Pollution, Poverty, and People of Color

One of the biggest environmental justice issues is the interconnectedness between pollution, poverty, and people of color. Too often, the victims of pollution are those already marginalized in mainstream society by class or race and those with fewer voices to fight with. But even with the difficulties facing them, some communities managed to win against the big corporations and industries polluting their water, air, and land. This past June, the Environmental Health Network launched a special news series highlighting the environmental justice issues facing seven different communities across the United States. Check out the articles!

Day 1: The Factory on the Hill. The people of Richmond, CA live within a ring of five oil refineries, three chemical plants, eight Superfund sites, dozens of other toxic waste sites, highways, two rail yards, ports and marine terminals.

Day 2: 'We are Richmond.' A beleaguered community earns multicultural clout. Richmond's jumble of smokestacks and storage tanks overlooking a port is one of the most industry-dense areas in the San Francisco Bay Area - and one of the poorest and most beleaguered.

Day 3: Stress + pollution = health risks for low-income kids. Facing financial strain, racial tension and high crime rates can wear down immunity and disrupt hormones, making kids more vulnerable to everything around them, including the lead in their yards and the car exhaust in their neighborhood.

Day 4: No beba el agua. Don't drink the water. “They think it’s normal not to drink water from your tap, that it’s normal to have to go buy bottled water. Part of our job is telling people, ‘This is not normal,’ ” said Susana De Anda, co-founder of the Community Water Center.

Day 5: Sacred water, new mine: A Michigan tribe battles a global corporation. The Keweenaw Bay Indians are fighting for their clean water, sacred sites and traditional way of life as Kennecott Eagle Minerals inches towards copper and nickel extraction, scheduled to begin in 2014.

Day 6: Dirty soil and diabetes: Anniston's toxic legacy. As a cleanup of West Anniston stretches into its eighth year, new research has linked PCBs exposure to a high rate of diabetes in this community of about 4,000 people, nearly all African American and half living in poverty. Even today, people there are among the most highly contaminated in the world.

Day 7: Falling into the 'climate gap'. Climate change is adding a new dimension to the three-decades-old environmental justice movement as researchers and activists focus on the inequities of the impacts. The rich can turn up air conditioners, move to higher ground, get bailed out by insurance. The poor and minorities are left – as with other environmental injustices – to cope as best they can.

Day 8: Asthma and the inner city: East St. Louis children struggle with life-threatening disease. What is it about this city, and other poor, African American cities, that leaves children with a disproportionate burden of respiratory disease? Is it the factories? The traffic exhaust? The substandard housing? Medical experts have struggled to unravel the mysterious connections between inner-city life and asthma, and they suspect they know the answer: All of the above.

Day 9A: Birth of the movement: "People have to stand up for what is right." A Q&A with two environmental justice pioneers. Just before the 30th anniversary of the protests against a toxic waste landfill at Warren County, North Carolina, Ferruccio and Ramey talk with EHN about their days as pioneers in the environmental justice movement.

Day 9B: Opinion Essay by Bullard: Much of America has wrong complexion for protection. In commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Warren County protests, we cannot celebrate too long because the “NIMBY” (not in my back yard) practice continues to be replaced with the “PIBBY” (place in blacks’ back yards) principle.

Day 10A: Opinion: Fighting environmental racism in the name of charity and justice . The “have not’s” or “have nothings” of the world often get blamed for their poverty as a moral failing on their own part. But perhaps the “haves” are the ones whose hardness of heart is the true moral failure because they don't act upon environmental inequity and destruction.

Day 10B: Opinion: Environmental policies must tackle social inequities. Even today, 30 years after residents of a poor, rural, predominantly African American county in North Carolina tried to block a hazardous waste landfill, the burden of proof still is placed on communities to demonstrate hazards and push for action. This needs to change. Social equity concerns should be incorporated into environmental policies and regulation.