Categories
Toxic Tuesdays

Flooding

Toxic Tuesdays

CHEJ highlights several toxic chemicals and the communities fighting to keep their citizens safe from harm.

Flooding

Massive flooding in the state of Kentucky in late July 2022 claimed the lives of 38 people – yet another example of extreme weather events driven by the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels. We touched upon this broad issue in a previous Toxic Tuesday about the wildfires that scorched the state of California not long ago. This edition will analyze the problem of massive flooding from the perspective of toxics.

The flooding in Kentucky on its own has had devastating consequences in the region – personal property was lost or damaged, access to clean water was scarce, and poor sanitary conditions lead to a rise in diseases in the affected population. However, another major problem to the region’s health was not talked about much or even quantified; the problem of potential leaks, spills, or accidental releases of chemicals from facilities that handle or house these chemicals.

CHEJ tried to quantify this problem in the eastern part of Kentucky. This effort, lead by our intern Hunter Marion, utilized EPA’s EJ Screen database to look at the 17 counties in eastern Kentucky that were hit the hardest. Within these counties, we wanted to determine if there was an unusually large number of chemical facilities that could be susceptible to flooding, and how close they were to the population centers. We defined these facilities as:

  • Facilities that are required by law to have Risk Management Plans (RMPs) to guard against chemical leaks or spills due to extreme weather events
  • Hazardous waste facilities (including hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facilities)
  • Underground storage tank facilities
  • Wastewater discharge facilities

Our analysis could not yield a definite number of chemical facilities or their exact distance from the populated areas. However, we were able to use the EJ screen to place each of the 17 affected counties into a percentile of the overall US population with regards to proximity to chemical facilities. This will become clearer with an example.

In the chart above, the population of Bell County (far right) is in the 84th percentile in terms of proximity to an RMP facility. This means that, on average, a person living in Bell County is closer to an RMP facility than 84% of the US population. To put it in another way, only 16% of the US population live closer to an RMP facility than a resident of Bell County, on average.

Similar conclusions can be drawn from the following charts:

We can see across the board that a few counties continuously rank high among proximity to chemical facilities as we have defined them. Bell County is the largest offender with its average resident being closer to hazardous waste facilities than 79% of the rest of the US, closer to underground storage tanks than 64% of the rest of the US, and closer to wastewater discharging facilities than 98% of the US. Clay, Knott, and Harlan counties follow closely.

These relatively high numbers mean that residents in eastern Kentucky where flooding was at its most damaging are comparatively closer to facilities that can spill, leak, or accidentally release dangerous chemicals than the average person in the US. This should alert authorities to do something, given that the area is prone to flooding.

Learn about more toxics

Categories
Toxic Tuesdays

The Role of Science and Information in Addressing Questions about Chemical Exposures

Toxic Tuesdays

CHEJ highlights several toxic chemicals and the communities fighting to keep their citizens safe from harm.

The Role of Science and Information in Addressing Questions about Chemical Exposures

It’s common to think that in science and technical information lies the answer to the many questions people ask about exposures to toxic chemicals. At CHEJ, we have not found this to be the case. While science and technical information is very important, by itself it cannot answer most of the questions people raise about exposure to toxic chemicals. People want answers and they want action to address the contamination in their community. Science and technical information can play a vital role in helping to achieve community goals, but identifying this role and learning how to use scientific and technical information is critical to the success of a local group. 

Many assume that if you hire the best scientists and engineers and make solid technical arguments, the government will do the right thing. It rarely works that way. It’s not because people who work for government don’t care, it’s just that the science is not there for government to justify acting. This is primarily because of the lack of scientific knowledge and understanding of how exposures to toxic chemicals lead to health outcomes in people. Scientists know little about the adverse health effects resulting from exposure to combinations of chemicals at low levels. As a result, when politicians and bureaucrats look for answers, the scientists usually don’t have them. 

At first glance, this may not make sense. We know so much about many toxic chemicals, like lead and dioxins, for example. But when it comes right down to it, we know very little about what happens to people when they are exposed to low level mixtures of toxic chemicals, even those that include lead and dioxins.

We can estimate risks and talk about the hazards associated with exposure, but we just don’t know much about the mechanisms of how chemicals damage the human body, especially in low level mixtures over long periods of time. This is because in most cases, there is very little information about what a person is exposed to, the concentration they are exposed to, and for how long. A person’s health conditions and prior exposures to toxic chemicals also play a role. In addition, there is no way to distinguish or fingerprint an exposure with a health outcome. 

Most scientists are reluctant to discuss how little is known about the link between health outcomes and exposures. Instead, the tendency is to discuss the “risks” of exposure which eventually leads to a debate over what’s an “acceptable” risk. This process hides the fact that scientists don’t know what happens to people who are exposed to low levels of a mixture of toxic chemicals. 

Because of this lack of scientific clarity, bureaucrats and politicians use “science” cloaked in uncertainty, not facts, to justify decisions which are based on the political and economic pressures they face. It is naïve to think that science and the many uncertainties resulting from exposures to toxic chemicals can serve as anything but a tool used by politicians and corporations to do what they want. 

In the face of these uncertainties, government sees as its main role and primary responsibility to maintain control of a situation and to assure the public that everything is fine, whether it is or not. The government cannot afford to say what it really knows about a situation, which often, is very little. If they did that, then the public would demand action that they could not scientifically justify taking. 

Despite these realities, there is a critically important role for science and information to play in addressing exposures to toxic chemicals. This role is to document the exposures and risks posed by these exposures and to support the arguments of activists and people exposed to toxic chemicals. The role of science and technical information is to be part of a larger strategic plan to help the community and the individuals who have been exposed to toxic chemicals achieve their goal, whether it’s to be relocated, or to achieve cleanup of a contaminated site. It’s important to recognize what science and technical information can tell you and what it can’t. 

Learn about more toxics

Categories
Toxic Tuesdays

Benzene

Toxic Tuesdays

CHEJ highlights several toxic chemicals and the communities fighting to keep their citizens safe from harm.

Benzene

Benzene is a colorless chemical with a sweet odor that is flammable and presents itself in liquid form at normal temperatures and pressures. It is part of a family of chemicals commonly referred to as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), mainly because they evaporate quickly when exposed to air. Although benzene can be formed and emitted from natural processes, exposure to it comes mostly from human activities.

Benzene is among the 20 most widely used chemicals in the United States. It is used as an industrial chemical in the production of a myriad of products including plastics, resins, synthetic fibers, rubber lubricants, dyes, detergents, drugs, and pesticides. Benzene is also naturally found in crude oil and is a major part of gasoline.

The health effects of benzene include irritation of the body parts in contact with the chemical, immune problems, nervous system conditions, and even certain cancers. Acute symptoms of relatively short-term exposure to benzene include skin, eye, and respiratory tract irritation. Prolonged exposures to even low concentrations of benzene can result in central nervous system depression and arrhythmias, as well as trigger anemia and even compromise the immune system. Finally, it has been long established that benzene exposure can cause many forms of leukemia. The International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) has classified it as carcinogenic to humans (IARC group 1) since 1979.

Human exposure to benzene in the environment usually takes the form of gasoline fumes, automobile exhaust, emissions from certain factories, and off gassing from some commonly used products. Areas that routinely experience heavy traffic can suffer from dangerous levels of benzene in the air. Benzene can also off gas from certain paints and glues and become concentrated in an indoor environment. Additionally, cigarette smoking and secondhand smoke can account for significant benzene exposure. Finally, industries such as oil and gas can contribute to local benzene pollution greatly.

This is the case of the community in Greeley, Colorado where a fracking well pad was in operation just 1000 feet away from the 4th– 8th grade campus of the Bella Romero Academy. Kids and teachers were being exposed to levels of benzene (emanating from the fracking operations) almost seven times higher than the lifetime safe exposure level for benzene developed by the World Health Organization (WHO). Colorado 350, a local nonprofit working on the issue, reached out to CHEJ for help in analyzing a report by Barrett Engineering on the measured levels of benzene in the school. With our help, Colorado 350 is now asking the city to reinstate air monitors and shut down the fracking operation if benzene levels do not drop below safe levels.

Learn about more toxics

Categories
Toxic Tuesdays

Interpreting Health Risks

Toxic Tuesdays

CHEJ highlights several toxic chemicals and the communities fighting to keep their citizens safe from harm.

Interpreting Health Risks

Community leaders are constantly asking government officials and scientists to explain the risks of being exposed to toxic chemicals. The answers they get are typically all over the place. Often people hear that you don’t have to worry, that the risks from living near a toxic contamination problem is no different than smoking cigarettes, eating a peanut butter sandwich, or living in an urban area. Government and industry further argue that it has never been proven that the health of the people at Love Canal was damaged by the chemicals leaking from the landfill, that the dangers of dioxin are overstated, and that people become “hysterical” just because they have been exposed to toxic chemicals.

No question people are upset. But they’re not upset because they can’t understand complicated risk assessments or detailed toxicity information. They are upset because government and industry trivialize their concerns, because they can’t get good information on the toxicity of chemicals, and no one will give them an honest answer about potential health effects caused by exposure to toxic chemicals.

There is no question that toxic chemicals can cause adverse health effects. What’s not so clear is how chemicals cause adverse health effects in people. Part of the reason for this is that for most chemicals, there is not enough information on what happens to people when they are exposed while eating contaminated food, drinking polluted water, or breathing toxic air. A classic 1984 National Academy of Sciences report found that we had good information on only 8% of over 65,000 chemicals in use. Not much has changed since then.

While most of the information on toxicity of chemicals comes from animal studies, the workers who manufacture toxic chemicals are the greatest source of information on the toxicity of chemicals. From their experience, we found that dusty air causes lung cancer, benzene causes leukemia, radioactive paint, bone cancer, vinyl chloride, liver cancer, and certain pesticides, muscle weakness and paralysis.

In the community, an association between health problems and exposure has been harder to “prove”, but still many examples exist, especially among children who are highly susceptible to toxic chemicals. At Love Canal, children who were born and raised next to the canal had higher rates of birth defects; in Tucson, AZ, children whose parents drank water contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) were born with 2-1/2 times more heart defects than normal; and in Santa Clara County, CA, state health researchers found an “unequivocal excess” of miscarriages and birth defects in a San Jose neighborhood where trichloroethane (TCA) and other toxic chemicals were found in the drinking water.

Despite these and other findings, scientists still find it extremely difficult to tell exactly what health effects will occur following exposure to toxic chemicals. There are a number of reasons for this. First, many factors determine what happens when a person is exposed to chemicals, including how an individual body responds to exposure (this varies widely from person to person), how long exposures occur, how many chemicals you’re exposed to and their toxicity. Without knowing these variables, it’s difficult to predict what will happen when a person is exposed (in most instances, most of these factors are unknown).

A second factor is that many symptoms or diseases are not specific to a particular chemical. In most instances, there can be many causes of the symptoms that people are having. And since few physicians have any experience with exposures to toxic chemicals, rarely do they look at chemicals as a possible explanation. For example, many physicians will diagnose a person who is fatigued, moody and without appetite as “depressed”, likely to have a problem at home or at work. Seldom is exposure to toxic chemicals considered, even if it’s raised by the patient.

Another problem is determining what the “normal” rate of illness or disease is in a community. Scientists simply can’t decide amongst themselves what is normal, in large part because of the many uncertainties we’ve already discussed.

As a result, interpretation of the risks posed by exposures to toxic chemicals is largely a matter of opinion, not fact. Government and industry may criticize people for being “hysterical” or emotional when trying to explain health risks. But without clear information and explanations, people are pretty much out in the cold. Scientists need to be more honest about what is known and what’s not known about low level exposures to mixtures of chemicals. Once people have this information, they may not be fully satisfied, but at least they have a good sense of what’s known and what’s not. Then people are in a better position to decide what action they need to take.

Learn about more toxics

Categories
Toxic Tuesdays

Radon

Toxic Tuesdays

CHEJ highlights several toxic chemicals and the communities fighting to keep their citizens safe from harm.

Radon

Radon is a colorless, tasteless and odorless gas that is radioactive and can cause cancer. It forms naturally when radioactive elements like uranium, thorium, or radium break down. This element can then move around in the environment by migrating as a gas or by dissolving in moving groundwater.

The main health concern surrounding radon is lung cancer. In the United States, radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer, after smoking. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Surgeon General’s office estimate that radon is responsible for more than 20,000 lung cancer deaths each year in the country. This risk is greatly increased among people who smoke.

Radon can affect your health by entering the body as a gas or in one of its multiple “progeny” forms. These progenies are other radioactive elements that form when radon decays and gives off radiation. Although they are solid, these progenies can still move around because they attach to dust particles that are easily carried around in air. As a result, the main route of exposure to radon and its progenies is through inhalation of contaminated air. The main source of exposure is people’s homes, especially poorly ventilated basements. Once breathed in, radon and its progeny particles can deposit in your lungs and impart a significant dose of radiation to the lung tissue.

Radioactive dust particles similar to those formed from radon decay are a concern for the people of Rostraver Township who live around the Westmorland landfill in Pennsylvania. Although mostly a solid waste landfill, Westmoreland also accepts certain hazardous wastes including fracking waste that in many instances is radioactive. This radioactive waste, when dissolved in the landfill’s leachate (water inside the landfill with waste dissolved in it), is planned on being treated by a new and unproved system that essentially boils leachate. The result is the formation of dust particles that can contain radioactive elements attached to them. CHEJ has helped the group working with the local community, Protect PT, with this and several other issues surrounding the proposed leachate treatment system.

Learn about more toxics

Categories
Toxic Tuesdays

Bisphenol A (BPA)

Toxic Tuesdays

CHEJ highlights several toxic chemicals and the communities fighting to keep their citizens safe from harm.

Bisphenol A (BPA)

BPA stands for Bisphenol A and is a man-made chemical produced in large quantities for use primarily in the production of polycarbonate plastics. It is found in a large number of everyday products such as eyewear, water bottles, and epoxy resins that coat some metal food cans, bottle tops, and water supply pipes.

BPA is a concerning chemical because it is one of those compounds that is in almost everything we use or come in contact with. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) between 2003 and 2004 found detectable levels of BPA in 93% of people sampled six years and older.

While air, dust, and water are possible sources of exposure, BPA in food and beverages is the main source of exposure for most people. BPA has been observed to leach into food from the internal epoxy resin coatings of canned foods. Other items that contain BPA which come in contact with food or drinking water such as polycarbonate eating utensils, food storage containers, and water bottles can also contaminate food with BPA.

Although research into the effects of BPA in humans is not conclusive, there is mounting evidence for classifying BPA as an endocrine-disrupting compound (EDC). EDCs affect human health by disrupt hormones during key developmental stages of growth. For this reason, they can cause many different adverse health outcomes including damage to sperm quality, reduced fertility, abnormalities in sex organs, early puberty, reduced immune function, and certain cancers. BPA, specifically, seems to mirror the hormone estrogen, and studies in animals have shown decreased levels of testosterone, atrophy of male genitalia, and fertility problems.

The National Resources Defense Council put together a few tips on how to avoid BPA products here. Given the uncertainty and potential severity of BPA’s health effects, it is a good idea to be proactive and avoid unnecessary exposures to it.

Learn about more toxics

Categories
Toxic Tuesdays

Risk Assessments

Toxic Tuesdays

CHEJ highlights several toxic chemicals and the communities fighting to keep their citizens safe from harm.

Risk Assessments

It is difficult to interpret health risks when people are exposed to toxic chemicals. This is largely driven by the lack of information about what happens to people when they are exposed to toxic chemicals.  

In the face of this uncertainty, the government, primarily the USEPA, developed the process called “risk assessment” as the means for evaluating health risks. This approach calculates the probability that exposure to a single toxic chemical, considered in isolation, will result in a specific level of harm to people. And, if the calculated probability falls below a targeted risk level defined by the government as “acceptable” (say one cancer in 100,000 individuals exposed for a lifetime), then that exposure is considered acceptable.

Risk assessment was developed in the 1970s and soon became the “go to” approach for evaluating health risks resulting from exposure to toxic chemicals, whether setting cleanup standards at Superfund sites, regulating toxic air emissions or waste water discharges, or for determining safe levels of contaminants in food. But instead of protecting or even prioritizing public health, the use of risk assessment has resulted in our regulatory system allowing broad-scale contamination of the planet by defining “acceptable” levels of contamination and exposure to toxic chemicals.

The risk assessment process has improved over the years, but it still suffers many critical limitations that make it inadequate and inappropriate for assessing public health risks. These limitations begin with a primary focus on cancer, ignoring reproductive, nervous system, immune, and other noncancer effects. This narrow focus also fails to consider the likelihood of getting rashes, headaches and dizziness, breathing disorders, allergies, liver and kidney effects, etc.

Another major limitation is the consideration of exposure to only one chemical at a time. This approach ignores the multiple chemicals that people are realistically exposed to at a contaminated site, or from an industrial source, as well as from other sources that contribute to a person’s overall toxic body burden including drinking water, ambient air, and food sources. It also ignores the additive, cumulative, and synergistic effects that result from exposures that occur daily and over time from all sources combined.

There is also great uncertainty in what we know about the toxicity of most chemicals. We actually know very little about the toxic effects of most chemicals. We have good toxicity information on only about 8% of the more than 65,000 chemicals in use. Lastly, people vary greatly in genetic characteristics, age, sensitivity and pre-existing conditions that all influence how a person responds to exposures to toxic chemicals. And, we have no way to characterize or predict this response.

To address these limitations and shortcomings, Peter Montague published  a number of explicit warnings that should accompany every formal risk assessment. These warnings include the following:

  • Assessing the risks to a hypothetical “most exposed individual” has led to a world contaminated by the cumulative effects of millions of low-level discharges and small stresses.
  • Risk assessors should acknowledge that most people are routinely exposed to mixtures of chemicals (pharmaceuticals, food additives, pesticides, secondhand smoke, vehicle exhaust, disinfectants, cleaning agents, fine particle pollution, pollutants in drinking water, and releases from consumer products (among others).
  • Risk assessments can mislead, confuse and exclude the public, thereby diminishing democratic participation.
  • Risk assessments are not scientific in the sense that they often are not reproducible when different people assess the same risks. Conclusions can vary dramatically (by a factor of 1,000 or more), depending on who’s doing the assessment.   
  • The selection of data determines the conclusions. The selection and use of particular data should be explained and defended as should the exclusion of particular data.
  • Informed consent is ethically essential. For the past 50 years, the general public and environmental justice communities in particular, have been subject to chemical exposures and other stressors without their informed consent. They suffer the consequences with their health.

While these warnings are important and could help people read and use risk assessments in reduce the danger of misusing or misunderstanding the results of the risk assessment process, they don’t address a critical question posed by people exposed to toxic chemicals: How will my health, or the health of my children, family, or community, be affected?

Risk assessment cannot answer this question, no matter how well done or how much context is provided to help reduce misuse and misunderstanding. People exposed to toxic chemicals suffer for years as scientists do health studies, health assessments, data evaluations, and risk estimates. In the end, the risk assessment process typically shows that the levels of toxic chemicals people were exposed to are not likely (or some similar caveat) to cause any adverse health effects. 

No matter how well designed, risk assessments cannot answer this question. Instead, we need to think of another way to provide relief for people who suffer from toxic chemical exposures. 

Learn about more toxics

Categories
Backyard Talk Homepage

Juliana v. United States (2015-2021)

Photo credit: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

By Hunter Marion.

In 2015, a group of 21 young people ranging from 8-19 in age filed a lawsuit against the federal government for violating their rights to a safe climate as argued under the “public trust doctrine.” This collection of plaintiffs was represented by the environmental legal firm, Our Children’s Trust, and contained several activists from the youth-focused environmental group, Earth Guardians. Juliana v. the United States became a high-profile, youth-led, legal battle to correct the political mess that contributed to roughly 50-years’ worth of climate change (several of the young plaintiffs even cited it as directly damaging their ways of life).

Although promising, the case was kicked around the court system, eventually getting stuck in legal limbo with the U.S. Supreme Court currently debating on whether to accept it for oral argument. If accepted, this case (and others) could potentially lay the groundwork for novel legal actions to prosecute against entities that contributed to climate change. It could also lead to more thorough punishment of gas and oil companies, set precedent for other environmental lawsuits, and possibly guarantee a constant right to a clean and stable environment.

Some legal scholars have criticized that the points brought up in Juliana were too weak, had too many sources of damage, or could not be given proper resolution within the judicial context. However, many judges involved in reviewing the case pointed out considerable evidence to the contrary. Critics also protest that even if the U.S. Supreme Court were to accept the case, it would not have the power to enact these changes because it is not the rule-making body of government. But this criticism also falls flat when one recognizes that the U.S. Supreme Court has a record of judicial activism or “legislating from the bench” (creating or interpreting their own new laws or constitutional rights without the need for the legislature to create them first), see Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Roe v. Wade (1973), or Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010). To put it bluntly, the courts can find the necessary points, damages, and resolutions if they want to.

The key takeaway from Juliana vs. United States is that for those seeking environmental justice, the courts are not a guaranteed pathway to restitution. Even if you or your group brings solid, compelling evidence or has a resounding reputation, that may not be enough to overcome the federal government’s reluctance to address its responsibility (or even culpability) in environmental degradation, climate driven or otherwise. While this approach creates another pressure point on those responsible for climate change, we at CHEJ would put more faith in a grassroots-based, multi-government level-focused strategy that gives us a seat at the table rather than relying upon a team of lawyers and government officials to do it for us.

If you would like to learn more about the case, you can watch the documentary Youth v. Gov now available on Netflix.

Categories
Backyard Talk Homepage

Do We Need A Worldwide Polluters Pay Policy ?

Photo credit: Pixabay, Creative Commons

By Sharon Franklin.

Emily Beament published an article on January 16, 2023, on The Ecologist, a news and analysis website that focuses on environmental, social and economic justice, about a study by Stuart Jenkins. The University of Oxford researcher’s study was on why we need a polluter pays policy. Jenkins said the world dramatically needs to scale-up geological carbon storage and that making fossil fuel firms pay to clean up carbon could help curb climate change.

The study posits that requiring fossil fuel companies to pay for cleaning up their carbon emissions could help curb dangerous global warming at a relatively affordable cost. Its argument is centered around what is already happening in other industries, such as plastic packaging and electrical goods, and in the water sector. This approach holds producers responsible for the waste generated by the products they sell.

Can the World Afford this Approach to Make Polluters Pay?  

Jenkins’ study describes it as a “carbon takeback obligation” and it would help overcome the energy trilemma – the choice between energy security, affordability, and environmental sustainability. He also stated, “Unfortunately when governments are forced to choose, they often forgo that latter obligation” (e.g., environmental sustainability). According to his study, “A carbon takeback obligation provides a simple and predictable regulation ensuring the fossil fuel industry cleans up after its activities and products without government subsidies.” To opponents to this approach who might ask, “But at what cost?” Jenkin’s response is, “It does add to the cost of fossil fuel production, and so it’s not an incentive to continue production by any means.” 

And What About Energy Demands? 

Dr. Hugh Helferty, a former employee at ExxonMobil North America, added to this argument: “It makes sense that the producer and consumer should pay rather than the taxpayer should pay, and that puts the drive to reduce costs in the right place.” He later issued a warning that “a lot of the reaction to current very high fossil fuel prices has been to increase supply not to reduce demand.”

So, What’s Next?  

Professor Myles Allen, from the University of Oxford, also stated that “ending fossil fuel use was going to be hard. We need to start a conversation about how we redirect this colossal amount of money that is currently simply being injected into what we call fossil fuel rents to addressing the climate problem.” Professor Allen went on to state that implementing the obligation could reduce and ultimately prevent further global warming from fossil fuels at an affordable cost.  

This is relative to conventional solutions, because the world spent ~$13 trillion in energy costs last year, mostly on fossil fuels and with a substantial fraction going into “rents” or profits, taxes and royalties.  By 2050, the global economy is expected to double, and the net costs would be less than half of last year’s energy costs as a proportion of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Categories
Backyard Talk Homepage

2022 – The Year in Review

Photo credit: Eman Mohammed | Survival Media Agency

By Stephen Lester.

As CHEJ begins its 42nd year in operation, it’s always good to reflect on the previous year. We found that 2022 concluded with incredible success. Our staff, volunteers and, most importantly, our leaders on the frontlines successfully adapted to new ways of organizing and fighting back during a difficult pandemic period. And they continued to win local efforts to stop polluters and protect their families.  

This is all possible because of our donors and supporters. With your support, we were able to provide leadership skills, facilitate strategic action plans, produce scientific analyses and provide the much-needed resources to frontline grassroots communities through our small grants program and community organizing efforts throughout the country. 

With the new administration in Washington, we saw significant new legislation passed by the Biden Administration including the Build Back Better and the Inflation Reduction Acts that offer promise for a better tomorrow. Most notably, the reinstatement of several Superfund polluter pays fees that promise to raise $3.5B for Superfund cleanups as part of the Build Back Better infrastructure legislation. Many Superfund communities across the county celebrated this long-awaited victory, which never would have been possible without the persistent call for action from hundreds of grassroots communities across the country.

CHEJ’s Unequal Response, Unequal Protection campaign continued in 2022 to create a clear, community-driven framework for conducting health investigations that prioritizes public health and gives community leaders the decision-making power to decide how government should respond. After meetings with community leaders and scientists who helped brainstorm an alternative response, we finalized an 8-step process that follows a defined timeline – ensuring that communities get answers in a timely manner.

This past year we also continued our work with grassroots groups in communities like Bristol, TN/VA, Wausau, WI, Houston, TX, Greeley, CO, Seattle, WA, Rostraver, PA, Rensselear, NY, and the Ohio River Valley, OH, all of whom had many accomplishments and expressed the strength and passion to fight against polluters and for environmental justice. Many of their stories are truly inspiring and help to keep us going.

We also continued providing our technical assistance to grassroots organizations in support of local organizing; published our biweekly feature Toxic Tuesday, which provides information on the toxicity of individual chemicals as well as features on the challenges of interpreting toxic effects; conducted 14 diverse and informative Zoom training calls that focused on topics designed to educate and develop skills amongst grassroots leaders. Attendance on these calls increased by over 86% from the previous year. Additionally, CHEJ was delighted to support 48 grassroots organizations with the assistance of our donors and supporters, as part of our Small Grants Program, as we continue to build the base of the Environmental Health and Justice Movement. We look forward to more success in this coming year.