Environmental health hazards on industrial disasters: a study on how to achieve community-level social support

Abstract

Efforts to prevent and mitigate the effects of disasters have largely emerged from the fields of science and human geography. However, social work has long been a profession aimed at the restoration and enhancement of individual and community social functioning. This article argues for the integration of social work in disaster prevention and mitigation efforts. The primary goal of this study is to explore how members of a community experience an oil spill and to take a critical look at the potential benefits of integrating social work practice in disaster mitigation efforts with this community. The study showed that community-level social work interventions can fill the existing gaps in disaster mitigation by providing the mechanism that facilitates the practice of knowledge exchange in environmental management disaster situations. The study also suggests the need to include a social work focus on building community social capital, including training of community responders to provide support and intermediary services with disaster response coordinators. The article re-enforces the need for a more structural approach to social work practice in the mitigation and management of industrial disasters as well as in building the political capital of communities to affect policies. The authors provide few recommendations to integrate social work methods into the field of health hazard.