Analyze

~10 PhD students across multiple institutions are working together with faculty (also from multiple institutions) to advance ethnographic practice can contribute to understanding myriad perspectives on environmental and climatological urgency. Conducting research during the program, students will share perspectives on their individual projects in Africa, Latin America, Asia or Europe. Non-academic partners also contribute to the interdisciplinary and community-engaged training. More on the project overview and objective can be found here: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101073542 

By Scott G. Knowles: As part of the STL Anthropocene Field Campus the research team visited the Wood Refinery Refinery History Museum on March 9, 2019. This museum is located on the grounds of the Wood River Refinery, a Shell Oil refinery built in 1917 and today owned by Phillips 66. The site is Roxana, Illinois, just upriver from Granite City, and just over two miles from the convergence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Sitting on the actual grounds of the refinery, the museum is an invitation to think across the micro, meso, and macro scales of the Quotidian Anthropocene, in terms of geography and also in terms of time. This refinery was built at the crux of the WWI, at a time when United States petrochemical production was entering an intensive phase of production, invention, corporate structuring, and global engagement. The museum is an invitation to think across temporal scales, backwards to the start of the refinery--through the individual lives of the workers and engineers whose lives defined the refinery--and forward to indeterminate points of future memory. This photo captures a key moment in an informal interview we did with one of the history guides. He had worked in the museum for decades before retiring. He explained to us that the museum sits in the former research facility of the refinery--and the glass plat he is showing reveals a beautiful artifact, a photograph made of the complex when it was built. Our guide only showed us this collection of slides after our conversation had advanced, perhaps after he was sure we were truly interested in his story, and the deeper history of the refinery. The pride in the place, the community of workers, and the teaching ability of the museum was manifest. The research team felt impressed, but also concerned about the health impacts (and naturally the environmental impacts as well) of the refinery. There was a mismatch in the scales--the memory of the individual tied to emotions of pride and knowledge of hard work done there--and the Anthropocene, global scale of petrochemicals. How do we resolve this mismatch? The glass plate is somehow a clue.

The vulnerability mentioned in this article is about pollution occurred due to port traffic, waste facilities, and industrial plants which cause increased risk of cancer. 

The Newark Resilience Action Plan (RAP) team comprises of the Ironbound Community Corporation, New Jersey Environment Justice, and Clean Water Action. 

The fact that when the government went to collect samples of lead, they didn't go to all the sites. Also the fact that EPA has an action level for lead in the water. 

The article talks about improving pollution in industrial neighbourhood but they forget to realize that there is water contamination in Newark and also the fact that what can be done to improve pollution rather than just stating to improve pollution but they forget about the pollution thats already been emitted, what can be done regarding that. 

The new initiative mentioned in the article wants to enhance Environmental Justice, good stewardship, and suistainable economic development by protecting the health of the residents in Newark, minimizing pollution, and by encouraging development that does affects Newark positively. 

The Resilience Action Plan Team got a grant from the Kresge Foundation's Climate Resilience and Urban Opportunity Initiative and they have the support of the city of Newark to enable their work and possibly shape their way of thinking about disaster and health. 

Since Newark is a major port for all transportation methods, it indirectly produces a lot of air pollution because of most of these vehicles in result people living in areas close to the ports suffer more from air pollution in terms of health. 

In this article, it is comparing how polluted Newark is compared to the country mentioning facts such as Newark residents face the nation's second greatest risk due to diesel emissions, the city being the nation's largest trash incinerator in the Northeast, and 25% of the school children in Newark face asthma which is double compared to the nation's average rate.