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Environmental harm and the safety are often the key categories and concepts used when citizens and activists have advocated for changes to US military infrastructure in South Korea. By Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek South Korea, the environmental costs of US military infrastructures often call on the citizens who live near the bases. In this below a new concrete wall built by the US military had blocked the natural water flow, leading to flooding just outside the base during heavy rainfall. Formally all environmental concerns are mediated through a clause called Known Imminent Substantial Endangerment Clause which asks that citizens must prove bodily harm has been inflicted due to environmental harms caused by the US military in order to receive redress. The US military often chooses to ignore claims of US military infrastructure effecting the daily lives of citizens who live near the occupation as the local governments and lawyers are often hesitant to approach the US military about grievances due to the financial support the city receives for hosting US military infrastructure. While environmental protections exist, when they are used and how they are used are often dictated by the US military who are not lawfully accountable for the citizen's livelihoods or concerns with US military infrastructure. In the case of this flooding incident, an activist organization was able to pressure the local government to make a complaint. It resulted in the construction of a drainage system which sits outside of the US military base and inside the property of a local citizen's land. Because all US military infrastructure technically maintains control over the land 3 past it's actual construction it remains up for debate whether the construction of the drainage system should be seen as a base expansion or not.

Cho, Tony. 2023. "Drainage system for Osan Air Base in reaction to flooding outside its borders." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawaii, Nov 8-11.

Dr. Cheney is attempting to answer the following question: What can we learn from the residents about their experience in living with asthma, and can this help us understand the disease?

There are very few hospitals in the area around the Salton Sea--only two in Imperial County and three in the Coachella Valley.

• In 2003, the Imperial Irrigation District signed the Quantification Settlement Agreement, in which they transferred the water from agricultural runoff that formerly fed the Salton Sea to supply municipalities in Southern California. The agreement kept water flowing into the lake until 2018 in order to give time to come up with ways to mitigate environmental effects of the lake's desiccation. These solutions have not materialized.
• UCR scientists are collecting dust for microbial analysis

• Increased salinity
• Waterfowl dieoffs
• Desiccation produces toxic dust that blows
• Childhood asthma and other respiratory conditions
• 15% of Imperial County residents have asthma
• wind-blown dust can act as a pathway for microbes, fungi, and viruses to enter lungs by attaching to dust particles
• Municipal sewage from Mexicali
• Waste from prisons

The "Disparities in Environmental Exposures and Health Impacts" project has four goals:

1. To establish a community advisory board to provide local stakeholder input;
2. To identify spatial patterns and trends in population exposure and in pollutant transport;
3. To distribute particle collectors at sites that represent the range of sources of particulate matter and to identify the elemental and biological composition of particles;
4. To use environmental chamber exposure studies to develop a protocol for monitoring pulmonary inflammation impacts of aerosol particulates identified from the particle collectors.

• The state of California is responsible for implementing and paying for environmental mitigation projects
• The Colorado River flows through multiple states and countries--all have a stake in extra-local actions

New and Alamo Rivers - transboundary movement

• Investors who left in the first half of the 20th century
• Residents who remained in the area (highly Latinx)
• Labor exploitation, especially of immigrants through programs like the Bracero program
• Indigenous groups - especially the Torres Martinez, 40% of whose land is underneath the Salton Sea
• Agriculture
• Historically not identified as an unwanted land use, which allowed farmers to get away with more than other industries

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.