"I Didn't Choose This. It Chose Me." Community-Based Environmental Justice Leaders.

On 13 February 2020, the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability held the Michigan Environmental Justice Summit 2020: Commemorating the Thirtieth Anniversary of Michigan's 1990 Conference on Race and the Environment and Looking Toward the Future. The Summit hosted a dynamic panel of community environmental justice leaders throughout the region who have "boots on the ground" in the progress and pursuit of environmental justice. The panelists included Donele Wilkins, the President/CEO of the Green Door Initiative in Detroit, MI; Andrea Pierce, Chair and Founder of the Anishinaabek Caucus, Idle No More Michigan, MI; and Theresa Landrum, co-founder of the 48217 Community and Environmental Health Organization, Detroit, MI. This article includes an edited transcript of the panel discussion. The panelists detail multiple grassroots efforts to remedy environmental injustice in Michigan.

Commemorating, Celebrating, and Rededicating to the Fight for Environmental Justice: National Environmental Justice Game Changers.

On 13 February 2020, the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability held the Michigan Environmental Justice Summit 2020: Commemorating the Thirtieth Anniversary of Michigan's 1990 Conference on Race and the Environment and Looking Toward the Future. The Summit hosted a dynamic panel of national leaders, individuals who became game changers in the Environmental Justice movement. The panel featured Dr. Robert Bullard, known as the "Father of Environmental Justice"; Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Policy Director of New Consensus; Charles Lee, Senior Policy Advisor at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Regina Strong, Environmental Justice Public Advocate for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy; and Dr. Beverly Wright, Founder and Executive Director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. This article includes an edited transcript of the panel discussion. The panelists detail the history of the U.S. environmental justice movement and directions for its future.

Thirty Years Working for Environmental Justice: Commemorating the 1990 Michigan Conference on Race and the Environment and Looking Toward the Future.

This article introduces two panel discussions that were held at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability's 2020 Michigan Environmental Justice Summit: Commemorating the Thirtieth Anniversary of Michigan's Conference on Race and the Environment and Looking Toward the Future. The authors provide an historical overview of how the 1990 Michigan Conference helped to shape the development and progression of the environmental justice movement.

Air pollution around schools is linked to poorer student health and academic performance.

Exposing children to environmental pollutants during important times of physiological development can lead to long-lasting health problems, dysfunction, and disease. The location of children's schools can increase their exposure. We examined the extent of air pollution from industrial sources around public schools in Michigan to find out whether air pollution jeopardizes children's health and academic success. We found that schools located in areas with the highest air pollution levels had the lowest attendance rates-a potential indicator of poor health-and the highest proportions of students who failed to meet state educational testing standards. Michigan and many other states currently do not require officials considering a site for a new school to analyze its environmental quality. Our results show that such requirements are needed. For schools already in existence, we recommend that their environmental quality should be investigated and improved if necessary.

Racial and socioeconomic disparities in residential proximity to polluting industrial facilities: evidence from the Americans' Changing Lives Study.

OBJECTIVES: We sought to demonstrate the advantages of using individual-level survey data in quantitative environmental justice analyses and to provide new evidence regarding racial and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of polluting industrial facilities. METHODS: Addresses of respondents in the baseline sample of the Americans' Changing Lives Study and polluting industrial facilities in the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory were geocoded, allowing assessments of distances between respondents' homes and polluting facilities. The associations between race and other sociodemographic characteristics and living within 1 mile (1.6 km) of a polluting facility were estimated via logistic regression. RESULTS: Blacks and respondents at lower educational levels and, to a lesser degree, lower income levels were significantly more likely to live within a mile of a polluting facility. Racial disparities were especially pronounced in metropolitan areas of the Midwest and West and in suburban areas of the South. CONCLUSIONS: Our results add to the historical record demonstrating significant disparities in exposures to environmental hazards in the US population and provide a paradigm for studying changes over time in links to health.

Reassessing racial and socioeconomic disparities in environmental justice research.

The number of studies examining racial and socioeconomic disparities in the geographic distribution of environmental hazards and locally unwanted land uses has grown considerably over the past decade. Most studies have found statistically significant racial and socioeconomic disparities associated with hazardous sites. However there is considerable variation in the magnitude of racial and socioeconomic disparities found; indeed, some studies have found none. Uncertainties also exist about the underlying causes of the disparities. Many of these uncertainties can be attributed to the failure of the most widely used method for assessing environmental disparities to adequately account for proximity between the hazard under investigation and nearby residential populations. In this article, we identify the reasons for and consequences of this failure and demonstrate ways of overcoming these shortcomings by using alternate, distance-based methods. Through the application of such methods, we show how assessments about the magnitude and causes of racial and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of hazardous sites are changed. In addition to research on environmental inequality, we discuss how distance-based methods can be usefully applied to other areas of demographic research that explore the effects of neighborhood context on a range of social outcomes.