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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.

The article addresses the inequities in public health by showing how millions of tons of dust from concrete and asbestos were kicked up into the air after the tower collapses of 9/11 and was then determined to be safe per the EPA. A lawsuit was filed against the EPA on behalf of schoolchildren required to attend school in buildings near the site of the collapse and forced to breathe in so-called safe air. Emergency response is not directly addressed however plans of mandating that the EPA pay for the cleanup process are mentioned.

Emergency response is addressed in this article as mentioned above, stating how it should be the focus of disaster prepardness instead of disaster prevention. Schmid also discusses the important components necessary in an emergency response team including analysis of previous disasters and experience from disaster relief organizations like the UN, and improvisation instead of comparing one disaster to another as no two disasters are identical.