowded markets-brimming with everything from freshly caught fish to live poultry and reptiles--are ‘a breeding ground’ for new and dangerous infections, said Evangelyn Alocilja, a professor and researcher of biosystems at Michigan State University,” Global News said. One animal sold in the wet markets is the pangolin--similar to an anteater or armadillo--which is valued both for its meat in several Asian countries and its scales, which are thought to have medicinal properties, National Geographic states. The New York Times reports that there is a very
what’s inside
high probability that pangolins transmitted COVID-19 to humans in the conditions of the wet markets. In the United States, fear of the coronavirus and knowledge about the “unsanitary” wet markets across China has spurred racism toward Chinese people and their culture; however, assigning blame to people of Chinese descent for allegedly
“It is a hybrid of human, bird and swine flu viruses, and by 1999 it is the dominant flu strain in US pigs,” New Scientist said. “US pig farms try to control it with vaccines, but these attempts are largely ineffective because the virus evolves too rapidly, changing the surface proteins targeted by the vaccine while keeping its internal genes unchanged. The 2009
creating a global health emergency due to their sometimes unsanitary wet market conditions is a racist notion that reflects stilltense “Eastern” and “Western” ideologies. In 1998, a strain of the swine flu originated on US pig farms, which would later evolve into the specific strain that caused the 2009 swine flu pandemic on a pig farm in Mexico, New Scientist reports in a timeline of the swine flu.
A Chinese wet market. Photo//TheHill pandemic virus is a variant on this 1998 flu, and behaves the same way.” Health conditions in US animal agriculture can hardly be considered sanitary: pens or cages for animals--pigs in this case--are packed tightly with more animals than they can hold, and animal waste is not disposed of properly and punctually, among other offenses. For an article about one such unsanitary hog farm in North
the Michigan Journal
• NEWS 2 • STUDENT LIFE 3 • OPINIONS 4 • ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT 5-6 • SPORTS 7-8
@MichiganJournal
Carolina, visit this article by the Guardian. Wet markets in China are not immediately to blame for the COVID-19 outbreak because they are unhygienic, nor because they offer different meats and products than US consumers see as familiar. The types of animal meat different cultures consume--for example, pangolin for Chinese households and pork for American households--are not reflections of how “exotic” or “backwards” a non-American diet is. Instead, American frustration both with COVID-19’s alleged outbreak in Chinese food markets and with ChineseAmericans who could be allegedly carrying the virus are simply a function of fear in response to the global health emergency. The truth is that food preparation is often unhygienic in many industries, regardless of whether individual producers are selling their goods in an openstalled wet market in Wuhan or whether Americans are purchasing meat from their grocery store deli. Racism toward Chinese-Americans, Chinese people abroad and those who travel, and toward Chinese cultural practices is a manifestation of Americans’ own myopic attitudes toward the shortcomings of our own cultural practices in food preparation and sale. While conditions in Wuhan’s wet markets are likely to blame for the spread of the virus, wet markets’ cultural background and the components of a Chinese diet are being wrongfully condemned.
@MichiganJournal
Michigan Journal