The Department of Transportation announced $905.25 million will go to 24 projects in 18 states as part of its Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) grant program, established back in 2015. For the first time since then or ever before, the department is finally considering the impact of these projects on race and the environment.
“These timely investments in our infrastructure will create jobs and support regional economies, while helping to spur innovation, confront climate change, and address inequities across the country,” said Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a release, noting that grants were considered by how they would address climate change, environmental justice and racial equity for the first time in USDOT history.
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Day: July 5, 2021
The clouds of vapor in Katrina Randolph’s salon that lingered after she and her stylists worked on customers’ hair in tight quarters all day made her uneasy.
“I knew we were inhaling everything that we’re using during the day,” Randolph, owner of Tré Shadez Hair Studio in Capitol Heights, Maryland, told EHN. “Even when we would turn on the vent, or the AC, it wouldn’t calm it totally down.”
After looking into the health effects of common chemicals in salon products, she upgraded her salon’s ventilation system and started making hair oils out of essential oils.
“There’s definitely not enough information out there for us” to stay safe, she said. Randolph is one of almost two dozen Maryland hairdressers who took part in a recent pilot study looking at phthalate exposure for hairdressers. The study, published last month in Environmental Science and Technology, found that levels of metabolites—substances formed from the breakdown of chemicals—for one kind of phthalate were 10 times higher amongst Black and Latinx hairstylists than in Black and Latinx office workers.
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Photo Credit: Elvert Barnes/flickr