Since the inception of the environmental justice movement in the late 1980s, studies have been conducted at national, regional, state, and local levels. However, environmental justice within the state of Illinois is largely unresearched. This article attempts to fill this gap by examining whether the presence of a Superfund site affects the surrounding communities in the state of Illinois with the intent to aid future siting decisions of hazardous sites and the amelioration of current sites. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was used to create buffer zones of one-, two-, and five-miles surrounding current Illinois Superfund sites. We then used these neighborhoods of the same size to analyze the current economic and racial demographics of Illinois communities that contain Superfund sites. Specifically, variables considered as indicators of environmental injustice were analyzed, including race, median household income, and homeownership. Our results support prior research that suggested race, rather than class, was the major indicator of environmental inequality. Additionally, as the distance from the Superfund site increases, the number of communities with socio-demographic disparities decreases. Our conclusions provide important theoretical implications for environmental justice research by distinguishing the racial factor from other socioeconomic factors (e.g., income and homeownership) and by identifying the socio-demographic characteristics associated with distance from a Superfund site.

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Many rodent species are currently under conservation threat. However, population monitoring and status assessment are extremely challenging because of small body size, low abundance and elusive behavior of rodents. Furthermore, invasive methods of capture and tissue collection commonly used to address such studies can induce an unacceptable amount of stress to sensitive species. As a result, noninvasive techniques have become more widely used, but relatively few studies have applied noninvasive techniques to rodents. Here we present two noninvasive alternatives for the collection of DNA from Franklin's ground squirrels (Poliocitellus franklinii). We compared the quantity, purity and degradation of DNA extracted from plucked hair and fecal pellets to tail snip tissues. We recovered more DNA from tail snips than either plucked hair or fecal pellets. Both hair and fecal pellets recovered DNA with purity ratios similar to tail snips. As expected, DNA recovered from fecal pellets exhibited a high degree of degradation compared to hair and tail tissues. Careful planning of field and laboratory protocols is therefore necessary to compensate for challenges associated with noninvasive tissue types. While there is no tissue that can universally be applied to all research projects, both hair and feces are viable alternatives to traditional invasive procedures and can be applied to threatened and endangered rodent species.