Search

This book builds on environmental justice research and concepts. In a reflection over the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, Kim Fortun (2012) proposed the beginning of a “late industrialism” era where disasters would be normalized as a result of conflicting information from the media and “experts” making it impossible for individuals to make informed decisions on politics and to demand environmental regulation. Bullard and Wright (2009) and Pellow (2018) proposed ethnic minorities and groups from lower socio-economic status are disproportionately burdened by toxic pollution; polluted communities face an uphill environmental justice battle against powerful corporations and local politicians to prove this disproportional toxic exposure. Brown (1993) and Allen (2003) proposed “popular epidemiology,” where communities would upkeep with their own health research, as an important way to include the community in research that would benefit them; with the benefit of having multiple different perspectives addressing one issue. Citizen science, coined by Alan Irwin (1995) is a popular concept that enforces community-based participatory research. Pellow (2018) proposed “critical environmental justices,'' defining it in four pillars: (1) “intersectional forms of inequality and oppression,” (2) “the role of scale in the production and possible resolution of environmental injustices,” (3) “recognition that social inequalities are deeply embedded in state power,” (4) “indispensability, arguing that “excluded, marginalized, and othered populations, beings, and things ... must not be viewed as expendable but rather as indispensable to our collective futures'' (Pellow 2018, 26).

Thom and Mah (2022) build on the importance of community inclusion in research. Although there are scholars interested in coming up with solutions on social-environmental problems. The community rarely benefits from the results of that research because there’s a huge disconnect between academia and neighborhoods with limited resources. Often, individuals of lower socio-economic status are left uninformed and underrepresented, even in cases of research. This book uses case studies of community-based participatory environmental health and justice research to show different ways to understand environmental injustice, political strategies, and ways to expand citizen science engagement and environmental literacy around the world. 

Text focuses on questions about the production and spread of knowledge, and the role science plays in society. Thom and Mah introduce the term “post-truths” that is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Which factors into how the intersection of science, politics, and values around the world determine a population’s attitude towards environmental justice. They argue for the importance of “science, knowledge, and data that are produced by and for ordinary people living in environmental risks and hazards” (Thom and Mah 2022). In doing so, they recognize data isn't sufficient to solve environmental injustice, especially since issues of environmental pollution are so deeply intertwined with structures that perpetuate social inequalities. Instead, they suggest an interdisciplinary approach that integrates “legacies of environmental justice movement, participatory citizen science,” and “experts” to come up with holistic questions on how to overcome environmental inequality and advance the environmental justice movement amid challenges on the salience of environmental expertise.

Thom and Mah use four case studies of community-based participatory environmental health and justice research to show the importance of including citizens in scientific research. Citizen science refers to public engagement with science, from data sensing and crowdsourcing to design, collection, analysis of research. Although citizen science is not the only answer - with Catree (2016) pointing out that citizen-led processes have become a “lucrative business,” which creates a conflict of interest - this book redefines the meaning of “justice” within the environmental justice movement and explores “role and interpretation of citizenship within citizen science research (Thom and Mah 2022). They recognize there’s tension in balancing a community’s subjective experience and contextual knowledge with rigorous, scientifically appropriate research. 

To tackle environmental injustice in a post-truth era, Thom and Mah (2022) argue there needs to be political change. An interdisciplinary approach is used to study local and global environmental justice challenges with a range of “qualitative and quantitative social science methods, including community-based participatory research (CBPR), epidemiology, ethnography, visual methods, and other innovative methods of participatory environmental justice and citizen science research” (Thom and Mah 2022). 

This article was published in 2022 in England. This is amid the coronavirus pandemic and after the populist influence of Trump’s fake news politics around the world. With populist leaders propagating their own version of post-truths in India, Russia, Turkey, and Brazil. These leaders have incited a new wave of climate change deniers while political conflicts and environmental vulnerabilities worsen worldwide. 

At the time of the article, Trump had defunded environmental protection and pulled the USA from the Paris agreement - although, since then, Biden has proposed other plans on environmental justice, and the US has rejoined the Paris agreement -, Brexit had threatened to derail  environmental regulation - still remains an issue -, and Brazil’s Bolsonaro had opened vast tracts of Amozonian forest for permanent exploitation - still remains an issue. 

“Not only is the history of environmental justice temporally deep, it is also geographically diverse and still expanding. Any account of environmental jus- tice will therefore remain incomplete, not least because it is still being written. Right now, across the world, thousands of communities are embroiled in the midst of ongoing toxic struggles. Environmental justice also belies its seemingly American past, and today it is increasingly clear that “the concept has travelled to different places” (Holifield et al. 2018, 2). Despite scholarly work on envi- ronmental justice remaining skewed toward American case studies (Reed and George 2011), many scholars have demonstrated how issues of environmental justice are truly global in nature (Walker 2009a; Armiero and Sedrez 2014; Guha 2014; Pellow 2018).” (6)

“A further body of environmental justice research places justice as a procedural concern. This form of environmental justice was born out of participatory democracy, and places the focus of justice squarely on access to decision making and accurate information upon which to base decisions (Yenneti and Day 2015). … This move from a distributional to a procedural logic of justice, which involves public hearings and access to reliable information, is predicated on the redistribution of power relations (Pellow 2018).” (8)

“Within the radical science movement tradition, citizen science emerged out of calls for the democratization of science and expertise to include perspectives from wider publics (Irwin 1995). For decades, scholars of science and technology studies (STS) have argued that scientific expertise is highly political and embed- ded in power relations (Irwin 1995; Epstein 1996; Fischer 2000; Frickel et al. 2010).” (11)

This text (the introduction to the book Toxic Truths) summarizes the content of the full book while providing context for it through framing the environmental justice movement through the lens of the “post-truth” rhetoric that has been common for the last several years. The introduction argues for critical thought as a crucial antidote to “post-truth politics”, especially in the name of making sure that environmental justice momentum is not forgotten by the short public attention span during the chaotic and complex times we live in. The authors cite the examples of (i) environmental protection defunding under former American president Trump, (ii) the threat to environmental regulation of Brexit, and (iii) exploitation of the Amazon rainforest under Brazilian president Bolsonaro to highlight the recent politics that have muddied the waters of environmental justice and protection. The authors then expand their focus outward to include the interconnected roles of science, politics, and community values in the global fight for environmental justice.

Through this guide, Raphael makes a case for ES within EJ research. Particularly, Raphael articulates the value ES in: 1) building scholarly relevance and promoting restorative justice, 2) improving methodological designs in communication research, 3) reaching a wider pool of audiences in ways that are translatable to the public sphere, and 4) prompting greater reflexivity and collaborations by scholars across disciplines. Evidence is cited from a particular case study wherein a collaboration across academic institutions, independent research institutes, and a statewide advocacy organization led to improvements across the four aforementioned spheres for the research project itself. For example, by co-designing materials to increase the visibility and transparency of specialized research on pollution emissions, this collaboration succeeded in relating knowledge around pollution risks and lent strength to a wider organizing campaign to reduce emissions from the Chevron Oil Refinery in Richmond. 

bbb

"Many environmental justice scholars have embraced the term “citizen science” as a way of describing community-based participatory science to tackle toxic problems (Ottinger 2017; Martinez-Alier et al. 2016; Gabrys et al. 2016). Other environmental justice researchers use different terms for similar practices, including “civic science” (Fortun and Fortun 2005; Wylie 2018), “popular epidemiology” (Brown 1993), “street science” (Corburn 2005), “community-based participatory research” (Allen; Brown et al.; Rhodes et al.; Shamasunder et al., this volume), and “participatory sensing” (Loreto et al. 2017), among others. Wylie (2018) proposes that “civic science” could help to distinguish between grassroots-led and professional science-led kinds of citizen science, and also to get away from the language of “citizens.” We recognize the limitations of citizen science as a concept, but we nonetheless use this term as a shorthand description for a wide range of public engagements with science within environmental justice struggles." (Mah & Davies, 2021, 10) 

Toxic Truths examines the relationship between citizen science and environmental justice in a post-truth age. Debates over science, facts, and values have long been an integral component of environmental justice struggles. However, post-truth politics threaten science in increasingly extreme ways: “rarely have science and expertise been so questioned, diminished, and vulnerable as they are today” (3). Through various case studies, the authors make a case for the significance of science, knowledge, and data as it is produced “by and for ordinary people living with environmental risks and hazards” (3), though they also recognize the limitations of data. They demonstrate how environmental justice activists both challenge and rely on science.

The authors recognize the lack of clear and specific definition for “environmental injustice” or “environmental justice” is part of its enduring appeal, though they pinpoint the crux of the concept as “based on the principle that all people have the right to be protected from environmental threats and to benefit from living in a clean and healthy environment” (4). Disproportionate vulnerabilities to environmental hazards amongst racialized lines has been linked by environmental activism and research to the idea of environmental racism in the United States.

The authors emphasize that despite suggestions that humans have entered a new age of toxicity (“the Anthropocene”), pollution is a product of centuries of unequal social relations. For instance, environmental inequality has come hand in hand with settler colonialism since at least the seventeenth century. Moreover, the authors emphasize that environmental injustice occurs in many different places, in different ways—and that the concept of environmental justice has traveled far beyond its origins in the United States. They seek to represent this global breadth in through case studies from across different countries and continents: “Through these chapters we will see how environmental justice is spatially dispersed, reaching far beyond the confines of the USA and the racialized geographies of the Deep South where the phrase “environmental justice” was first coined (Bullard 1990)” (6).

Davies and Mah also elaborate on what they mean by “justice” in environmental justice. While acknowledging the plurality and diversity of what justice can mean, they focus on three specific forms of justice: distributive (geographical); procedural (participatory); and capabilities (well-being). In elaborating on distributive justice, the authors noted that as environmental justice research and activism has moved beyond the racialized geographies of the United States, there has been a real need to expand notions justice beyond this geographic frame.

Procedural justice focuses on the need to involve those most affected by environmental injustice in decision-making (e.g. in developing, implementing and enforcing laws, regulations and policies). The authors highlight Barbara Allen’s research in southern France as a prime example of this form of justice. They also acknowledge that procedural justice can depend too strongly on the state and the legal system to protect those that are already being injured by the very structures of toxicity that compose the state.

The authors draw on American philosopher Martha Nussbaum and Indian economist Amartya Sen in highlight capabilities as a third form of justice. They define this form of justice as “centered around the ability of individuals to live freely and unhindered in the world” (5). This form of justice is focused on ensuring the wellbeing of a population and people’s ability to live a life they consider worthwhile. However, this form of justice has be criticized for emphasizing too strongly the significance of individual experiences of injustice, rather than providing attention to the wider community and the structural forces that sustain inequality. This aligns with Pulido’s critique of environmental injustice as overly focused on procedure and inattentive to structures of inequality and pollution reduction.

Such criticisms have produced new iterations of environmental justice, focused on “four pillars of critical environmental justice”: attention to intersectional inequality, scale as an importance factor in the production and potentially resolution of environmental injustices, the embeddedness of social inequalities in state power, and the indispensability of people, beings, and things that have been excluded, marginalized, and othered.  

The authors turn to the role of science in environmental justice by listing the terms through which this application has been described: citizen science, but also civic science, popular epidemiology, street science, community-based participatory research, and participatory sensing. They describe calls for the democratization of science and expertise as the historical origins of this form of science. Yet they also remain cautiously critical about the capacity of citizen science for enacting environmental justice, noting that public participation must not be viewed as a cure-all for solving environmental inequalities.

“Post-truth” refers to struggles for control over determining what is possible through theories of truth and knowledge. Backlash against the term raises the point that debates over truth have a long history. In examining the role of truth in environmental justice, the authors emphasize the significance of scientific knowledge for making toxic issues visible—as well as the problem of ‘undone science” (Frickel et al. 2010), because of which the health risks of pollution are often overlooked. They argue that the threats science faces in the post-truth age jeopardize the ability to make environmental health claims. And yet they acknowledge that science itself is not enough: “if political structures go unchanged, environmental injustice will persist” (14). This raises the question: “ ‘What kind of science can serve as ‘changeagent’ knowledge – what are the ingredients that can facilitate action?’ (14).

The question of data relates to Denise Brock’s key role in the passage of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA). Brock independently collected thousands of documents related to the health of  workers in nuclear facilities like Weldon Spring in her efforts to show that they had been exposed to pathological levels of radiation. In many cases, their employers were fully aware of the dangers these workers faced, but kept this information to themselves or hidden away in the private documents that Denise uncovered decades later. Prior to Denise's work this information was not publically available, and if workers who had become ill wanted to receive compensation for worksite expose, they would have to undergo exposure reconstruction assessments, which--due to the lack of accurate and available data--were imperfect evaluations of the actual levels of radiation workers had been exposed to. Due to Denise's advocacy, which led to the passage of the EEOICPA, workers at nuclear facilities are exempted from the exposure reconstruction assessments and are eligible for compensation payments up to a maximum amount of $250,000, plus medical expenses for accepted conditions.

Denise's experience raises a few questions and reflections on data in the Anthropocene:

•  Issues like worksite and environmental exposure are often plagued by invisibilities and what STS scholars have referred to as "agnotologies"--where can activists/scholars/any interested party gain access to relevant data in relation to these issues (in a similar fashion to Denise's work)?
• For historians in particular: do the thousands of documents Denise complied consitute an archive? How can these and similar archival practices be Anthropocenic strategies?