Download or read book Environmental Justice And Public Health written by Rafeal Mechlore and published by Rose Publishing (CA). This book was released on 2023-09-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Environmental Justice and Public Health" is a compelling and intertwined field that addresses the intersection of environmental concerns and their profound impact on human well-being. It recognizes that environmental issues are not evenly distributed across society and that marginalized communities often bear a disproportionate burden of environmental hazards. This dynamic field of study and advocacy seeks to rectify these disparities, ensuring that all individuals, regardless of their socio-economic background or demographic, have equal access to a clean and healthy environment. At its core, environmental justice and public health are intimately connected, as the environment in which people live, work, and play has a profound influence on their health outcomes. Here's a closer look at the key aspects of this critical intersection: Environmental Hazards: Many communities, particularly those marginalized or disadvantaged, face a higher prevalence of environmental hazards such as air and water pollution, toxic waste sites, and industrial facilities. These hazards can lead to a range of health issues, including respiratory diseases, cancer, and developmental problems, affecting the overall well-being of individuals in these areas. Health Disparities: Environmental injustice often leads to health disparities, where certain populations experience higher rates of illness and shorter life expectancies due to their exposure to environmental hazards. This exacerbates existing inequalities in healthcare access and outcomes. Access to Resources: Environmental justice aims to ensure that all communities have equitable access to clean air, clean water, green spaces, and other environmental resources that promote good health. This includes addressing issues like food deserts, where disadvantaged neighborhoods lack access to fresh and nutritious food. Community Empowerment: Environmental justice advocates work to empower communities to participate in decision-making processes regarding their environment. This includes providing them with the tools and knowledge needed to advocate for policies and practices that protect their health and environment. Policy and Advocacy: The field of environmental justice and public health relies on policy initiatives and advocacy efforts to bring about change. These efforts often include pushing for stricter environmental regulations, community-based research, and legal actions against polluters. Environmental Racism: Environmental justice also sheds light on the phenomenon of environmental racism, where minority and low-income communities face a disproportionate burden of pollution and environmental hazards. Addressing this issue is central to achieving equitable public health outcomes. Global Impact: While many environmental justice discussions focus on local or national issues, it's important to recognize that environmental problems often have global implications. Climate change, for example, affects communities worldwide and requires collective efforts to mitigate its impact on public health. Health Equity: Ultimately, the goal of environmental justice and public health is to promote health equity. This means that everyone, regardless of their background, should have the same opportunities to lead a healthy life, free from the adverse effects of environmental hazards. Environmental justice and public health represent a powerful partnership between environmental stewardship and social justice. It recognizes that the health and well-being of individuals and communities are deeply intertwined with the health of the planet. By addressing environmental inequalities and advocating for policies that prioritize public health, this field contributes to a more equitable and sustainable future for all.
Download or read book Toward Environmental Justice written by Committee on Environmental Justice and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1999-03-11 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Driven by community-based organizations and supported by a growing body of literature, the environmental justice movement contends that poor and minority populations are burdened with more than their share of toxic waste, pesticide runoff, and other hazardous byproducts of our modern economic life. Is environmental degradation worse in poor and minority communities? Do these communities suffer more adverse health effects as a result? The committee addresses these questions and explores how current fragmentation in health policy could be replaced with greater coordination among federal, state, and local parties. The book is highlighted with case studies from five locations where the committee traveled to hear citizen and researcher testimony. It offers detailed examinations in these areas: Identifying environmental hazards and assessing risk for populations of varying ethnic, social, and economic backgrounds, and the need for methodologies that uniquely suit the populations at risk. Identifying basic, clinical, and occupational research needs and meeting challenges to research on minorities. Expanding environmental education from an ecological focus to a public health focus for all levels of health professionals. Legal and ethical aspects of environmental health issues. The book makes recommendations to decisionmakers in the areas of public health, research, and education of health professionals and outlines health policy considerations.
Download or read book Environmental Health written by Natalie Sampson, PhD, MPH and published by Springer Publishing Company. This book was released on 2024-08-29 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental Health: Foundations for Public Health brings together diverse voices and perspectives to examine our most pressing public health issues today. This foundational textbook introduces readers to a wide range of the knowledge, skills, data, and resources needed to ensure environmental health at local and global levels. Whether students are heading into careers in governmental public health, research, advocacy, or other sectors, this textbook covers topics that relate to us all: climate change, energy, air, water, food, waste, and much more. Designed for graduates and advanced undergraduates, this textbook presents the field's basic concepts, related policies, and scientific tools in an accessible way. Readers learn about regulatory science, how environmental health science informs environmental protections, and where gaps remain, particularly in promoting environmental justice. Each chapter examines ways that structural racism and discrimination have shaped environmental health inequities that persist today. Readers can dig deeper to examine how environmental health and justice can be achieved in our communities, workplaces, households, and other built and social environments, as well as our healthcare systems. Drawing on countless historic and contemporary case studies, Environmental Health: Foundations for Public Health facilitates a learning experience that inspires students to reimagine the foundations of environmental health for all. Key Features: Provides a variety of learning tools, including discussion questions and learning activities, related to engagement, advocacy, and the exploration of environmental health in our daily lives Presents "In Other Words" boxes to reframe key or complex concepts and promote accessibility Humanizes the realities of pressing environmental health and justice concerns Includes access to a five-episode companion podcast series—The PFAS Chronicles—on the challenges and solutions of preventing and combating per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or "forever chemicals" Qualified instructors have access to expanded Instructor Resources featuring chapter PowerPoint slides, a Test Bank, a Sample Syllabus, and an Instructor Manual to supplement students' dynamic learning and interaction with the text
Download or read book Dumping In Dixie written by Robert D. Bullard and published by Avalon Publishing - (Westview Press). This book was released on 2008-03-31 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To be poor, working-class, or a person of color in the United States often means bearing a disproportionate share of the country’s environmental problems. Starting with the premise that all Americans have a basic right to live in a healthy environment, Dumping in Dixie chronicles the efforts of five African American communities, empowered by the civil rights movement, to link environmentalism with issues of social justice. In the third edition, Bullard speaks to us from the front lines of the environmental justice movement about new developments in environmental racism, different organizing strategies, and success stories in the struggle for environmental equity.
Download or read book Environmental Justice written by Barry E. Hill and published by Environmental Law Institute. This book was released on 2009 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental risks and harms affect certain geographic areas and populations more than others. The environmental justice movement is aimed at having the public and private sectors address this disproportionate burden of risk and exposure to pollution in minority and/or low-income communities, and for those communities to be engaged in the decision-making processes. Environmental Justice provides an overview of this defining problem and explores the growth of the environmental justice movement. It analyzes the complex mixture of environmental laws and civil rights legal theories adopted in environmental justice litigation. Teachers will have online access to the more than 100 page Teachers Manual.
Download or read book Advancing Environmental Justice Through Community based Participatory Research written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pesticide Drift and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice written by Jill Lindsey Harrison and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-07-29 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of political conflicts over pesticide drift and the differing conceptions of justice held by industry, regulators, and activists. The widespread but virtually invisible problem of pesticide drift—the airborne movement of agricultural pesticides into residential areas—has fueled grassroots activism from Maine to Hawaii. Pesticide drift accidents have terrified and sickened many living in the country's most marginalized and vulnerable communities. In this book, Jill Lindsey Harrison considers political conflicts over pesticide drift in California, using them to illuminate the broader problem and its potential solutions. The fact that pesticide pollution and illnesses associated with it disproportionately affect the poor and the powerless raises questions of environmental justice (and political injustice). Despite California's impressive record of environmental protection, massive pesticide regulatory apparatus, and booming organic farming industry, pesticide-related accidents and illnesses continue unabated. To unpack this conundrum, Harrison examines the conceptions of justice that increasingly shape environmental politics and finds that California's agricultural industry, regulators, and pesticide drift activists hold different, and conflicting, notions of what justice looks like. Drawing on her own extensive ethnographic research as well as in-depth interviews with regulators, activists, scientists, and public health practitioners, Harrison examines the ways industry, regulatory agencies, and different kinds of activists address pesticide drift, connecting their efforts to communitarian and libertarian conceptions of justice. The approach taken by pesticide drift activists, she finds, not only critiques theories of justice undergirding mainstream sustainable-agriculture activism, but also offers an entirely new notion of what justice means. To solve seemingly intractable environmental problems such as pesticide drift, Harrison argues, we need a different kind of environmental justice. She proposes the precautionary principle as a framework for effectively and justly addressing environmental inequities in the everyday work of environmental regulatory institutions.
Download or read book Environmental Justice and the Rights of Unborn and Future Generations written by Laura Westra and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-04 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The traditional concept of social justice is increasingly being challenged by the notion of a humankind that spans current and future generations. This book, with a foreword by Roger Brownsword, is the first systematic examination of how the rights of the unborn and future generations are handled in common law and under international legal instruments. It provides comprehensive coverage of the arguments over international legal instruments, key legal cases and examples including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, industrial disasters, clean water provision, diet, HIV/AIDS, environmental racism and climate change. Also covered are international agreements and objectives as diverse as the Kyoto Protocol, the Millennium Development Goals and international trade. The result is the most controversial and thorough examination to date of the subject and the enormous ramifications and challenges it poses to every aspect of international and domestic environmental, human rights, trade and public health law and policy.
Download or read book Environmental Justice and Resiliency in an Age of Uncertainty written by Celeste Murphy-Greene and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-06-15 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the issue of environmental justice across 11short chapters, with the aim of creating a resilient society. Starting with a history of the environmental justice movement, the book then moves on to focus on various current environmental issues, analyzing how these issues impact low-income and minority communities. Topics covered include smart cities and environmental justice, climate change and health equity, the Flint Water Crisis, coastal resilience, emergency management, energy justice, procurement and contract management, public works projects, and the impact of COVID-19. Each chapter provides a unique perspective on the issues covered, offering practical strategies to create a more resilient society that can be applied by practitioners in the field. Environmental Justice and Resiliency in an Age of Uncertainty will be of interest to upper level undergraduate and graduate students studying race relations, environmental politics and policy, sustainability, and social justice. It will also appeal to practitioners working at all levels of government, and anyone with an interest in environmental issues, racial justice, and the construction of resilient communities.
Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
Download or read book The Promise and Peril of Environmental Justice written by Christopher H. Foreman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are we environmentally victimizing, perhaps even poisoning, our minority and low-income citizens? Proponents of "environmental justice" assert that environmental decisionmaking pays insufficient heed to the interests of those citizens, disproportionately burdens their neighborhoods with hazardous toxins, and perpetuates an insidious "environmental racism." In the first book-length critique of environmental justice advocacy, Christopher Foreman argues that it has cleared significant political hurdles but displays substantial limitations and drawbacks. Activism has yielded a presidential executive order, management reforms at the Environmental Protection Agency, and numerous local political victories. Yet the environmental justice movement is structurally and ideologically unable to generate a focused policy agenda. The movement refuses to confront the need for environmental priorities and trade-offs, politically inconvenient facts about environmental health risks, and the limits of an environmental approach to social justice. Ironically, environmental justice advocacy may also threaten the very constituencies it aspires to serve--distracting attention from the many significant health hazards challenging minority and disadvantaged populations. Foreman recommends specific institutional reforms intended to recast the national dialogue about the stakes of these populations in environmental protection.
Download or read book Environmental Health Hazards and Social Justice written by Florence Margai and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides geographic perspectives and approaches for use in assessing the distribution of environmental health hazards and disease outcomes among disadvantaged population groups. Estimates suggest that about 40 per cent of the global burden of disease is attributable to exposures to biological and chemical pathogens in the physical environment. And with today's rapid rate of globalization, and these hazardous health effects are likely to increase, with low income and underrepresented communities facing even greater risks. In many places around the world, marginalized communities unwillingly serve as hosts of noxious facilities such as chemical industrial plants, extractive facilities (oil and mining) and other destructive land use activities. Others are being used as illegal dumping grounds for hazardous materials and electronic wastes resulting in air, soil and groundwater contamination. The book informs readers about the geography and emergent health risks that accompany the location of these hazards, with emphasis on vulnerable population groups. The approach is applications-oriented, illustrating the use of health data and geographic approaches to uncover the root causes, contextual factors and processes that produce contaminated environments. Case studies are drawn from the author's research in the United States and Africa, along with a literature review of related studies completed in Europe, Asia and South America. This comparative approach allows readers to better understand the manifestation of environmental hazards and inequities at different spatial scales with localized disparities evident in both developed and developing countries.
Download or read book Bridging Silos written by Katrina Smith Korfmacher and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How communities can collaborate across systems and sectors to address environmental health disparities; with case studies from Rochester, New York; Duluth, Minnesota; and Southern California. Low-income and marginalized urban communities often suffer disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards, leaving residents vulnerable to associated health problems. Community groups, academics, environmental justice advocates, government agencies, and others have worked to address these issues, building coalitions at the local level to change the policies and systems that create environmental health inequities. In Bridging Silos, Katrina Smith Korfmacher examines ways that communities can collaborate across systems and sectors to address environmental health disparities, with in-depth studies of three efforts to address long-standing environmental health issues: childhood lead poisoning in Rochester, New York; unhealthy built environments in Duluth, Minnesota; and pollution related to commercial ports and international trade in Southern California. All three efforts were locally initiated, driven by local stakeholders, and each addressed issues long known to the community by reframing an old problem in a new way. These local efforts leveraged resources to impact community change by focusing on inequities in environmental health, bringing diverse kinds of knowledge to bear, and forging new connections among existing community, academic, and government groups. Korfmacher explains how the once integrated environmental and public health management systems had become separated into self-contained “silos,” and compares current efforts to bridge these separations to the development of ecosystem management in the 1990s. Community groups, government agencies, academic institutions, and private institutions each have a role to play, but collaborating effectively requires stakeholders to appreciate their partners' diverse incentives, capacities, and constraints.
Download or read book Environmental Justice and Community Based Health Model Discussion and Recommendations Report written by U.s. Environmental Protection Agency National Environmental Justice Advisory Council and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2001-02-28 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: EPA, through its Office of Environmental Justice, asked the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council to provide advice and recommendations on the following questions: (1) What strategies and areas of research should be pursued to achieve more effective, integrated community-based health assessment, intervention, and prevention efforts?; (2) How should these strategies be developed, implemented and evaluated so as to ensure substantial participation, integration and collaboration among federal agencies, in partnership with: impacted communities; public health, medical and environmental professionals; academic institutions; state, tribal and local governments; and the private sector?; (3) How can consideration of socioeconomic status and cultural factors: (a) contribute to health disparities and cumulative and disproportionate environmental effects; and (b) be incorporated into community health assessments? This report reflects the advice and recommendations that resulted from pre-meeting preparation and on-site discussions and public comments. It sets forth a number of policy recommendations for consideration by EPA and other federal, state and local agencies to consider.
Download or read book Ground Truths written by Chad Raphael and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-01-09 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. This is the first book devoted entirely to summarizing the body of community-engaged research on environmental justice, how we can conduct more of it, and how we can do it better. It shows how community-engaged research makes unique contributions to environmental justice for Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities by centering local knowledge, building truth from the ground up, producing actionable data that can influence decisions, and transforming researchers’ relationships to communities for equity and mutual benefit. The book offers a critical synthesis of relevant research in many fields, outlines the main steps in conducting community-engaged research, evaluates the major research methods used, suggests new directions, and addresses overcoming institutional barriers to scholarship in academia. The coauthors employ an original framework that shows how community-engaged research and environmental justice align, which links research on the many topics treated in the chapters—from public health, urban planning, and conservation to law and policy, community economic development, and food justice and sovereignty.
Download or read book Noxious New York written by Julie Sze and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-11-22 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the culture, politics, and history of the movement for environmental justice in New York City, tracking activism in four neighborhoods on issues of public health, garbage, and energy systems in the context of privatization, deregulation, and globalization. Racial minority and low-income communities often suffer disproportionate effects of urban environmental problems. Environmental justice advocates argue that these communities are on the front lines of environmental and health risks. In Noxious New York, Julie Sze analyzes the culture, politics, and history of environmental justice activism in New York City within the larger context of privatization, deregulation, and globalization. She tracks urban planning and environmental health activism in four gritty New York neighborhoods: Brooklyn's Sunset Park and Williamsburg sections, West Harlem, and the South Bronx. In these communities, activism flourished in the 1980s and 1990s in response to economic decay and a concentration of noxious incinerators, solid waste transfer stations, and power plants. Sze describes the emergence of local campaigns organized around issues of asthma, garbage, and energy systems, and how, in each neighborhood, activists framed their arguments in the vocabulary of environmental justice. Sze shows that the linkage of planning and public health in New York City goes back to the nineteenth century's sanitation movement, and she looks at the city's history of garbage, sewage, and sludge management. She analyzes the influence of race, family, and gender politics on asthma activism and examines community activists' responses to garbage privatization and energy deregulation. Finally, she looks at how activist groups have begun to shift from fighting particular siting and land use decisions to engaging in a larger process of community planning and community-based research projects. Drawing extensively on fieldwork and interviews with community members and activists, Sze illuminates the complex mix of local and global issues that fuels environmental justice activism.
Download or read book Taking Action Saving Lives written by Kristin Shrader-Frechette and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-19 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States alone, industrial and agricultural toxins account for about 60,000 avoidable cancer deaths annually. Pollution-related health costs to Americans are similarly staggering: $13 billion a year from asthma, $351 billion from cardiovascular disease, and $240 billion from occupational disease and injury. Most troubling, children, the poor, and minorities bear the brunt of these health tragedies. Why, asks Kristin Shrader-Frechette, has the government failed to protect us, and what can we do about it? In this book, at once brilliant and accessible, Shrader-Frechette reveals how politicians, campaign contributors, and lobbyists--and their power over media, advertising, and public relations--have conspired to cover up environmental disease and death. She also shows how science and regulators themselves are frequently "captured" by well-funded polluters and special interests. But most important, the author puts both the blame--and the solution--on the shoulders of ordinary citizens. She argues that everyone, especially in a democracy, has a duty to help prevent avoidable environmental deaths, to remain informed about, and involved in, public-health and environmental decision-making. Toward this end, she outlines specific, concrete ways in which people can contribute to life-saving reforms, many of them building on recommendations of the American Public Health Association. As disturbing as it is, Shrader-Frechette's message is ultimately hopeful. Calling for a new "democratic revolution," she reminds us that while only a fraction of the early colonists supported the American Revolution, that tiny group managed to change the world. Her book embodies the conviction that we can do the same for environmental health, particularly if citizens become the change they seek. "Timely, accessible, and written with enviable clarity and passion. A distinguished philosopher sounds an ethical call to arms to prevent illness and death from pollution." --Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard University "Influential and impressive. A must-read." --Nicholas A. Ashford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "By one of America's foremost philosophers and public intellectuals; immensely readable, courageous, often startling, insightful." --Richard Hiskes, University of Connecticut "Like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring--brilliant, brave." --Sylvia Hood Washington, University of Illinois, Chicago "A blistering account of how advocacy must be brought to bear on issues of justice and public health." -- Jeffrey Kahn, University of Minnesota "No other author can so forcefully bring together ethical analysis, government policy, and environmental science. Outstanding." --Colleen Moore, University of Wisconsin
