Center for Health, Environment & Justice
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Put the Super back into Superfund

It has been almost 40 years since the nation heard the cries for help from Love Canal, a school and neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York built on a toxic dump filled with 21,000 tons of chemical waste. Children were sick, parents were scared and families lost their homes. I know, because my children, my family and my home were among them. The Love Canal crisis created a public awareness and scientific understanding that the chemicals people are exposed to in their everyday environment can cause serious harm to their

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July 27, 2017

A Vicious Cycle of Poison and Poverty

We in the wealthiest country in the world should feel ashamed. America takes our most vulnerable families – poor or working poor – and houses them next to polluting industries, poisons their children and now wants to take away their access to health care. This vicious cycle of poison and poverty leads young men and women to end up sick, dead or in prisons. Polluters Don’t Pay, We Do Many low-income families only find housing near polluting facilities or on contaminated lands. There are many reasons for this: for many years,

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June 29, 2017

Environmental Justice and Incarceration

Environmental Justice is a system of thought which asserts that all people have a right to equal environmental hazard protection and access to the decision-making process upon which their welfare hinges. Moreover, this paradigm recognizes that marginalized groups are, by far, the most affected by environmental harms. Environmental Justice and Incarceration my not seem to have much in common at first glance, however, over a thousand prisons across America are home to shocking toxic hazards. Independent cartographer Paige Williams claims that at least 589 federal and state prisons are located within three miles of

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June 13, 2017

An Open Letter From Pittsburgh to the President on Paris Climate Pullout

Last week, President Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Here’s what Pittsburgh had to say about it: “Mr. President, when you took our country out of the global agreement to stop climate change, you said you  “represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” As a proud native of western Pennsylvania, I strongly disagree. You do not represent Pittsburgh. Our people overwhelmingly rejected you at the ballot box, and we have seen your brand of charlatanism before. For generations, glorified highwaymen like you have come to

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June 8, 2017

Climate Scientists to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt: Not so Fast

Climate scientists are fighting back. They had heard enough when EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt claimed in written Senate comments following his confirmation hearing as administrator of EPA that “over the past two decades satellite data indicates there has been a leveling off of warming.” They decided to respond, not with reactionary rhetoric, but with science, with facts. A team of scientists led by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, CA and from MIT in Cambridge, MA examined temperature data from three satellite data sets going back to

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June 1, 2017

Superfund Task Force Headed by Bank Chairman – Cuts in Budget- Appointing Lawyer Who Represented Polluters to EPA Enforcement

What a nightmare. EPA administrator Scott Pruitt promised to restore Superfund and the EPA’ s land and water cleanup efforts “to their rightful place at the center of the agency’s core mission.”  He made this announcement in April while visiting a site in Indiana where hundreds of families must relocate because it is unsafe to live there. When I heard the announcement, I was excited. Unfortunately, soon afterwards his action spoke louder. Pruitt is not being honest. But judge for yourself. On May 12th Susan Bodine was nominated to be

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May 24, 2017
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