"You're Just Stuck in a Hole, Really": Mechanisms of Structural Racism Through Migrant Agricultural Worker Housing in Canada.

Worldwide, migrant agricultural workers face poor housing conditions and related health challenges. A growing body of research has documented the substandard housing often occupied by this largely racialized population. Yet limited health research has examined mechanisms of structural racism that determine this group's poor housing and health. Drawing on interviews with 151 migrant farmworkers in Ontario and British Columbia, Canada, we documented the housing experiences faced by migrant agricultural workers and examined the role of structural racism in determining housing and health inequities. Our analysis identified four overlapping mechanisms by which migrants' housing and health were determined by structural racism: (1) scarcity, (2) segregation, (3) sacrifice, and (4) stagnation. These mechanisms both reinforced and normalized housing hardships, making it difficult for migrants to escape unsafe or inadequate housing. Our findings point to the need for immediate action to improve housing conditions for this population and to interrogate the racist design that keeps migrant workers at the margins of society.

Environmental Justice: Where It Has Been, and Where It Might Be Going.

Taking stock of environmental justice (EJ) is daunting. It is at once a scholarly field, an ongoing social movement, and an administrative imperative adopted by government agencies and incorporated into legislation. Moreover, within academia, it is multidisciplinary and multimethodological, comprising scholars who do not always speak to one another. Any review of EJ is thus necessarily restrictive. This article explores several facets of EJ activism. One is its coalitional and "inside-outside" orientation. EJ activists are constantly forming alliances with other stakeholders, but these coalitions do not flout the importance of engaging with formal institutions. The review next turns to one set of such institutions-the courts and regulatory agencies-to see how well EJ claims have fared there. I then survey scientific findings that have been influenced by EJ. The review concludes with future directions for activists and scholars to consider: the changing nature of EJ coalitions, fragmentation within EJ and with other fields, the historical roots of environmental injustice, and opportunities for stronger infusion of the EJ lens.

Narratives of Injustice: An Investigation of Toxic Dumping within the Blackfeet Nation.

For over 50 years, the people of the Amskapi Piikani (Blackfeet) Nation have relayed information of "something bad" being covertly dumped within their remaining homelands. These stories, addressing contaminated waste and the locations of rumored dump sites, have also been linked with perceived cancer clusters among residents who live within the Blackfeet Nation. The concept of environmental injustice suggests that often the most vulnerable populations, including communities of color, experience the most negative realities of environmental toxic exposures, and it is not uncommon for toxic wastes to be disposed of within Native American lands. Given that Blackfeet communities suffer from some of the highest rates of cancer in the state of Montana, these narratives warrant further investigation. This research examined whether illicit dumping within Blackfeet sovereign lands can be substantiated and if this is a case of environmental injustice. This investigation employed a mix of both traditional Indigenous and Western-based scientific methodologies, both quantitative and qualitative. Traditional methodologies included the use of Indigenous oral narratives. These oral narratives are then further informed with Western processes of document review and geologic, water, and radiation surveys. The authors found compelling evidence through the oral histories and document reviews for toxic dumping within Blackfeet lands; however, cursory water and radiation surveys were not conclusive. This initial inquiry provides the foundation for further research needed to press this investigation.

The relationship between urban forests and race: A meta-analysis.

There is ample evidence that urban trees benefit the physical, mental, and social health of urban residents. The environmental justice hypothesis posits that environmental amenities are inequitably low in poor and minority communities, and predicts these communities experience fewer urban environmental benefits. Some previous research has found that urban forest cover is inequitably distributed by race, though other studies have found no relationship or negative inequity. These conflicting results and the single-city nature of the current literature suggest a need for a research synthesis. Using a systematic literature search and meta-analytic techniques, we examined the relationship between urban forest cover and race. First, we estimated the average (unconditional) relationship between urban forest cover and race across studies (studies = 40; effect sizes = 388). We find evidence of significant race-based inequity in urban forest cover. Second, we included characteristics of the original studies and study sites in meta-regressions to illuminate drivers of variation of urban forest cover between studies. Our meta-regressions reveal that the relationship varies across racial groups and by study methodology. Models reveal significant inequity on public land and that environmental and social characteristics of cities help explain variation across studies. As tree planting and other urban forestry programs proliferate, urban forestry professionals are encouraged to consider the equity consequences of urban forestry activities, particularly on public land.

Sensory Disruption in Modern Living and the Emergence of Sensory Inequities.

Modern lifestyles are disrupting the human senses-primarily sight, sound, and smell. Noise-induced hearing loss has been noted for centuries and increasing over time following the industrial era. From the mid-20th century, the numbers of individuals with myopia (the leading visual impairment) have been increasing globally. Historical evidence for olfactory dysfunction is not known but its etiological links to pollution suggest it increased following industrialization. Clinical interventions for sight and sound loss include preventative and corrective measures but none exist for olfactory dysfunction. Further, olfactory loss is linked to multiple negative health outcomes across physical, mental, and social domains. Due to the global rates of exposure to pollution, olfaction is a global health concern. The environmental injustice inherent in human society (locally and globally) results in inequitable risk for sensory loss by the most vulnerable populations and creates an even deeper gradient in health disparity. Situated within the environmental justice and health disparity literature, this paper introduces the term sensory inequity to describe variation in sensory environments based on socio-economic status (which is often entwined with race and education). A key challenge to risk management is awareness of sensory inequity experienced by vulnerable populations and incorporating that awareness into basic research and policy.

Feminist perspectives on environmental justice and health in Jamaica.

Jamaica is an island nation with a history that is informed by Taino settlement, European colonisation, chattel slavery, disinvestment, and continued extractivism. This perspective paper leverages a historical analysis to explore environmental injustices affecting the health and quality of life of Jamaicans living in Jamaica. This article hopes to contribute to a growing but limited body of scholarly research that contends with environmental and climate justice in the context of the Caribbean. In discussing a lack of critical environmental infrastructure, such as reliable solid waste management, and the impacts of extractive industries, such as bauxite mining, the paper intends to highlight the environmental, public health, and social harms that are produced. Employing an intersectional approach grounded in Black feminist epistemology put forward by Patricia Hill Collins, the authors use their lived experiences as a source of knowledge. The paper analyses how these environmental injustices harm Jamaican communities at large but underscores the compounded challenges faced by Jamaican women who experience marginalisation on the basis of gender, urban/rural residency, and class. The paper concludes by urging researchers, policymakers, regulatory bodies, and other stakeholders to conduct further research and create sustainable and equitable environmental standards that have considerations for environmental injustice in Jamaica.

An environmental justice fictional case study for engaging non-majors in human biology.

The impacts of climate change are and will continue to be far-reaching, and environmental justice communities are disproportionately impacted due to environmental racism and related forms of oppression. Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education encourages that the connection between science and society be explicitly taught in science classrooms. Here, I describe a fictional case study where students decide how to allocate a budget at a non-profit organization tasked with mitigating environmental issues in a town that contains environmental justice communities. Students are each assigned a role in the community and must reach a consensus on their budget in small groups before the whole class votes on a consensus budget. Afterward, students perform a metacognitive activity that encourages them to reflect on the human health impacts of their decisions and how their role impacted their decision-making process. Quantitative and qualitative feedback from students shows that by the end of the course, students appreciate the importance of science literacy in understanding global issues and that they are able to connect environmental justice to their lives and coursework. This case study helps fill an unmet need in climate change education by allowing students to practice empathy in topics related to climate change and environmental justice.

Coping with the tale of natural resources and environmental inequality: an application of the machine learning tools.

With the rising momentum according to the environmentalist voices seeking climate justice for more equity and the importance of encouraging environmental justice mechanisms and tools, in this perspective, the objective of this study is to analyze in depth the substantial role of natural resources abundance in the environmental inequality issue. For this purpose, this study adopted the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), LightGBM, Natural Gradient Boosting (NGBoost), Hybrid hybrid upper confidence bound-long short-term memory-Genetic Algorithm (UCB-LSTM-GA), and the Shapley Additive Explanation (SAE) machine learning algorithms in the context of 21 emerging economies spanning the years 2001 to 2019. The empirical results reveal that natural resource abundance, foreign trade, and foreign direct investment inflows contribute all to higher levels of environmental inequality. However, higher levels of per capita income, gross fixed capital formation, and institutional quality contribute to lower levels of environmental inequality. Addressing climate justice holistically through an integrated supranational vision is significant since every step taken toward eradicating environmental racism matters.

Associations between Historical Redlining and the Risk of Pregnancy Complications and Adverse Birth Outcomes in Massachusetts, 1995-2015.

Objective: To assess the impact of historical redlining on the risk of pregnancy complications and adverse birth outcomes in Massachusetts (MA) from 1995 to 2015. Methods: In total, 288,787 pregnant people from the MA Birth Registry had information on parental characteristics, pregnancy factors, and redlining data at parental residences at the time of delivery. Historic redlining data were based on MA Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) security maps, with grades assigned (A "best," B "still desirable," C "definitely declining," and D "hazardous"). We used covariate-adjusted binomial regression models to examine associations between HOLC grade and each chronic condition and pregnancy/birth outcome. Results: Living in HOLC grades B through D compared with A was associated with an increased risk of entering pregnancy with chronic conditions and adverse pregnancy/birth outcomes. The strongest associations were seen with pregestational diabetes (adjusted risk ratio [RR] Grade D: 1.7, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.3, 2.4) and chronic hypertension (adjusted RR Grade D: 1.5, 95% CI: 1.1, 1.9). Conclusions: Historical redlining policies from the 1930s were associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes and chronic conditions; associations were strongest for chronic conditions in pregnancy.

Inequality in the Distribution of Air Pollution Attributable Mortality Within Canadian Cities.

Recent studies have identified inequality in the distribution of air pollution attributable health impacts, but to our knowledge this has not been examined in Canadian cities. We evaluated the extent and sources of inequality in air pollution attributable mortality at the census tract (CT) level in seven of Canada's largest cities. We first regressed fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) attributable mortality against the neighborhood (CT) level prevalence of age 65 and older, low income, low educational attainment, and identification as an Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, Inuit) or Black person, accounting for spatial autocorrelation. We next examined the distribution of baseline mortality rates, PM2.5 and NO2 concentrations, and attributable mortality by neighborhood (CT) level prevalence of these characteristics, calculating the concentration index, Atkinson index, and Gini coefficient. Finally, we conducted a counterfactual analysis of the impact of reducing baseline mortality rates and air pollution concentrations on inequality in air pollution attributable mortality. Regression results indicated that CTs with a higher prevalence of low income and Indigenous identity had significantly higher air pollution attributable mortality. Concentration index, Atkinson index, and Gini coefficient values revealed different degrees of inequality among the cities. Counterfactual analysis indicated that inequality in air pollution attributable mortality tended to be driven more by baseline mortality inequalities than exposure inequalities. Reducing inequality in air pollution attributable mortality requires reducing disparities in both baseline mortality and air pollution exposure.

How Federal and State Regulatory Systems Perpetuate Environmental Injustice in the United States: Industrial Ethylene Oxide Emissions as a Case Study.

Background: Ethylene oxide (EtO), a known human carcinogen, is emitted from facilities across the United States. A 2018 assessment by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) showed that areas around EtO-emitting facilities had cancer risk levels up to 24 times the national average. The EPA notified the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) about the high cancer risk to their residents. Our aim was to analyze actions and implementation equity at the federal, state, and community levels since the EPA notification. Methods: Using publicly available data, we identified U.S. emitters of EtO and then analyzed community, state, and federal actions since the EPA notification through content analysis of internet data using the lens of the environmental inequality formation (EIF) theory. Results: Thirty-one of a total 654 EtO-emitting facilities have an estimated cancer risk of over 100 in a million in neighboring census tracts and are located in 13 states and Puerto Rico, representing 7 EPA regions. Content analysis identified themes of community outcry, agency involvement, and legislative action and found no action without community outcry. By January 2021, 2 facilities had closed, 5 facilities had cut emissions, and 24 facilities in 9 states and 5 EPA regions had taken no action. Discussion: Wealthier white neighborhoods saw facilities close or cut emissions. Differences in state response correlated with differences in community pressure and state priority setting, resulting in over 1 million people having continued significant EtO exposure for years. Conclusions: The impotence of the federal and state regulatory framework perpetuates environmental injustice in the United States.

Practices of Care and Relationship-Building: A Qualitative Analysis of Urban Agriculture's Impacts on Black People's Agency and Wellbeing in Philadelphia.

Gardens and farms provide individuals and communities with access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally significant foods. There is a rich body of literature unpacking the connections between Black urban growing and agency, freedom, resistance, and care. However, spirituality remains one aspect of health and wellbeing that has not been studied extensively in relation to agriculture. The main goal of this study was to conduct focus groups with Philly-based growers to understand the self-determined impacts of urban agriculture on health, agency, and wellbeing. The secondary goal of this work was to determine if these impacts differ by race. I apply a collective agency and community resilience theoretical framework to this study. This framework offers a model to understand agriculture as a way for communities to become self-determined, self-reliant, and self-sustained. For this study exploring the impacts of urban agriculture on health, there were three eligibility criteria. Participants had to be at least 18 years old, identify as Black or White, and have grown food in a garden or farm in Philadelphia. I hosted six race-specific focus groups at Bartram's Garden in Southwest Philadelphia. The audio recordings were transcribed, and the full transcripts were coded using open and axial coding methods and a "key concepts" framework. We also employed several methods of triangulation to help ensure the credibility and validity of the findings. Four major themes emerged from the data: growing as a demonstration of agency and power, growing as a facilitator of body-mind wellness, community care and relationship-building, and deepened spiritual connection and interdependence. There were both similarities and differences in the impacts of urban agriculture by race. Across the six focus groups, people talked about concepts related to community care and relationship-building as being major benefits of growing food. In both groups, people also brought up significant issues and barriers around land security. Mentions of spirituality appeared more frequently and more emphatically in the Black focus groups. Black focus groups were more likely to discuss the collective impacts of agriculture, while White participants were more likely to discuss the impacts on themselves as individuals. The findings of this focus group study point to some key domains through which agriculture impacts the health of farmers and growers in Philadelphia.

Rural Embodiment and Community Health: an Anthropological Case Study on Biocultural Determinants of Tropical Disease Infection and Immune System Development in the USA.

Purpose of Review: Biocultural methods are critically important for identifying environmental and socioeconomic factors linked with tropical disease risk and outcomes. For example, embodiment theory refers to the process by which lived experiences impact individual biology. Increased exposure to pathogens, chronic psychosocial stress, and unequal resource access are all outcomes linked with discrimination and poverty. Through lived experiences, race and socioeconomic inequality can literally become embodied-get under the skin and affect physiology-impacting immune responses and contributing to lifelong health disparities. Yet, few studies have investigated tropical disease patterns and associated immune function using embodiment theory to understand lasting physiological impacts associated with living in a high-pathogen environment. Recent Findings: Here, we use preliminary data drawn from the Rural Embodiment and Community Health (REACH) study to assess whether pathogen exposure and immune stimulation within a sample of children from the Mississippi Delta are associated with household income. We also test whether immune marker levels-assessed with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays using dried blood spot samples-vary between the REACH sample and a similarly aged nationally representative NHANES sample. Immune marker levels did not differ significantly between REACH participants living below vs. above the federal poverty line, yet immunoglobulin E levels-a marker of macroparasite infection-were higher among REACH study participants compared to the NHANES sample. Summary: These results may suggest community-level pathogenic exposures (i.e., parasitic infections) are embodied by REACH participants with implications for long-term immune function, potentially resulting in immune aspects that differ from nationally representative samples. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40475-023-00282-z.

Community-driven research and capacity building to address environmental justice concerns with industrial air pollution in Curtis Bay, South Baltimore.

Introduction: Curtis Bay (CB) is an environmental justice (EJ) community in South Baltimore. With a high concentration of industrial polluters and compounding non-chemical stressors, CB has experienced socioeconomic, quality of life, and health burdens for over 100 years. Today, these polluters include the open-air CSX Coal Terminal, waste-to-energy incinerators, and heavy diesel traffic through residential areas. The Community of Curtis Bay Association, Free Your Voice, and South Baltimore Community Land Trust are local organizations enacting a vision for equitable, healthy, and community-led development without industrial encroachment. In response to community-identified EJ concerns and an explosion at the CSX Coal Terminal, CB community groups partnered with academic researchers to develop a community-driven hyperlocal air monitoring and capacity building approach. This paper describes this approach to characterizing hyperlocal air quality in CB, building bridges between community residents and regulatory agencies, and nurturing a cohesive and effective community-academic partnership toward EJ. Methods: Using hyperlocal air monitoring, we are collecting real-time air pollution (particulate matter, black carbon, and ground-level gas species) and meteorological data from 15 low-cost sensors in residential and industrial areas of CB. We also use trail cameras to record activities at the CSX Coal Terminal. We merge air pollution and industrial activity data to evaluate the following: overall air quality in CB, multi-air pollutant profiles of elevated events, spatiotemporal changes in air quality in the community, patterns of industrial activity, and potential correlations between air quality and observed industrial activity. Members of our partnership also lead a high school course educating students about the history and ongoing efforts of the EJ movement in their community. Students in this course learn how to employ qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods to bring scientific support to community EJ concerns. Results and Discussion: Our hyperlocal air monitoring network and community-academic partnership are continuing to evolve and have already demonstrated the ability to respond to community-identified EJ issues with real-time data while developing future EJ leaders. Our reflections can assist other community and academic groups in developing strong and fruitful partnerships to address similar EJ issues.

Water pollution and environmental policy in artisanal gold mining frontiers: The case of La Toma, Colombia.

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the largest anthropogenic source of mercury emissions globally. Concern over mercury pollution increases due to its long-term impacts on human health and aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Using a participatory research methodology, we gathered social and behavioral information regarding daily practices and water usage by an ASGM community in Suárez, Colombia. Based on this information, we identified 18 sampling sites of water sources commonly used by the community. The samples were analyzed for total mercury, total coliforms, pH, electrical conductivity, and total dissolved oxygen. Physicochemical and microbiological parameters from the water assessment were compared with the drinking water thresholds set by the Colombian regulatory agencies, the EPA, and the WHO. Our results showed that the majority of the samples do not meet one or more quality and safety standards. On average, the sampling sites showed total mercury levels below the regulatory limits; however, the data had considerable variability, and in many cases, individual observations fell above the maximum concentration limit for drinking water. We discuss these results within the larger framework of the regulatory gaps for human and environmental protection in ASGM contexts. The total lack of water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure, combined with the long-term consumption of sublethal doses of mercury and other water contaminants, constitutes a significant threat to the well-being of communities and territories that necessitates further research and intervention by institutional authorities.

Study the forest, not only the trees: Environmental exposures, not genomes, generate most health disparities.

As sequencing and analysis techniques provide increasingly detailed data at a plummeting cost, it is increasingly popular to seek the answers to medical and public health challenges in the DNA sequences of affected populations. This is methodologically attractive in its simplicity, but a genomics-only approach ignores environmentally mediated health disparities, which are well-documented at multiple national and global scales. While genetic differences exist among populations, it is unlikely that these differences overcome social and environmental factors in driving the gap in health outcomes between privileged and oppressed communities. We advocate for following the lead of communities in addressing their self-identified interests, rather than treating widespread suffering as a convenient natural experiment.

Racial Disparities in the Heavy Metal Contamination of Urban Soil in the Southeastern United States.

(1) Background: Field monitoring data for addressing the disproportional burden of exposure to soil contamination in communities of minority and low socioeconomic status (SES) are sparse. This study aims to examine the association between soil heavy metal levels, SES, and racial composition. (2) Methods: A total of 423 soil samples were collected in the urban areas of eight cities across six Southern states in the U.S., in 2015. Samples were analyzed using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for eight heavy metals. The association was examined with mixed models with the log-transformed metal concentrations as the dependent variables and rankings of low-income or minority percentages as the explanatory variables. (3) Results: Model results showed that soil metal concentrations were significantly associated with rankings of poverty and minority percentages. The cadmium concentration significantly increased by 4.7% (p-value < 0.01), for every 10 percentiles of increase in poverty rank. For every 10 percentiles of increase in minority rank, the soil concentrations were significantly up (p-values < 0.01) for arsenic (13.5%), cadmium (5.5%), and lead (10.6%). Minority rank had significant direct effects on both arsenic and lead. (4) Conclusions: The findings confirmed elevated heavy metal contamination in urban soil in low-income and/or predominantly minority communities.

"I Can't Breathe": Examining the Legacy of American Racism on Determinants of Health and the Ongoing Pursuit of Environmental Justice.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: "I can't breathe" were the last words spoken by Eric Garner (July 17, 2014), Javier Ambler (March 28, 2019), Elijah McClain (August 30, 2019), Manuel Ellis (March 3, 2020), and George Floyd (May 25, 2020). These were all African American men who died at the hands of police in the United States. Recently, police brutality has gained critical and overdue attention as one clear manifestation of systemic racism. However, historical and current policies related to a wide range of environmental hazards have exposed Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) to disproportionately high levels of physical, mental, social, emotional, and cultural toxicities, thus creating unbreathable and unlivable communities. RECENT FINDINGS: This paper traces the roots of systemic anti-Black racism in America from its origins in the 1400s, through systems of scientific racism that pathologized Blackness in order to justify slavery, and through evolving policies and structures that have shifted over time but consistently exposed many African American communities to unsafe and unhealthy environments. We conclude with calls for bold solutions to move through and past this oppressive history and toward true environmental justice the enables all communities to thrive together.

Racial Disparities in Climate Change-Related Health Effects in the United States.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Climate change is causing warming over most parts of the USA and more extreme weather events. The health impacts of these changes are not experienced equally. We synthesize the recent evidence that climatic changes linked to global warming are having a disparate impact on the health of people of color, including children. RECENT FINDINGS: Multiple studies of heat, extreme cold, hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires find evidence that people of color, including Black, Latinx, Native American, Pacific Islander, and Asian communities are at higher risk of climate-related health impacts than Whites, although this is not always the case. Studies of adults have found evidence of racial disparities related to climatic changes with respect to mortality, respiratory and cardiovascular disease, mental health, and heat-related illness. Children are particularly vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change, and infants and children of color have experienced adverse perinatal outcomes, occupational heat stress, and increases in emergency department visits associated with extreme weather. The evidence strongly suggests climate change is an environmental injustice that is likely to exacerbate existing racial disparities across a broad range of health outcomes.