Chemical of the Month: Formaldehyde, October 2022
A digital collection for the September 2022 issue of RISE St. James' The Community Scientists: Chemical of the Month, focused on formaldehyde.
Chemical of the Month: Formaldehyde
Op-ed for October 2022 edition of RISE St. James' The Community Scientists: Chemical of the Month.
Chemical of the Month: Benzene, September 2022
A digital collection for the September 2022 issue of RISE St. James' The Community Scientists: Chemical of the Month, focused on benzene.
Chemical of the Month: Benzene
Op-ed for August 2022 edition of RISE St. James' The Community Scientists: Chemical of the Month.
Main argument
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Lee argues that EJ practice has long stagnated over an inability to properly define the concept of disproportionate (environmental and public health) impacts, but that national conversations on system racism and the development of EJ mapping tools have improved his outlook on the potential for better application of the concept of disproportionate impact. Lee identifies mapping tools (e.g. CalEnviroScreen) as a pathway for empirically based and analytically rigorous articulation and analysis of disproportionate impacts that are linked to systemic racism.
In describing the scope and nature of application of mapping tools, Baker highlights the concept of cumulative impacts (the concentration of multiple environmental, public health, and social stressors), the importance of public participation (e.g. Hoffman’s community science model), the role of redlining in creating disproportionate vulnerabilities, and the importance of integrating research into decision making processes.
Baker ultimately argues that mapping tools offer a promising opportunity for integrating research into policy decision making as part of a second generation of EJ practice. Key areas that Lee identifies as important to the continued development of more effective EJ practice include: identifying good models for quantitative studies and analysis, assembling a spectrum of different integrative approaches (to fit different contexts), connecting EJ research to policy implications, and being attentive to historical contexts and processes that produce/reproduce structural inequities.
Op-ed for August 2022 edition of The Community Scientists: Chemical of the Month, led by RISE St. James.