EiJ Hazard: PFAS
FOR ECOGOVLAB/CCEJP CURRICULUM: Use this as a research resource during 11th and 12th Grade Lesson 2 on Hazards.
FOR ECOGOVLAB/CCEJP CURRICULUM: Use this as a research resource during 11th and 12th Grade Lesson 2 on Hazards.
I hope to be involved in projects that aim to gather scientific evidence to inform environmental decision making and advocate for greater equity and justice in environmental governance. Through this work, I hope to learn the skills needed to engage in community based research and leverage community knowledge as expert knowledge. In my department, things are often siloed and issues are only seen through one perspective. I really want to gain more experience in collaborating with a wide array of stakeholders to come up with approaches to mitigate the environmental injustices experienced in under-resourced communities.
Emergency response is not directly addressed in this article but the conditions and forms of violence that are discussed in the article that emergency responders have been documented with facing, effects the way they work and respond to calls.
“In all of them, we find that health experts, policy advocates, and politicians have competing visions about how to characterize the problem of biosecurity and about what constitutes the most appropriate response.”
“even experts who understand that social issues such as poverty and deteriorating health infrastructure are critical determinants of disease risk may propose narrower technical measures given the difficulty of implementing more ambitious schemes.”
“They suggest that the uncertainties endemic to contemporary biosecurity threats such as avian flu point to the need to develop new ways of living with and managing the possibility of outbreaks that are more nuanced than current attempts to achieve absolute security at the expense of local wellbeing.”
Financially they have to secure funding. They rely on private donations that may not always be consistent. They also have to maintain certified and experienced medical staff to provide care.. Finally the security and safety of their staff when they are in areas of conflict or high violence.
The Red Cross is seen as a positive in the public eye as a positive organization for the most part; however, there has been some negative news articles.
A GoogleDoc link to a bibliogrpahy about PFAS in Santa Ana and community-led responses