Communication for the Community

By: Judith Eppele, Community Organizing Intern Growing up in a household with divorced parents, I quickly realized how important communication was for creating and sustaining strong relationships. This notion is the backbone of CHEJ, of which I’ve experienced firsthand through my time as an intern. Since I’m a community organizing intern specifically, I’ve found that having good communication with the different community groups we work with is incredibly important. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that maintaining this good communication is one of the most important parts

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Social Determinants Meet Environmental Health

By: Evelyn Zavala, Science Intern I was drawn to working with CHEJ because of their work with communities across the United States of diverse backgrounds, socio-economic status, ethnicities, geographical locations, and education. CHEJ is where the community meets science, environment, health, and justice. Recently we have seen how vital this relationship really is. While the snowstorms of 2021 are seen across the country, Texas has been hit hard. Within Texas, minority and marginalized communities were hit even worse.  Social Determinants of Health are described as the conditions in the environment

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The Intersection Between Tribal Sovereignty and Environmental Justice

By: Kristen Millstein, Communications Intern In the summer of 2016, I traveled to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I was in high school and had not spent significant time outside my California bubble. Pine Ridge was like a different world. While there, I learned from tribal leaders about the continual violation of their sovereignty and the trauma caused by a history of massacres and loss of sacred land. At the time, I looked at these atrocities through the lens of colonization. It has only been since I joined

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A new study finds air pollution from fossil fuels causes 20% of premature deaths worldwide

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

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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

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Inequity in the Distribution of Covid-19 Vaccine

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

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Blog Roll
Greenpeace’s The Witness
Grist
Groovy Green
Healthy Child Healthy World
Inside Prevention
It’s Getting Hot in Here
Moms Rising
Pharos
Safe Mama
Safer Chemicals Healthy Families
The Soft Landing
Treehugger
Zero Waste World