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.

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