That book you want to ban was a life-saver for me, not porn

Welcome to NC Voices, where leaders, readers and experts from across North Carolina can speak on issues affecting our communities. Send submissions of 350 words or fewer to opinion@newsobserver.com.

Your banned book is my life-saver

Regarding “An NC school board cleared the room of teens to read a book’s sex scene aloud,” (Sept. 20) and related articles:

I’m writing in response to recent attempts to ban books. The latest was the Cabarrus County Board of Education trying to ban “Looking for Alaska,” an award-winning teen novel by John Green.

This book deeply impacted my life for the better. I’ve loved to read ever since I learned how, but when I was 16 I picked up a copy of “Looking for Alaska” from my high school library and it changed why I love to read.

This book touched me. It “saw me” without ever asking me to shed my shields and be vulnerable. It showed me that books are points of connectivity between people, that there is something universal about me and all of us. It showed me that books would name things for me that I couldn’t name for myself. That books could give me a place to go and so many someones to love.

It gave me the language to cope later in life when I would experience a bout with depression. I went back to these words from the book over and over: “We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken.” Ten years later, multiple copies sit on my bookshelf, ready to be lent and loved over and over again.

Taking this book out of school libraries would be a disservice to students and a statement that you don’t believe them to be capable of the critical thought you teach in your schools.

It’s 2022, if teenagers want porn they’re not going to flip through a novel to find two pages where one scene is described. They’re going to the internet. By banning any book, you are disproportionately impacting students from lower income families who can’t afford to access these books outside of a library.

These life-changing, gorgeous books should not be reduced to porn due to a minor scene in a beautiful novel about hope and life being worth fighting for.

Lindsay Smith, Huntersville

Better regulate NC fertilizer plants

The writer is a Wake Forest law school professor and leading U.S. regulatory policy expert.

There isn’t much to see now. There’s no indication that a February 2022 fire at a fertilizer plant in Winston-Salem, where I live, raged through a facility that was storing 600 pounds of ammonium nitrate. No signs remain that the city almost became the location of “one of the worst explosions in U.S. history,” according to the fire marshal.

The city would have never been in this position had the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulated the storage of aluminum nitrate at fertilizer plants and other industrial facilities. It has a chance now to remedy this dangerous oversight, but has yet to do so.

The EPA previously exempted ammonium nitrate from its Risk Management Plan (RMP) rule, which requires industrial facilities to address the potential for accidental releases of toxic materials. In August, it proposed a draft RMP rule that would update these protections. While that draft rule is an improvement, ammonium nitrate and other dangerous chemicals are still exempted.

That decision is inexplicable. Unless properly stored, ammonium nitrate can become a chemical bomb.

Even if a plant does not explode, a fire can cause massive disruptions. Winston-Salem issued a voluntary evacuation of 6,500 people living within a one-mile radius of the fire. Wake Forest University, where I work, shut down as a precaution.

The failure to regulate highly hazardous chemicals is inexplicable for another reason — the risks for events like these fall disproportionately on marginalized communities. Residents within one mile of the Winston-Salem plant are overwhelmingly people of color in households with incomes well below the city’s average.

The Winston-Salem facility did not have a sprinkler system or a fire alarm because it was built before the city mandated those protections. A company that does not even bother to install a sprinkler system when it knows a fire might cause a massive explosion indicates the necessity for stronger EPA regulations.

The ongoing EPA rule-making to revise the RMP rule is an opportunity to remedy this oversight. The agency should immediately do so.

Sidney A. Shapiro, Winston Salem