By Jessica Klees, Communications Intern
Every year since 1995, delegations from many countries gather for the Conference of the Parties (COP). And now as world leaders from more than one hundred countries convene in Glasgow for COP26, it is more important than ever that nations work to heal our planet and combat climate change. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted, “History will judge us on what we achieve over the next two weeks. We cannot let future generations down.” The eyes of the world turn to this group of people as we pray that they won’t abandon us, and our future.
The leaders who attended the G-20 summit over the weekend were accused by activists of not taking enough action. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said he left the summit “with my hopes unfulfilled.” He also believes it will be “very difficult” to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times.
The nations of the world have a great deal to do if they want to combat the climate crisis. According to CNBC, “To have any chance of capping global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the aspirational goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world needs to almost halve greenhouse gas emissions in the next 8 years and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.” The UN has also found that out of the 191 countries taking part in the Paris Agreement, only 113 have improved their pledges for carbon reduction.
During the course of the conference, India pledged to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2070. 100 countries each signed a pledge to end deforestation by 2030 and a pledge to cut methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030. However, environmentalists were concerned that China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, did not introduce any new climate targets during the conference. In fact, Chinese President Xi Xinping did not attend the conference, and instead sent a written message to delegates.
Our future rests on the actions of these leaders, but there is still hope. Boris Johnson says he feels “cautiously optimistic” about the work being done at the conference, but there is still a “very long way to go.” He said, “The clock on the doomsday device is still ticking but we have a bomb disposal team on site – they are starting to cut wires.”
Photo credit: Andy Buchanan/Getty Images
Category: Backyard Talk
CHEJ Blog
By: Emily Nguyen, CHEJ Science & Technical Fellow
There is no such thing as a natural disaster. This is one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in my academic career. While this phrase may be referring to droughts, hurricanes, and the like, its message is equally relevant to communities that have lived with toxic pollution for decades. Disasters and crises don’t decide who lives and who dies, society does. This has nothing to do with chance, but everything to do with ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic status. Similarly, who gets to live in a house with lead-based paint and who doesn’t is dictated by generations of racist environmental and housing policies. There’s nothing “natural” about that.
In California’s Santa Ana community, low-income and Latino families have been disproportionately impacted by soil lead contamination for decades. Despite leaded gasoline and lead-based paint being banned over the past 25-40 years, their toxic effects continue to plague predominantly minority communities.
Studies have shown that Latino and low-income children are among the most at risk of high blood lead levels, due to disproportionate lead exposures from living in older lead-contaminated homes, urban areas, and near industrial contamination sites. The developmental consequences of these toxic inequalities are most evident in the academic achievement gaps of Latino children compared to their white peers in the Nation’s Report Card.
In Santa Ana, a recent University of California Irvine (UC Irvine) study found that over 50% of the 1,500 soil samples gathered from residential homes were above what the California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deems safe (80 ppm). Researchers also estimated that 12,000 kids within these neighborhoods have been exposed to lead concentrations exceeding the US EPA’s 400 ppm federal limit for children’s residential play areas. Furthermore, neighborhoods with average median household incomes under $50,000 showed lead soil samples levels 440% higher than areas with median household incomes above $100,000.
As UC Irvine historian Juan Manuel Rubio asserts, Santa Ana’s rampant racial disparities in lead contamination are nothing short of a “manufactured crisis”; in other words, something that could have easily been prevented. Instead, decades of systemic racism in housing policies, coupled with crumbling infrastructure and aging housing stock have left residents with few options but to bear the consequences of a system rigged against them.
The first step towards effecting meaningful change for these vulnerable communities is recognizing and addressing the existing social inequalities that rendered them vulnerable in the first place. Much like natural disasters, these victims aren’t randomly selected. Every day, these individuals are chosen because of their location, economic conditions, and lack of sociopolitical power. They suffer and endure these crises because of deliberate decisions made by society. So, thousands of minority families in Santa Ana being subject to decades of toxic soil is anything but “natural.”
Photo Credit: Daniel A. Anderson/Grist
By Anabelle Farnham, Communications Intern
October 13, 2021
Ever since I can remember, I enjoyed science in school because it helped me to explain the world with concrete answers. It was a way of illuminating universal truths, and providing objective views of the world….right?
Though I have abandoned all hope of becoming a STEM major, since coming to college I have classes that challenge the ways I think about science and the weight I put into the answers “science” provides.
Most recently, I learned about something called the Threshold Theory that made me think of CHEJ. The Threshold Theory originates from Earle B. Phelps and H. W. Streeter, two engineers who developed this theory while working in the Ohio River and published it in 1958. The theory goes like this: nature, in this case a river or body of water, has the ability to absorb contamination up to a certain point. It is after this tipping point that we consider harm is being done and the “contamination” become “pollution.” This tipping point, the point when water/nature is unable to purify itself and the contamination we are putting into it becomes harmful, has been coined “assimilative capacity.”
I had not realized until reading about this theory how much I used the assumption of assimilative capacity in my life. It can not only apply to the way we consider land, but also how we consider our bodies. The EPA has set limits on many chemicals and the concentrations at which they can be released into the environment, operating under the assumption that both the environment and people’s bodies can absorb toxicity up until a certain point.
Under this theory, the question we ask is: what is this tipping point of chemicals at which we are causing harm? However, this question assumes that all chemicals follow the same model of the Threshold Theory when this theory cannot be universally applied.
For example, certain chemicals, such as those categorized as “endocrine disruptors” do not fit into the Threshold Theory. These chemicals can mimic our hormones, which constitute a delicate balance in our body, and can send big signals with small changes. In the case of these chemicals, a small amount can be more harmful than a large one because our body is unable to detect the difference between an endocrine disruptor or a hormone. Chemicals like these defy the Threshold Theory.
Learning about the Threshold Theory has made me reflect more on what truths I take as givens and when these assumptions might be blinding me to something bigger. It’s not that I used to think all science is good and now I think all science is flawed; it’s that I know more clearly that the questions we ask are going to determine the answers we find. Science is a tool that we can use to help each other live healthy, full, abundant lives, but the assumptions we bring into our scientific studies will create limits for how useful science can be. It really comes down to a very basic but powerful question: What stories will we use science to help us tell?
Inspiration for this blog comes from Max Liboiron’s book Pollution is Colonialism, which I highly recommend if you are interested in thinking more about the way methodologies in science have the power to create or minimize harm and violence in the world.
See also A Study of the Pollution and Natural Purification of the Ohio River by Streeter and Phelps for more on the origins of the Threshold Theory
Photo Credit: David Howell/Quebec Science. Max Liboiron is an indigenous Canadian scientist who does work on plastics pollution on the island of Newfoundland.
Cancer-Causing Waste Along The Texas Eastern Pipeline in Pennsylvania Still Exists
By: Sharon Franklin, Chief of Operations
Jim Ryan of the Perry County Times recently reported that it has been over 30 years since the public first learned that the Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation in Pennsylvania buried industrial fluids containing the carcinogen polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) along the natural gas line, which could represent thousands of tons of contaminated soil.
Unfortunately, the PCBs still have not been fully cleaned up and there isn’t an estimate for when that will be completed. Max Bergeron, a spokesperson for Enbridge, the owner of the Texas Eastern gas pipeline, stated, “We have undertaken PCB remediation efforts at (the Shermans Dale) facility in accordance with applicable regulations and are committed to continuing efforts supporting the health and safety of the communities in which we live and work.” However, according to the state of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), Enbridge is supposed to conduct PCB cleanups as it makes updates to its facilities, and that companies that previously owned the Texas Eastern pipeline were supposed to do the same, but did not completely remove all the PCB-contaminated soil.
It has been confirmed that there are nineteen Texas Eastern PCB waste sites across Pennsylvania, according to DEP. When Bergeron was asked about how much PCB soil was removed and how much cleanup was left to do along the Texas Eastern line in Pennsylvania, he did not specifically answer those questions.
Why is this being reported now? It is being reported now because it is the 30th anniversary of the 1991 Texas Eastern PCB settlement, but work on the natural gas pipeline has been ongoing in central Pennsylvania for several years. It came to the attention of the Perry County Times when a resident asked about regulatory violations at the Shermans Dale facility. They found the alleged violations on EPA’s website where it was noted the Shermans Dale Texas Eastern site had three violations in less than a year, including what appeared to be effluent runoff and emissions violations. However, EPA found no violations in their records, and Pennsylvania’s DEP said they were generated in error.
EPA spokesman Roy Seneca said in a May email that “We checked with our Water and (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act) enforcement staff and they are not aware of any direct EPA involvement with these events. They believe this was likely handled by the state.” Pennsylvania DEP stated that the incidents only appeared as violations because of a glitch in how data is uploaded to the EPA website. Sometimes if a large batch of data is uploaded, it can trigger paper violations in error. But the permit for Texas Eastern Shermands Dale under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) had no violations attached to it. “The records we have regionally and downtown don’t show violations,” John Repetz, Local Government Liaison, said, referring to DEP’s records in Harrisburg.
There are many other communities throughout the country that are facing issues such as these. While EPA says it should have been handled by the state, the state says something like it was an uploaded data issue to the EPA site, therefore it wasn’t a violation. This leaves communities along the Pipeline asking “Why is there still cancer-causing waste along the Pennsylvania Texas Eastern Pipeline after 30 years and a settlement to cleanup PCBs in contaminated soil?”
Photo Credit: Jim T. Ryan/Perry County Times
The year 2021 marks the 40thth anniversary of the Center for Health, Environment & Justice. The Love Canal community’s efforts in 1978 successfully won the relocation of 900 working class families away from a leaking toxic waste dump and awoke a nation to the hazards of toxic chemicals in our environment. Overcoming powerful resistance from government and a multi-billion dollar company, Occidental Petroleum, this grassroots effort demonstrated how ordinary people can gain power through joining together to win their struggle. Love Canal sparked a new nationwide social justice movement concerned with links between health problems and the environment. Hand-in-hand with these concerns are questions about the rights of corporations to increase their profits through decisions that sacrifice the health of innocent families and the environment.
The Meaning of Environmentalism Has Expanded—A New Grassroots Environmental Health Movement
Traditional environmentalism in America has centered, in general, around protecting the natural environment through laws and regulations. Newer grassroots efforts, however, are as much about protecting public health as the environment. These efforts value the basic human right to have clean air, water, food and soil along with preserving our nation’s natural resources. The grassroots leadership believes systemic change comes from the bottom up—people plus organization equals strength—the strength to influence policy and win protection of these basic rights, and the strength to counteract the money and pressure corporations bring to bear on elected representatives to oppose or weaken protective laws. As a result, the grassroots strategy is to build a stronghold at the local and state levels that can trickle up to influence federal-level representatives and national policies.
Another distinction between the two movements is their contrasting approaches on achieving the same overarching goals of protecting the environment and public health:
Traditional environmentalism is focused on regulations and regulatory controls. It therefore inevitably winds up debating how many parts per million of chemical X can be in wastewater that is released into a river without killing off downstream fish populations?
Today’s grassroots efforts are focused on prevention. Grassroots leaders are asking “Why do we allow chemical X in wastewater to be discharged into our rivers when non-toxic alternatives exist?”
Neither approach is right or wrong, or is superior to the other. The overarching goal of protecting the environment and all living things is the same for both segments of the environmental movement. When operating on a parallel path, the two approaches together can make significant progress in protecting the environment and public health.
Who Represents the Grassroots Environmental Health Movement Today?
The grassroots environmental movement has a long history of success. One of its most important achievements has been building a broad and diversified base of support that includes: Workers, people of color, faith-based organizations, rural and urban families, and indigenous peoples living in today’s society whose lives have been affected by environmental issues. Parent-teacher organizations, doctors, nurses, and other health professionals working to transform the health care industry’s disposal of potentially harmful substances; people who make their living fishing or depend upon fish as a primary food in their diets and other people from all walks of life.
“A public hearing is an official event on a public issue where the public speaks and the officials don’t listen.”
Activists spends endless hours sitting and testifying in public hearings. Local leaders often have endless patience despite the fact that hearings are generally convened in inconvenient places, at inconvenient times and with the room set up to intimidate. Public hearings chew up a huge amount of time and burn out leaders. They alienate members who have such a lousy time that they never come to another group activity. And often, they have no effect on public policy.
When asked why they go to hearings in light of such bad experiences, here’s what some local leaders said:
We don’t want to miss anything. There could be useful information, though this is not the only place to get it.
It’s a chance to tell our side. Sure, after the “experts” for the agencies and polluters drone on for hours, knowing the news media will leave after the first hour.
Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? The typical public hearing is a gross distortion of democracy. Hearing officers are trained to control public hearings. Your opponents will use public hearings to TEST you. Will you sit there and take it? Can they force you to conform to their rules? As the saying goes, “if you take what they give you, you deserve what you get.”
Do you have to go to public hearings? No, you don’t. If a public hearing ignores your needs, you can boycott it. You can hold a protest outside and denounce it. You can send a speaker inside to say you refuse to acknowledge its legitimacy. And you can organize a mass walk-out. You can even organize your own “People’s Hearing,” one you run and that deals with the truth.
If you do attend, insist they take their rules and throw them out the window. Let the people speak first, even if this means crying mothers speak, instead of the “experts” hearing officials prefer. Insist that officials respond, point by point. Use the hearing to present specific, concrete demands and insist on “yes” or “no” answers on the spot.
If they don’t cave in to your demands to do it your way, pull a mass walk-out. When denied the dignity of meaningful participation, the United Farm Workers would signal members to kneel in prayer and sing hymns.
At one public hearing, Concerned Citizens of White Lake (MI) were shocked when hearing officials turned out the lights when it was the citizens’ turn to speak. At the next public hearing, each member brought a lit flashlight.
At another hearing on contaminated water Concerned Residents of Muskegon (MI) showed up with water jugs. Their “testimony” took the form of queuing up at water fountains to fill their jugs from the city water supply they wanted hooked up to their neighborhood.
At a hearing in Maryland, Lois Gibbs, CHEJ’s founding director, stunned local leaders with a small but powerful tactic. As she testified, she saw that the hearing officials weren’t listening. Lois stopped and stood silent at the microphone. After a long pause, the hearing official saw she wasn’t talking. “Er, ah, Ms. Gibbs, are you through?” “No sir, “Lois replied, “I was simply waiting for you to start listening. When you’re ready, I’ll continue.”
We’ve advised groups who’ve been shut-out, silenced or scorned to physically display their response. Accordingly, groups have shown up wearing gags, ear plugs and in a couple of instances, wearing cardboard cut-outs over their ears bearing the label “B-S Protectors.”
The best way to handle the media black-out that results when community testimony is not given until after the media leaves (and after hours of testimony by the “experts”) is by calling the news media and holding a news conference before the hearing starts so they can get both sides of the story.
What you do with public hearings is up to you. If you let the hearing officials control the agenda and flow of the meeting, they’re assured of prime media coverage. All you’re assured of is the that they won’t be listening to what you and your group has to say. It’s up to you.
Excerpted from Public Hearings: It’s a hearing, but is anyone listening? Chapter 30, CHEJ’s Organizing Handbook.
Categories
My Personal Experience with the EPA
By: Jose Aguayo, Senior Science Associate
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an often embattled and criticized federal agency – and very much rightly so. Since its inception in late 1970, the EPA has struggled to deliver on its mandate to be good stewards for America’s environment. However, it is my view derived from my personal experience, that the agency’s failings have more to do with its structure and its imposed limitations, than with its people.
One example that is still fresh in everyone’s mind is the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. The town experienced such a cataclysmic and systematic failure of all the safety checkpoints designed to maintain a safe drinking water system; but the biggest failure of all came from the very top. The EPA failed to “establish clear roles and responsibilities, risk assessment procedures, effective communication and proactive oversight tools,” as their own self-assessment report concluded. This stemmed from the slow and bureaucratic structure of their upper management, who in many instances were political appointees with little to no experience in the field.
Perhaps even more damaging are the handcuffs the EPA works with – financial handcuffs. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Superfund program. Once funded by a fairly well-designed and reasonable dedicated tax on polluters, the program now runs on fumes. Since 1995, taxpayer money funds the cleanups, and even this has been cut by almost 50% over the last two decades. The result for the agency is almost nonexistent enforcement power and cleanup activities that get delayed for years. I could probably go on and on citing examples of the way the EPA has proven to be next to useless. But I don’t despise the agency; at least not anymore. I worked there for a little over 3 years as a contractor and, initially, I was very cautious and apprehensive. Having come from an environmental nonprofit background, I saw them as, maybe not the enemy, but certainly as a facilitator for those against me. In many ways that remains true, but the people I met there changed my view of the agency quite drastically.
In my years working as a contractor for the EPA, I saw firsthand how its people work passionately and are fully committed to the agency’s mission. I have seen how toxicologist colleagues meticulously examined chemicals under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and approached their review from a precautionary principle standpoint. I saw how occupational safety experts strictly enforced updated chemical safety measures at EPA labs. I saw how sustainability professionals implemented new environmental management systems at nearly all EPA facilities to further reduce the carbon footprint of the agency. All of these personal victories of the dedicated EPA staff I have had the privilege of knowing and working with over the past seem small compared to the agency’s debacles. But they served to paint a different picture in my head. In an ideal world, where funding is not always cut short and management is effective and knowledgeable, the EPA could do some good work. Perhaps more, much more, is needed for it to address all of the environmental challenges we face today. But I am willing to bet that if the drive and dedication of most of the EPA staff were unshackled, the EPA would have a decent chance at doing its job.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
By: Sharon Franklin, Chief of Operations
In a recent article in Environmental Health News, Environmental injustice and disability: Where is the research?, it sites that one group remains largely ignored: disabled people, who make up more than 25% of the United States population. When descriptions of environmental justice are made, the EPA doesn’t even include a category for individuals with disabilities. While a recent study Unequal Proximity to Environmental Pollution: An Intersectional Analysis of People with Disabilities in Harris County, Texas suggests that disability status—especially in combination with race, ethnicity, and income—can determine the amount of environmental harm exposure, it doesn’t address the environmental harm and exposure for physically challenged individuals. When we compare similar other marginalized communities, these individuals are also forced to live in areas that disproportionately expose them to environmental hazards.
While environmental justice researchers have spent decades trying to document these inequalities, there are only a few studies focused on the disabled population. Jayajit Chakraborty, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, observed that in Houston, where “neighborhoods located near pollution sources—like Superfund sites and hazardous waste facilities—were home to a significantly higher proportion of disabled people compared to the rest of the city. In addition, race, ethnicity, and age all further amplified these inequalities—disabled people of color and those aged 75 years or older both lived in even closer proximity to polluted areas, likely decreasing their quality of life.” Conversely, expanding on this research will be difficult, as work like Professor Chakraborty’s is uncommon.
Professor Chakraborty concludes that the goal has always been to expand the scope of environmental justice research. He hopes that studies similar to his Houston study will “lead to a better inclusion of people with disabilities in environmental justice research and environmental policy.”
Daphne Frias, a disabled youth organizer, told EHN researchers that the lack of available data is just a symptom of a larger problem: “ableism.” “It’s the idea that disabled lives are unimportant and disabled lives are invisible. It doesn’t matter if where we live makes us even more unhealthy.” That’s why Frias believes this framing needs to change. “Our community is beautiful and powerful, and I think that needs to be embodied instead of this doom and gloom narrative of how we’re perceived.” She added that moving forward, it’s important that researchers begin reaching out directly to the community and listen to their lived experiences. “It’s the phrase that [disabled people] always say, ‘Nothing about us without us.’”
Photo credit: Environmental Health News
By: Jessica Klees, Communications Intern
Research shows that among those with chronic diseases, use of health services increased as exposure to air pollution increased. It has also been shown that “burning fossil fuels has had significant, direct, and harmful impacts on heart disease, lung disease, and other health problems.” Exposure to pollution hurts those who are already at the greatest risk the most. We need to protect our communities and hold polluters accountable for their actions, before even more everyday people become sick.
Through our work with affected communities, the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice (CHEJ), understands that environmental rights are both a racial justice as well as an economic justice issue. We have found that it is important to note that young children, the elderly, people with weakened immune systems and underlying health conditions are even more at risk for the negative health effects of pollution and toxic waste. These individuals disproportionately suffer more, and for them the effects of pollution and climate change are a serious health issue.
I live with type 1 diabetes, and I understand all too well how unrelenting and frustrating living with a chronic condition can be. From my personal experience, I know what it is like to live with a disease that tries to break you, mentally and physically, every single day. I am very fortunate to be able to have access to treatment and resources for my disease, but this is not the case for others who suffer with chronic conditions. Individuals who are affected by toxic chemicals are more likely to live in underserved communities with less access to healthcare treatment and resources. As I fight my own health issues, I cannot imagine the pain that people who have underlying conditions face when their health is even further impacted by pollution and poisonous chemicals. The fact that corporations willingly destroy the environment and allow people to suffer so much just so they can make a greater profit is not only horrifying, it is WRONG.
Although this health crisis is a dire issue, there is hope. We need to support efforts to reinstate the Polluters Pay Tax. This will create a mechanism for companies that poison our environment to pay to clean up the environmental disasters that they created–rather than having taxpayers pay for the cleanups, when the payments should be coming from the polluters. Currently, there is an opportunity for us to right this injustice, with the proposed Infrastructure Plan that includes a provision to reinstate the “Polluters Pay Tax.” This will enable citizens to hold corporate polluters accountable. Unfortunately, it will not alleviate all the pain of the populations that have been affected, but this will be a giant step in the right direction towards collective healing and environmental justice for individuals who live in these underserved communities.
Photo Credit: James Nielson/Houston Chronicle
It was 43 years ago when I travelled to Albany, New York from Love Canal to meet with the NYS Health Department. My goal was to deliver the petition from the Love Canal Parents Movement asking for the state to close the 99th Street Elementary School. August 2, 1978 was the day my whole world shifted in an unimaginable way.
While knocking on doors in the neighborhood to obtain signatures on the petition, I learned that my neighbors were sick, some had multicolored gunk coming up in the basement and seeping through the cement walls. Many neighbors shared stories with me about black oil looking substance coming up in the fields located north and south of the 99th Street School and “hot rocks” yellow looking rocks that exploded like firecrackers when the children threw them against hard surfaces. Women I spoke with were the most impacting, they told stories of innocent children they lost, pregnancies that ended in miscarriage or birth defected infants.
Our goal at the time, was to close the elementary school. The playground sat on top of the toxic site with the school building located on the perimeter of 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals. I also felt the need to educate the New York State Health Department (NYSHD) about all the other health problems that were occurring in the neighborhood. Three of us travel to Albany, NY to deliver the petitions. As we walked into the auditorium where the meeting was held, we were shocked to see so many journalists. The room had dozens of cameras and microphones on tripods.
Naively, we thought there would be a private meeting in a small office to talk about what we wanted, why it was important to close the school and take the opportunity to share the health information we uncovered while visiting our neighbors.
It didn’t take long to understand that we were being set up. There were three of us, dozens of media related people and later the health department officials and staff took the elevated stage in front of us.
Heath Commissioner Robert Whalen took the microphone and said: “. . . the Love Canal Chemical Waste Landfill constitutes an extremely serious threat and danger to health, safety and welfare of those living near it or exposed to the conditions emanating from it.” He ordered that pregnant women or families with children under the age of two living at 99th and 97th streets (that encircle the landfill) move from their homes as soon as possible. Stunned and terrified Debbie my neighbor and I stood up and began to yell at Whalen. “What are you saying? My daughter is 2 ½ years of age has she been harmed?” The journalist then began to shout questions. The chaos, noise, and shock from the news made me feel faint.
When I walked out of that building, my life was changed forever. The rest of the story is history.