Social Justice Equity | Air Pollution

"The U.S. EPA defines environmental justice as the "fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies. Fair treatment means that no group of people, including racial, ethnic, or socio-economic groups should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal programs and policies."

"Championed primarily by African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and Pacific Islanders and Native Americans, the environmental justice movement addresses a statistical fact: people who live, work and play in America's most polluted environments are commonly people of color and the poor."

(Skelton & Miller, NRDC).

It's a sad fact: people of low socioeconomic status or of minority ethnicities are exposed to more air pollution than white, middle-class Americans. They also suffer from more pollution-related health problems. Families in poverty may not have the financial means to relocate. Because minorities do not have equal access to clean air, air pollution is an issue of social justice. A large population of the student body at Oceanside High School is either impoverished or a minority. Because these groups are more at risk to be negatively impacted by environmental hazards, there is a need to educate the community about air pollution and how to prevent it.

Statistics:

Following the Warren County Protests (North Carolina), a study in 1983 revealed that three-quarters of the hazardous waste landfill sites in eight southeastern states were located in primarily poor, African-American and Latino communities (The General Accounting Office, 1983).
A study in 1987 by the Commission for Racial Justice found a correlation between correlate waste facility sites and demographic characteristics. Race was found to be the most potent variable in predicting where these facilities were located--more powerful than poverty, land values, and home ownership.
A study in 2002 reported that 71% of African Americans lived in areas that violated air pollution standards; whereas, only 58% of the white population did (the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples. “Air of Injustice”).
African Americans and Latino are almost three times more likely than whites to die from asthma, the most common ailment caused by air pollution.
In the heavily populated South Coast air basin of the Los Angeles area, it is estimated that over 71 percent of African Americans and 50 percent of Latinos reside in areas with the most polluted air, while only 34 percent of whites live in highly polluted areas.
According to National Argonne Laboratory researchers, 57 percent of whites, 65 percent of African Americans, and 80 percent of Hispanics live in 437 counties with substandard air quality.
A 2000 study by The Morning News and the University of Texas-Dallas found that some 870,000 of the 1.9 million (46 percent) housing units for the poor, mostly minorities, sit within about a mile of factories that reported toxic emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Resources:
http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/PovpolEj.html
http://www.nrdc.org/ej/history/hej.asp
www.epa.gov

Social Justice