Lindsey Johnson Environmental Racism Reading

 While I was looking for articles for my independent research project, I came across an article about environmental injustice. It caught my eye because I learned about it in my Environmental Ethics class two semesters ago and I had thought it was a very interesting subject. In "The Threat of Environmental Racism" by Robert D. Bullard, the author discusses how environmental issues, specifically lead poisoning and the placement of waste facilities, impact African Americans so much more negatively than other races. African American children experience lead poisoning at a disproportionate rate compared to white children no matter their family income. According to the article, for families earning less than $6,000, 68% of African American children had lead poisoning in comparison to 36% of white children. This is due to the fact that African American communities still experience the effects of redlining, which places them closer to waste facilities and other environmental hazards. It is hard for the people who are affected by this to escape the environmental threats because they are correlated with income. The article states that about 60% of African Americans live in areas with one or more abandoned toxic waste sites. I think that environmental racism is terrible and completely unfair, but it is such a hard issue to combat due to the complexity of the problem. When thinking about this issue a bunch of questions come to my mind. What steps could communities take to solve these issues? How do you get politicians to care about these issues? How do you work around the income aspect since these people are unable to escape due to not being able to afford to move? Why are waste facilities built near residential areas when it is known that they can be harmful to humans? Why are they not built in isolated locations? This is an ongoing issue that has gained attention in recent years but definitely still needs a lot of work.

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