Center for Health, Environment & Justice
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Zika Virus, Environmental Justice, and Unforced Errors

By Kaley Beins Over the past few months the mosquito-borne Zika virus has been dominating global health headlines, especially as researchers began linking it to microcephaly, a birth defect where babies are born with abnormally small heads and potential brain damage. Though Zika virus itself has fairly mild symptoms and is sometimes even asymptomatic, its connection to microcephaly created pandemonium. As the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began issuing travel warnings and El Salvador recommended that women not get pregnant until the virus is controlled (estimated to take

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February 19, 2016

Knock Knock Is Anyone Home at EPA?

EPA has gone dark. McCarthy is awaiting the end of her term and no one is protecting the American citizens or our environment. It is outrageous that Administrator Gina McCarthy refuses to acknowledge the citizens living near the Bridgeton/West Lake Superfund site. What is wrong with her? Just Moms STL wrote a letter requesting a meeting in May of 2015 and never even received an acknowledgement that they asked for a meeting. They traveled to Washington, DC anyway in hopes of seeing McCarthy after their federal delegation of senators and

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February 15, 2016

National Coalition fights Burning of Military Waste

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”] Community members in Colfax, Louisiana are dealing with an unconventional form of potential environmental contamination – outfall from the open air burning of hazardous explosive waste. The town of Colfax is the site of a commercial facility called Clean Harbors, which stores and treats energetic/reactive waste, whether it is solid, sludge or liquid. From fireworks to bulk high explosives to rocket motors, the facility is a

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February 4, 2016

Environmental Injustice in the Navajo Nation

By Dylan Lenzen Experiencing the environmental injustice associated with the fossil fuel industry is not exclusive to minority and low-income neighborhoods within America’s largest cities. The same toxic living conditions can also be found on America’s remote and impoverished Native American reservations. Here, the health of individuals and communities that inhabit these regions subsidize the development of cheap electricity and water in surrounding cities that disconnected from their suffering. An example of this remote environmental injustice can be found on the Navajo reservation in the Southwestern U.S. This sprawling reservation

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January 29, 2016

Super-Polluters Responsible for Most Environmental Health Risks

Environmental justice is a familiar concept to the communities that CHEJ works with, who experience racial and socioeconomic disparities in health as a part of daily life. Among the general public, this concept is not always understood. If there is any positive associated with the tragic water contamination in Flint, MI, it is that environmental injustices may continue to gain more research attention and spotlight in the national media as a result. Today, EJ research was front-page news. Just a few days ago, researchers with the Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center in

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January 27, 2016

People or Pollution – Which Came First?

Researchers at the University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment published a paper last month that examines an important question about environmental disparities: Which came first – The people or the pollution? More specifically, are present-day disparities around hazardous sites the result of a pattern of placing hazardous waste sites, polluting industrial facilities, and other locally unwanted land uses disproportionately where poor people and people of color live? Or are they the result of demographic changes that occur after the facilities have been sited? Their answer published in

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January 25, 2016
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