By Mihir Vohra, Research Associate
In the fight to end our reliance on fossil fuels, most of the focus has been on the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions, but other emissions are harmful as well. Particulate matter (PM) is a type of air pollution made up of a mixture of dust, chemicals, and liquid droplets and gets released into the air through fossil fuel combustion. When inhaled, PM enters the lungs and bloodstream, exacerbating existing respiratory tract illnesses and causing lung disease, heart disease, and lung cancer. Very small PM – called PM2.5 to denote particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter – is particularly dangerous. A study published this week in Environmental Research made a shocking finding about just how dangerous this pollution is: PM2.5 emissions from fossil fuel combustion are responsible for over 20% of premature deaths worldwide.
Previous studies have calculated the effect of all sources of PM2.5 on worldwide mortality, but this is the first one with the data and computer modeling technology to accurately assess the effect of PM2.5 only from fossil fuel combustion. It incorporates fossil fuel burning from all sources and sectors such as oil and natural gas extraction, power generation, kerosene, and land, air, and sea transportation.
To do their analysis, the authors created a map of total PM2.5 emissions from all sources. They also mapped premature deaths, meaning deaths that occur before the average age of death in a given country. Then they used computer modeling to estimate PM2.5 emissions due only to fossil fuels. Using a mathematical function to calculate what percentage of premature deaths could be attributable to PM2.5 emissions, they arrived at an estimate of how many premature deaths were due to PM2.5 from fossil fuels. China and India had the highest fossil fuel PM2.5 emissions, with Europe and the United States not far behind. Unsurprisingly, these were the places with the highest death rates due to these emissions.
The study estimated that worldwide, 21.5% of all premature deaths were due to PM2.5 air pollution from fossil fuel combustion. This means that out of every five people who died before their natural lifespan, one of them died because of health effects of PM2.5 emissions from burning fossil fuels. This staggering number even surprised scientists because previous estimates using less accurate computer modeling estimated the effect to be much smaller. Overall, this study shows that a huge percentage of deaths across the globe occur because of air pollution from burning fossil fuels. Transitioning to clean fuels will have a direct impact on health and mortality worldwide.
Photo Credit: Vohra et al./Environmental Research
Category: Backyard Talk
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Justice Through GIS
By: Benjamin Silver, Science and Technology Intern
I never imagined that a five-gigabyte software on my laptop could contain an approach to fighting environmental injustice. The keys lie somewhere between map frames and advanced geostatistical interpolations.
Before interning at CHEJ, I had an incomplete understanding of environmental justice. I pictured the field solely as activists and victims opposing corporate polluters. Although I understood that research supports these organizing efforts, I never considered methods that scientists adopt to evaluate ecological data. One of these methods is GIS (geographic information systems), a computer program designed to collect, analyze, and distribute spatial data. GIS specialists create maps to interpret data across various disciplines. When appropriate techniques are applied, GIS can help solve geographically-related problems.
One environmental application of GIS is its use to develop comprehensive disaster responses. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey ripped through Southern Texas, killing 68 people and causing over $120 billion in infrastructure damage. However, widespread GIS usage after the storm significantly decreased Harvey’s devastation. The International Association of Fire Chiefs used GIS in their search and rescue efforts to determine flooded regions with high concentrations of vulnerable populations. They prevented dozens of elderly, children, and disabled people from being stranded in their homes. Additionally, the Texas Division of Emergency Management mapped shelter locations with ArcMap, a GIS platform, and created a web application for tracking evacuees.
CHEJ has allowed me to learn and implement GIS into my work. In December, I began my first GIS project with the Brave Heart Society, a non-profit dedicated to preserving traditional elements of Dakota culture on the Yankton Sioux Reservation. I worked on the Mni Wizipan Wakan Project, which aims to create a long-term resource management plan for the Dakota tribe. My contribution of the project focused on vegetation, an integral component of Dakota lifestyle for their various tribal uses. The goal is to create an inventory of culturally-valuable plants along the Missouri River Basin. This information is important because soil erosion, agricultural runoff, and invasive species along the river have undermined biodiversity and decreased the abundance of healthy vegetation. Using Dakota ethnobotanical data, I created an interactive map of the bioregion with GIS. Viewers can click on species survey points on the map to learn about each location’s plants and their respective uses.
This project taught me that GIS is a useful tool. Like any tool, its value lies within the creative context the author invokes. While my map informs the Dakota where they can find various vegetation, it does not address the underlying sustainability question facing the Dakota: How can the tribe ensure their access to these plants for future generations? Therefore, I integrated the map into a presentation that incorporates broader themes of the project, including ethnobotany, environmental threats, and local conservation efforts along the river. My aim in designing this product was to create a useful resource in the Ihantonwan’s struggle for environmental justice.
GIS is a groundbreaking technology with the power to transform the modern environmental justice movement. Maximizing GIS’s potential to combat issues hinges on engaging local communities by familiarizing them with the program and its benefits. Residents fighting contamination often feel helpless due to their lack of agency during testing and investigations. Empowering these communities with basic GIS education will provide a resource to better involve them in local environmental justice battles. Even if communities are not working with the data directly, viewing GIS-generated maps can foster citizen science participation around issues that impact their everyday lives.
While GIS expands horizons for scientific advancement, we must remember that it is most valuable when harnessed to assist the people impacted by the environmental justice movement. Only then will mapping elements on the computer screen translate into meaningful social change.
Photo Credit: Huawei Enterprise
Everyone’s talking about the Covid-19 vaccine these days – who gets it first; how will it be distributed; is there enough; where do I sign up; and so much more. While it’s still early in the rollout, it’s already become clear that African Americans and Latinos, who have been hit the hardest by the Corona virus and Covid-19, are getting vaccinated at disproportionately low rates. The early data (though limited by many factors including poor data on who is being vaccinated) indicates that vaccinations are not reaching the populations the virus has harmed most and that Black and Brown people are getting vaccinated at a much lower rate than their share of cases and deaths.
In Maryland, only about 16% of the first doses of the vaccine have gone to African Americans, and 4.6% have gone to Latinos. Those groups represent 31% and 11% of the population, respectively. Black residents have accounted for approximately 33% of Maryland’s coronavirus cases and 35% of deaths from the disease; Latino residents account for 19% of infections and 9% of fatalities. In New York City, about 5% of those vaccinated are Latino or African American, but these groups make up 29% and 24% of the city’s population, respectively. In Philadelphia, 12% of those vaccinated were Black while the city’s population is about 44% Black.
These results are consistent with a report released last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation that evaluated race and ethnicity data on vaccinations for 17 states obtained from the federal government. Kaiser found that “the share of vaccinations among Black people is smaller than their share of cases in all 16 reporting states and smaller than their share of deaths in 15 states. For example, in Mississippi, Black people account for 15% of vaccinations, compared to 38% of cases and 42% of deaths, and, in Delaware, 8% of vaccinations have been received by Black people, while they make up nearly a quarter of cases (24%) and deaths (23%). Similarly, Hispanic people account for a smaller share of vaccinations compared to their share of cases and deaths in most states reporting data. For example, in Nebraska, 4% of vaccinations are among Hispanic people, while they make up 23% of cases and 13% of deaths.”
Conversely, Kaiser found that “the share of vaccinations among White people is larger than their share of cases in 13 of the 16 reporting states and larger than their share of deaths in 9 states.” For example, in North Carolina, 82% of vaccinations have been among White people, while they make up 62% of cases and 65% of deaths.
These figures make it clear that the early rollout strategy is not adequately nor appropriately targeting those most susceptible and vulnerable to Covid-19. It is early and much has been said about the logistics difficulties in getting the vaccine into the arms of the people who need it most. But it does seem apparent if not obvious that the rollout strategy for the distribution of the vaccine is not centered on equity – getting the vaccine into the arms of the people who have been infected the most and who are dying at the highest rate.
By: Leija Helling, Organizing Intern
Today marks the inauguration of Joe Biden as our president and there is work to be done. Across the country, groups are coming together in an effort to push the incoming administration on progressive policies. We must continue to demand better from our government and, unlike over the past four years, we are soon to have a White House that just might listen.
Throughout the past few months, part of my work at CHEJ has included contributing to our Unequal Response Unequal Protection campaign, a project through which CHEJ is seeking to make its voice heard in the Biden White House. The campaign is attempting to address the federal government’s repeated failure to protect communities from toxic pollution, building on growing calls for community-oriented approaches to science across environmental and public health fields. We centered community voices in our process by holding multiple meetings with local leaders from EJ and Superfund communities throughout the country to discuss their experiences around environmental contamination and public health studies. These conversations helped me understand why building trusting partnerships between scientists and marginalized communities and creating a substantive role for local expertise in the scientific process are so crucial to developing strategies for environmental justice.
The burden of proof is one example of how the current scientific approach fails to protect communities from the health impacts of environmental contamination. Impacted communities currently bear the burden of proving their health issues were caused directly by exposure to toxics in the environment. This can be incredibly difficult to do, as exposures can add up over years and health conditions can be caused by the cumulative effects of many exposures and risk factors. Agencies can use a lack of hard proof of a direct link between a chemical exposure and a health condition to deny a community the intervention they need. In other words, the current response assumes chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. The system values scientific certainty over protection of communities being harmed. This approach cannot provide environmental justice. Something that is not statistically significant can still be causing harm!
All this reminds me of an article I recently read by a professor in the Science, Technology and Society department at my university. The piece first talks about a “data-to-action paradigm” which leads us to believe that more data and better science will tell us how to solve problems. More data and more science equals more action, according to this model. What we need, Professor Samantha Jo Fried argues, is a new “civic engagement paradigm” where issues that matter to the public would guide the scientific process through collaborative partnerships between empowered communities and humbled scientists. I believe CHEJ’s Unequal Response campaign and the many community groups and organizations that are working alongside us in these efforts are attempting to provide just that. This would be a fundamentally different approach, but it is only through these equal partnerships and collaborative processes that science can address the disparate impact of environmental hazards on low-wealth communities and communities of color.
By: Gustavo Andrade, Organizing Director
After the horrific display of violence and hatred in Washington, DC last week, we must unite to uphold our most basic common values of democracy and safety for all. We fully support the bi-partisan efforts to impeach, convict and remove this president.
There is no place for white nationalism in a just society, no “middle ground” between fascism and fairness and no excuses for violence and murder.
We must focus on holding all those involved in the failed insurrection fully accountable, while also moving forward an aggressive agenda for justice. While the Georgia runoff elections have opened a window to significant legislative progress, President-Elect Biden should also make decisive use of his considerable executive powers to protect us from violent extremists and to undo the damage of the last 4 years as soon as possible, and chart a new course towards a more perfect union.
By Mihir Vohra, Research Associate
For over 40 years, the Navajo Generating Station (NGS), located on Navajo nation land near Page, AZ, was the largest coal plant in the American West. The NGS and the coal mine that fed it shut down in 2019, and on December 18th, 2020 its three smokestacks were finally demolished. Air pollution from coal plants is associated with higher risks for asthma, cancer, heart and lung diseases, and neurological dysfunction. The burden of these facilities disproportionately affects poor and minority communities. A 2012 report from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) determining that of the people living within 3 miles of a coal plant, the average per capita income was $18,400 and 39% were people of color.
Navajo and Hopi community members fought for closure of the NGS and issued a statement observing the December 18thdemolition. It notes that NGS provided electricity for many cities in Arizona, Nevada and California, but not the Navajo or Hopi communities, illustrating an egregious reality: not only are there disparities in the toxic burden of energy generation, but there are disparities in who gets to reap the rewards. Those most burdened are least likely to receive benefits. This exploitation isn’t limited to coal, either. During its operation, the plant pumped billions of gallons of water from the Navajo Aquifer to the city of Phoenix. This has left the Native land in a drought and decreased access to running water in Navajo and Hopi communities, endangering health as well as Tribal culture.
Now that the NGS is closed, Navajo and Hopi community members are outlining what is required for community restoration. This includes securing electricity and clean water access for residents as well as job training. A 2012 Department of Energy report estimated that the NGS employed over 800 Native people, and community members want them to be first in line for new clean energy jobs in the area. More broadly, they demand investments in a sustainable economy for the Navajo and Hopi tribes with a just transition to new industries.
Another key feature of community members’ demands is cleanup and land reclamation. The mine and plant closed over a year ago, but the company operating them has done little to clean up these sites even though it is required to return the land to its original state. Groundwater contamination from toxic waste and coal ash is a serious concern, and community members are calling on the incoming Biden administration and Department of the Interior to enforce a full and transparent process to restore the land and ensure residents’ safety.
The Navajo and Hopi people who spent decades in the shadow of the NGS deserve more than just this demolition of its smokestacks, they deserve an investment in their future.
Photo credit: Adrian Herder, Tó Nizhóní Ání.
By: Zack Schiffer, Organizing Intern
It has been one week since I began my community organizing internship with CHEJ.
Many pride CHEJ on its ability to organize ordinary citizens and lead them towards
accomplishing extraordinary things, but until spending a week with this dynamic team, I did not truly appreciate the level of dedication and energy that underlies this organization. On my
second day, I attended a virtual meeting where environmental activist Pam Kingfisher spoke
about organizing against a poultry feeding operation in Delaware County, Oklahoma. In many
ways, Kingfisher became emblematic of what this organization is all about: helping ordinary
citizens accomplish extraordinary things. As my time at CHEJ progressed, this mantra became
even more readily apparent to me.
In our current capacity, CHEJ has devoted itself towards a citizen’s campaign in Dallas,
Texas. In a small community known as Highland Hills, the Lane plating metal factory, which
closed its doors in 2015, left behind large amounts of poorly-contained chemical waste.
Overtime, these chemicals, some of which include cyanide, lead, and mercury, have leaked into
the soil and groundwater for the surrounding community to ingest. After hearing about this
serious problem (and how recently it came into fruition), I immediately realized this pressing
level of injustice. Many on CHEJ have experience working within the scope of injustices like
Lane plating, but for me, it was my first exposure to a complete disregard and wanton disrespect for members in a community. As we mobilized the community around this issue, my
preconceived notions of what a people-centered campaign would look like were quickly
disbanded. Although I often cynically envisioned a slow roll of back-and-forth communication
and free rider issues, our first town hall with Highland Hills community led CHEJ staff to sweep in like seasoned pros. From conveying information about the chemicals affecting Highland Hills residents to providing community members with a viable call-to-action, the Lane plating campaign had legs before it even started.
My tenure at CHEJ has been short thus far, but during the early stages of my internship, I
have come to fully appreciate the level of commitment underlying each and every member on
our dynamic team. These people care, and so do I. Allowing issues like Lane plating to hide in
plain sight is simply unacceptable, and after exposure to successful organizers like Pam
Kingfisher, I appreciate the power of helping the ordinary become extraordinary The future for
my internship looks bright, and with organizers like CHEJ at the helm of action, so does the
future for environmental justice in Highland Hills.
By: Ruth Rodriguez, Communications Intern
As an intern for CHEJ, I reflect on environmental justice every single day. This leads me to ponder over the intersection of homelessness and environmental justice. We see environmental justice as an issue that affects low income communities and communities of color, but we fail to address those who do not really have a “community.” The definition of “community” is important when discussing this issue. A community is a group of people living in the same place. But those who are unhoused are not located in one single location, rather they are all over the world, making it difficult to address this environmental justice issue. The ability to organize is difficult for those experiencing homelessness because they do not have a “community” by the sense of the definition. How do you organize for a group that is so widespread? Additionally, they do not have the resources often needed to fight for their rights to a clean environment.
The effects of pollution can be catastrophic to communities. Those who are unhoused are at a greater risk of being exposed to pollution and environmental hazards. Homelessness has increasingly been regulated and even criminalized by the banning camping in safe places and “move-along” orders. This has led people to be exposed to even more hazards by forcing them to move into risky areas in terms of violence and crime, water and soil contamination, noise pollution, pests and rodents, and natural disasters. One of the biggest environmental risks, though, is air pollution and particulate matter like dust and debris. Health effects of air pollution and particulate matter include, premature death, heart attacks, chronic diseases, respiratory conditions, and lung disease.
In some places those experiencing homelessness are viewed as environmental hazards for nearby communities. Some of the byproducts that arise from those who are homeless are trash, human waste, bodily fluids, needles, and fires. Urban development is in part increasing homelessness through increasing housing costs and gentrification. It is therefore, in part, feeding into environmental injustice. With COVID-19 comes more problems for the unhoused. Many do not have access to masks and cannot properly social-distance making their potential for exposure high.
The exposure to pollution, homeless hazard, urban development, and COVID-19 issues could possibly be mitigated by providing housing. For example, vacant housing and empty hotels could be allocated for those who are homeless to quarantine or for housing in general.
In Austin, Texas there are about 2,506 people experiencing homelessness, with 1,574 being unsheltered. Recently, Austin cut its police department funding by one-third through the reorganization of a number duties out of police oversight. Some of the money saved from this reorganization could potentially be used to provide the housing previously mentioned. This is just one possible solution to get environmental justice for those who are homeless.
By: Julia Weil, Organizing Intern
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have increasingly seen many social, economic, and environmental injustices in our society highlighted. One injustice that encapsulates all three is being demonstrated by the increasing pattern of oil and gas companies, struggling as the demand for their product decreases, paying out their executives just before filing for bankruptcy, making the rich richer, and exposing at-risk populations to higher quantities of dangerous chemicals than ever.
This practice of paying executives vast sums of money before going bankrupt is known as a “golden parachute.” One of these companies is Chesapeake, one of the first companies to popularize hydrofracking. Just before filing for bankruptcy, $25 million was given to 21 employees that ranked high in the company’s hierarchy in the form of “retention payments,” though typically this type of payment is intended to keep employees at the company for a designated amount of time.
Other recent examples of this practice have occurred with Whiting Petroleum, a shale drilling company that was able to secure $15 million for its top executives days before the bankruptcy filing, and Diamond offshore drilling, a company that was granted $9.1 million through a COVID-19 stimulus check, and that filed for bankruptcy just one month later.
This is not only an economic injustice, but, as they are frequently closely associated, it is also blatant environmental injustice. The workers are left out of the equation, and when the majority of the remaining money is funneled directly into the pockets of the most powerful company members, the financial planning frequently doesn’t account for the cost of well-closing — money isn’t left over to properly seal the wells.
When this happens, the already harmful fracking wells will leak greater quantities of methane and contaminated water. This is the case for MDC energy, who also paid their executives $8.5 million before filing for bankruptcy. One estimate showed that cleaning up, closing the wells and halting the consistent methane leakage for this particular company would cost $40 million; an amount which, after paying the executives, did not remain.
Though all of the instances discussed here happened more recently, in 2016, there was an estimation of 3.2 million orphaned (or inactive) oil and gas wells in the US, and over 2 million of these were not properly sealed. Although hydrofracking wells also leak while in operation, when they’re out of use and not monitored, they release even greater amounts of the toxic chemicals. Contaminated water from hydrofracking can contain benzene, toluene, arsenic, manganese, barium and strontium, many of which are carcinogenic.
Methane leakage is additionally dangerous because of its warming capabilities – it is an especially potent greenhouse gas; though it doesn’t last as long as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it is 25 times stronger of a warming agent. Additionally, atmospheric methane concentrations have more than doubled in the last couple centuries – the orphaned fracking wells will significantly accelerate this problem.
Since this bankruptcy boom is expected to continue – one estimate expects 250 oil and gas companies to file for bankruptcy protection before the end of next year – this puts more and more communities at an increased risk of the effects associated with methane and other toxic chemicals. Waste from gas and oil companies already disproportionately impacts Black and low income communities; this phenomenon further worsens this instance of environmental racism and injustice, while those who should be held responsible profit.
By: Shaina Smith, Organizing Intern
The relationship between Native Americans and the United States has always involved genocide and theft. An estimated 5 to 15 million indigenous people already inhabited the land when European settlers first discovered America. By the late 1800s, only 237 thousand people remained. During this period of colonization, the United States took more than 1.5 billion acres of land from Native Americans. To force people onto land and then to contaminate the air, soil, and water of that land is environmental genocide. Environmental genocide by the United States government and corporate polluters is done through both legal and nonlegal methods.
The concept of environmental justice was created to acknowledge the disproportionate burden marginalized communities face from corporate polluters. Government and industry often ignore indigenous people, making it all the more important that they have a critical voice in the environmental justice movement.
Vi Waghiyi of Alaska Community Actions on Toxins (ACAT) faces what she calls “environmental violence” in her community because of contamination from a former US military base at Northeast Cape on St. Lawrence Island. Vi is a Yupik grandmother from Savoonga, a native village in St. Lawrence. Once abandoned in the early 1970s, the military left behind at least 220,000 gallons of spilt fuel, heavy metals, asbestos, solvents, and PCBs known to cause cancer. These pollutants contaminate the soil and groundwater, which especially harms the nearby Yupik community of Savoonga who have for generations relied on traditional subsistence agriculture. A 2002 study found that Native people who hunt and fish near Northeast Cape have almost 10 times as many PCBs in their blood compared to the average American. Many residents suffer from PCB-associated health problems, such as cancer, low birth weight, and miscarriages.
Rebecca Jim of Local Environmental Action Demanded (LEAD) Agency Inc, lives in a Cherokee community plagued by environmental and economic exploitation from the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Over many years, US authorities forced tribes onto land in Northeast Oklahoma in Ottawa County. Once it was discovered the land was rich in lead and zinc, the BIA illegitimately leased land for mining and extraction starting in the early 1900s. The BIA claimed Native people were incompetent to manage their wealth and kept many from seeing their earnings. Though the mines were no longer in production, they contained debris contaminated with heavy metals. The BIA encouraged tribal land owners to make use of the waste, resulting in poison being spread throughout the county. By 1994 tests had found that 35% of children in the area had high concentration of lead in their blood. Prolonged lead exposure can damage the immune system, nervous system, blood system and kidneys. It can also potentially cause birth defects, learning disabilities, decreased mental ability, and reduced growth in children.
From the moment the first European settlers reached America, indigenous people have suffered physical and cultural genocide. Politicians who claim to empathize with indegenous people are still not doing enough to stop people from being poisoned. Kaniela Ing, a Native Hawaiian and former State Representative, noted during his time in office how even progressive politicians are pulled to the right by corporate lobbyists. “A system that relies on appealing to the good nature of politicians is never going to work,” Kaniela observed. “We never really learned how to do democracy right.” At best this violence results from negligence and inaction, and at worst it’s no more than the continuation of centuries of genocide. It’s imperative that the US government listen to Native voices, show greater urgency in clean-up efforts, and compensate those who’ve been harmed.