Environmental Justice Organizing for Environmental Health: Case Study on Asthma and Diesel Exhaust in Roxbury, Massachusetts

Abstract

This article examines how environmental health problems have been addressed from an environmental justice perspective in a low-income community of color in Boston. The disparate impact of environmentally related diseases on low-income people and people of color are the result of deeply rooted racial and class injustices. The authors examine a case study of youth who, out of concern about high asthma rates, organized to clean up diesel exhaust from transit buses. In this case, scientific uncertainty about multiple, dispersed causes demanded a problem frame broader than one that identifies and addresses a single cause. Environmental justice expands the frame to ask, Why are there so many risk factors? What rights do we have to a healthy environment? and Who decides what is to be done? The environmental justice approach goes beyond treating individuals to changing the underlying environmental conditions causing these illnesses.

Community-Based Research Partnerships: Challenges and Opportunities

“…This in turn paved the way for a variety of policy and community education actions and outcomes. 19 Although having a community partner such as ACE identify an issue and catalyze a research partnership may be the ideal, it is often the privileged outside researcher who initiates a CBPR project. In these instances too, however, a genuine commitment to high-level community involvement in issue selection, with NGOs and formal and informal community leaders engaged as equal partners, can help ensure that the research topic decided upon really is of major concern to the local population.…”

Between activism and science: grassroots concepts for sustainability coined by Environmental Justice Organizations

“…EJOs appeal to transit justice or transport justice -that is, the right to well-connected, affordable, and clean transit systems in cities Loh and Eng, 2010;Loh and Sugerman-Brozan, 2002;Lucas, 2004). For instance, in the Bay Area in California, The Transit Riders for Public Transit (TRPT) Campaign protests against structural inequities in transport funding and investment which prioritize suburban expansion over the preservation of the existing system.…”

Community Voice, Vision, and Resilience in Post-Hurricane Katrina Recovery

“…Although scientific analysis is critical to informed decision making about how, where, and whether to rebuild, environmental justice advocates have argued that this expertise should not be the sole driver of how agencies set priorities, allocate resources, and address community health concerns (Loh and Sugerman-Brozan 2002). Environmental regulation is often contested and situated within the realm of scientific uncertainty ( Jasanoff 1987).…”