Families in Southern California continue to manage the effects of the January 2025 fires. Pediatric patients are experiencing medical and psychological impacts due to fire damage. Social drivers of health, such as environmental protections, socio-economic factors, and racial discrimination, influence community recovery. When assessing for toxins and developing policies to enhance community resilience, children should be considered a priority.
Community air monitoring has expanded rapidly over the past decade in response to persistent environmental injustices and the limitations of regulatory monitoring networks, which often fail to capture localized pollution burdens in overburdened communities. While low-cost particle sensors have improved spatial coverage, communities still lack access to tools capable of measuring the chemical composition of particulate matter and identifying sources of air pollution. This study describes the improvement and community integration of the Toxic-Metal Aerosol Real-Time Analyzer (TARTA), an air quality instrument designed to quantify multiple metal species in near real time. Over several years of field testing, TARTA has been adapted from a laboratory prototype into a field-ready tool that can be safely operated and maintained by trained technicians from community-based organizations (CBOs), with major enhancements to usability, software functionality, and mechanical robustness. Building on this foundation, TARTA was integrated into the Toxic Metals Monitoring Regional Network (ToMMoRW), a collaborative effort between San Diego State University, the University of California, Davis, and CBOs in California. As the initial phase of ToMMoRW, we organized a 3-day, hands-on training workshop to prepare technicians from CBOs to assemble, operate, and troubleshoot TARTAs, emphasizing colearning, confidence building, and shared ownership of monitoring capacity. This study demonstrates how advanced air-monitoring technologies can be made truly community-operable when technical redesign is paired with structured training, streamlined data management, and collaborative field integration. Our approach provides a replicable model for developing community-driven monitoring systems that can support ongoing environmental health protection.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies are increasingly promoted as essential for mitigating global climate change. However, their implementation often lacks transparency and local engagement. This article explores community resistance to a proposed CCS project, Coda Terminal, in Hafnarfj & ouml;r & eth;ur, Iceland, focusing on issues of procedural justice and community consultation. The study draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between May 2024 and February 2025, including 13 in-depth interviews, participant observation at town hall meetings, and monitoring of a Facebook group used for grassroots mobilization. Interviews were thematically analyzed to identify patterns in how residents experienced the planning and consultation process. Findings indicate that local opposition was driven less by CCS technology itself than by widespread dissatisfaction with how the project was introduced and approved. Key concerns included lack of transparency, exclusion from decision-making processes, and perceptions of top-down governance. Grassroots mobilization, especially through social media, enabled residents to assert collective agency and demand democratic accountability. The Coda Terminal case highlights how procedural injustice can emerge even in affluent, democratic contexts when climate technologies are introduced without adequate public consultation. Resistance took the form of "refusal," challenging the legitimacy of imposed decisions and reframing climate governance as a democratic concern. Technological legitimacy alone is insufficient for successful climate action. Climate interventions must also be democratically legitimate and procedurally just. CCS projects must be developed with transparent, inclusive, and participatory processes. The case underscores that procedural justice is not optional but foundational to the long-term viability of climate solutions.
Background: Climate change disproportionately harms low-income and racialized communities, deepening structural health inequities. Public health nurses (PHNs) collaborate with community-based organizations (CBOs) to advance climate justice through education, advocacy, and community organizing. While these partnerships are vital to equity-focused environmental work, little is known about their outcomes. Methods: We conducted a secondary qualitative analysis in 2024 using interview and photovoice data collected in 2022–2023 with PHNs and CBO representatives. A logic model framework guided the analysis of short-term (learning), medium-term (actions), and long-term (social determinant) outcomes. Results: Thirteen participants from eight PHN-CBO partnerships across six U.S. states focused on climate justice in low-income or racialized communities. They reported short-term outcomes like increased environmental awareness, practical skills, and trust in PHNs. Medium-term outcomes included better food access, social capital, grassroots organizing, and regulatory engagement. Barriers to long-term outcomes cited were institutional constraints, systemic injustice, and limitations within public health and academic systems. Discussion: PHN-CBO partnerships yield meaningful short- and medium-term climate justice outcomes. However, sustained progress is impeded by structural and institutional barriers. Transforming public health systems to prioritize community partnership, long-term investment, and climate justice leadership will be essential to advancing more equitable and ecologically resilient futures. Conclusion: To achieve lasting impact, public health systems must invest in relational infrastructure, strengthen organizational capacity, and address institutional barriers. Research and policy efforts should focus on the governance, funding, and leadership structures that shape climate justice capacity. These PHN-CBO partnerships support a more relational, equity-oriented vision of planetary health.
The development, implementation, and enforcement of regulations to address environmental burdens are key to achieving environmental justice (EJ). The participation of all people, particularly those experiencing environmental harms, in cocreating environmental regulations is termed procedural EJ. To date, scant attention has been paid to the involvement of laypeople in environmental enforcement, thereby potentially impeding realization of procedural EJ. I turn to New York City (NYC) to examine how laypeople are included in air pollution enforcement. In NYC, as elsewhere, air pollution is a major public health and EJ issue. To enforce the city’s Air Code, the Citizens Air Complaint Program (CACP) permits laypeople to report commercial vehicles for idling in excess of the legal limit. Lay complainants receive one-quarter of each paid fine. The number of idling summonses initiated by laypeople increased from 9,070 reports in 2019 to 124,330 in 2024. The CACP’s involvement of laypeople in environmental enforcement of air pollution is laudable and should be replicated. However, several important barriers exist that prevent broader participation in the program, thereby directly inhibiting the realization of procedural EJ. I highlight four dimensions of the CACP—bureaucracy and transparency, technical, digital literacy, and temporal—that limit its ability to realize air pollution producer accountability.
Across the United States, environmental hazards differentially burden low-wealth communities of color due to institutionalized racism and discriminatory practices in zoning, land use, and community development. This is observed in the predominantly African American City of Uniontown, Alabama. Community members in Uniontown have long complained of poor health conditions associated with local operations of the Arrowhead Landfill, the Southeastern Cheese Corporation cheese processing plant, and the Harvest Select catfish processing facility. From March-July 2019, local residents were trained in the use of real-time low-cost PurpleAir sensors for monitoring ambient air pollution. Baseline data on fine particulate matter (PM2.5) were collected. The daily average PM2.5 concentrations ranged from 1.39 to 24.0 mu g/m(3). An Analysis of Variance and post hoc Tukey's Honest Significant Difference test were performed to compare the average daily PM2.5 concentrations in the five regions of Uniontown (divided into a control area, east downtown, west downtown, landfill, and sprayfield). The average daily PM2.5 concentration in the five regions ranged from 4.76 mu g/m(3) (control and sprayfield) to 5.49 mu g/m(3) (landfill). Although these were below the daily and annual standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency, the levels at the landfill were above the more protective WHO annual standards, suggesting a need for an intervention. Overall, this study provided baseline PM2.5 concentrations that will be used to assess the effectiveness of mitigation efforts that can be taken by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.
In the past decade, as environmental justice activist-scholars have engaged with critical social theories including the Black Radical Tradition, decolonial scholarship, urban political ecologies, and abolitionist thinking, they have debated whether the movement’s longstanding state-focused strategies can truly bring about a just and sustainable future. In the context of this debate, as well as the Trump administration’s evisceration of environmental and EJ regulations, this article investigates how state funding has affected climate justice advocacy in Stockton, California. Stockton is in many ways typical of environmental justice communities: racially diverse, working class, and facing multiple forms of toxicity and climate precarity. I argue that, in a region generally ignored by philanthropy, state funding has galvanized community-based climate justice advocacy, bringing organizations focused on kindred social justice issues into the climate space, drawing national organizations to the region, and providing opportunities for paid work in advocacy and decarbonization. This has led to substantial community engagement as well as tangible results. However, although this funding has become essential to implement just and sustainable alternatives, it cannot be used to oppose new, dangerous land uses. Thus, state funding provides some mitigation and improves local green infrastructure amid worsening environmental and climate conditions. And yet, by raising organizational capacity, providing tangible, observable benefits, and engaging thousands of local residents, Stockton’s past decade of climate justice advocacy may lay the groundwork for future movement building.
Background: Soil lead (Pb) contamination remains a persistent yet underestimated health concern, particularly in urban school gardens where young people learn and play. Although much attention has been given to lead in paint and water, far less is known about soil lead and disparities in pollution within school soils. Methods: This study analyzed soil lead concentrations in 31 Brooklyn, NY public schools with active garden programs. Garden and adjacent school ground soil samples were analyzed using X-ray fluorescence. Spatial proximity to polluting sources was mapped using geostatistical analysis of 306 known environmental hazard sites. Demographic data, soil management surveys, and statistical models assessed associations between soil lead, pollution proximity, and school characteristics. Results: Of the soil samples, 42% exceeded the minimum Environmental Protection Agency’s screening level for child-accessible soils near known lead sources (100 ppm). Garden soils exhibited lower average lead concentrations than adjacent school grounds (74 mg/kg standard deviation (SD) 62 and 147 mg/kg SD 86, respectively), suggesting the implementation of effective lead mitigation practices, including using raised beds and imported soils; however, this implementation varied across schools. In addition, schools with higher proportions of Black, Hispanic/Latin American, or low-income students were found to be located closer to higher numbers of environmental hazard sites. Discussion: Historical pollution and structural inequalities intersect within urban school environments, replicating other known manifestations of spatial inequality. School gardens exhibit varying degrees of precautionary soil management, raising concerns about equitable implementation of soil safety practices in cities with complex pollution landscapes. Conclusion: Targeted support, sustained management and monitoring, and policy frameworks are needed to ensure that school gardens exist as safe and equitable sites for all students.
With data from the U.S. General Social Survey linked with regional environmental quality data this article considers the individual demand for environmental quality as measured by stated preferences, relative to its supply, to determine if race/ethnicity matter for the demand and supply of environmental quality and environmental justice. Parameter estimates reveal that relative to Whites, the distribution of environmental quality is unjust for African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Indians, Southeast Asians and other race. This suggests that as race/ethnicity conditions the distribution of environmental justice, there remains an unmet demand for environmental quality in the United States among non-Whites, As such, environmental policy interventions that acknowledge the intersection of race/ethnicity, civil rights, and environmental-such as the Environmental Protection Agency equity action plan & horbar;are well-motivated.
Energy transition is often framed as a problem of cost; it is, more fundamentally, a problem of allocation and institutional design under real resource constraints. Decarbonization advances while deprivation persists, revealing a structural tension between ecological ambition and distributive order. Such imbalance erodes legitimacy, weakens compliance, and destabilizes reform. This article advances a justice-centered framework in which sustainability endures only when fairness disciplines allocation, secures credibility, and anchors the institutional conditions for durable transition.
Environmental justice (EJ) is becoming recognized as involving not only the governance of air, water, and land but also as a part of everyday life systems that create vulnerability to danger, such as food systems. The food regimes created by industry in the Global South are particularly implicated as an understudied intersection between environmental destruction, noncommunicable diseases, and social inequality; here, the focus will be on refined sugar within these food systems as a site of socially normalized environmental injustice. Building on stories centered around communities in India, this research examines how the cultivation of sugarcane and sugar production lead to environmental destruction through intensive monoculture farming practices, pollution, and exploitative working conditions, whereas the prevalence and marketing of sugar have negative health impacts. This article claims that the damage done to people’s health through their diets is inseparable from inadequate environmental, agricultural, and food policies. Marginalized groups, including rural areas and poor families, suffer more environmental and dietary consequences than other social groups, although having little say in decision-making procedures. Instead of perceiving the consumption of processed sugar to be purely an individual decision, this article offers an approach grounded in food systems that considers justice as the core principle guiding this effort. The connection made between the regulation of the environment, the policy concerning health, and social protection provides a platform for achieving food justice and health equity. In the context of the EJ 2076 framework, this article proposes that for the next several decades, the concept of EJ will necessarily involve addressing preventable harms that are perpetuated by everyday practices like food systems.
New Mexico's Priority Climate Action Plan (2024) positions the state as a national leader in climate mitigation and energy transition under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Pollution Reduction Grant framework. Yet questions remain about who truly benefits from this transition and how justice, power, and inclusion are embedded in the governance process. This article critically examines New Mexico's climate governance through an environmental justice lens, exploring how state priorities align with equity commitments, community participation, and fair distribution of benefits and burdens. Drawing on a qualitative review of the plan, complementary policy documents, and current scholarship on just transitions, the analysis identifies both progress and persistent gaps. Although New Mexico integrates equity language and targets disadvantaged communities, implementation mechanisms remain uneven and vulnerable to political and economic influence. The article argues that realizing a just climate transition requires transparent decision-making, localized engagement, and long-term capacity building within frontline communities. By situating New Mexico's approach within the broader U.S. discourse on environmental justice and state-led decarbonization, this review contributes to understanding how subnational climate policies can either reinforce or transform existing inequalities, offering insights for other states pursuing equitable climate action.
Background: Yucatan, Mexico, has experienced an expansion of swine concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). These operations produce large quantities of concentrated waste that may contaminate surrounding areas and infiltrate surface and groundwater. This pilot study explored the viability of swine fecal contamination testing across several impacted communities and was conducted to build local technical capacity and to address community complaints against the industry. Methods: Community and study team members collected well, surface, cenote (natural underground reservoir), and tap water samples in nine and settled dust samples from road signs, apiaries, and outdoor home surfaces in three Mayan communities in Yucatan. Samples were tested for the presence of the swine fecal source tracking marker Pig-2-Bac by quantitative PCR. Results: Challenges in shipping from Yucatan, Mexico, to Baltimore, USA, led to prolonged holding times of samples under suboptimal storage conditions. Nonetheless, Pig-2-Bac was detected in 4/21 well, 0/6 cenote, 0/1 tap, and 1/7 surface water samples. Among the settled dust samples, 1/2 road sign, 0/38 apiary, and 0/9 household surfaces tested positive for Pig-2-Bac, providing preliminary evidence of contamination of water and outdoor surfaces with swine fecal waste in multiple communities. Conclusion: Despite limitations in sample storage conditions, Pig-2-Bac was detected in multiple communities and media. These and future data can support indigenous Mayan communities and affected residents that are engaged in lawsuits against the CAFO industry. Capacity building and technological transfer of procedures to perform microbial source tracking would improve communities' ability to expeditiously test environmental samples for pig fecal contamination.
Wind energy has expanded rapidly in Brazil in recent years, accounting for 15.2% of national electricity generation in 2023. This growth, however, has been accompanied by socioenvironmental conflicts in communities located near wind farms, including livelihood disruptions, forced displacement, and health impacts. Using national census data and georeferenced information on existing and planned wind farms, we examined the racial composition of census tracts hosting these facilities across six states in Brazil's Northeast Region, which concentrates 91% of the country's wind power capacity. Our analysis shows that between 56% and 73% of these census tracts, depending on the state, have proportions of racialized groups (Black, Brown, and Indigenous populations) above their respective municipal averages. These findings underscore the need to improve public participation and community consultation processes for wind energy projects in Brazil in order to mitigate the reproduction of structural racism in the sector.
Introduction: The Justice40 initiative was introduced in 2021 to ensure that at least 40% of U.S. federal investments for environmental, energy, housing, and workforce development initiatives are allocated to disadvantaged communities. The Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) was developed to define disadvantaged communities to meet this goal. However, dichotomous community classification (disadvantaged vs. not) overlooks broad differences in community type, need, and depth of burdens. Methods: The authors conducted an assessment of the CEJST dataset within the contiguous United States to identify distinct profiles of community risk and spatial clustering. They assessed the extent of variation of demographic, environmental, and health disparities by comparing quartiles of the total number of Justice40 burden threshold criteria met in each U.S. census tract. The authors then conducted a principal component analysis to identify spatially co-occurring burdens and demographics across urban and rural Justice40 communities. Results: At least one Justice40 threshold burden criteria was met by 25,714 census tracts. There were distinct, spatially clustered groupings of community risks centered on eight individual or co-occurring components of socioeconomics, health and minority statuses, environmental burdens, age structures, and climate vulnerabilities. Urban and rural groupings were generally similar but differed by distribution across the United States. Discussion: Although Justice40 may not continue, federal funding to benefit burdened and climate-vulnerable communities should be focused on areas with the greatest need. With the authors' nationwide findings, subsequent local approaches can be tailored to spatial groupings of co-occurring community characteristics and burdens. Data-driven resource delivery in collaboration with disadvantaged communities could enhance the benefits of future investments.
Many individuals are exposed to multiple toxic chemicals that contribute to the same adverse health impacts. However, these co-exposures and community vulnerability to exposures are not often considered in chemical assessments and regulations. In this study, we develop an approach to identify the potential co-exposures of chemicals causing similar adverse health effects and community vulnerability where these exposures occur. Co-releases of toxic chemical pairs in the same health endpoint groups were assessed from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Comparative impacts from toxic chemical releases that occur in overburdened communities were conducted using the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine if the magnitude of releases was significantly different between facilities releasing one or multiple chemicals, and ANOVAs with post hoc Tukey's Honestly Significant Difference were performed to determine if CVI scores were significantly different depending on endpoint group or chemicals. This study found the occurrence of TRI co-releases of chemical pairs causing similar health effects ranges from 0% to 72%, with high co-releases in similar volatile organic compounds and metals. Facilities releasing multiple chemicals released statistically significantly higher amounts of these chemicals from 2017 to 2022 than facilities that release only one chemical-over 285,000 lbs. more on average (p < 0.0001). Additionally, chemicals such as vinyl chloride and hexachlorobutadiene are released frequently in more vulnerable communities, with the CVI of communities near these chemical-releasing facilities being 8%-16% greater on average. This study provides an approach for identifying toxic chemical co-releases and community vulnerability where chemicals are released, which can aid state and federal agencies in prioritizing chemicals for assessment and regulation based on their potential for cumulative risks in overburdened communities, scoping for cumulative risk assessments, and identifying opportunities for co-benefits to at-risk communities.
Background: This article amplifies the voices of African Nova Scotians in the south end of Shelburne in Nova Scotia, Canada, who have long been concerned about the social and health effects of the Shelburne Town Dump near their community. Methods: The study used an interpretive narrative methodology to collect and analyze the data. A total of 39 African Nova Scotian residents in the south end of Shelburne, Nova Scotia, Canada, participated in interviews and focus groups. Sixteen people participated in interviews, and 23 people participated in focus groups. Results: Although the dump was initially perceived as a childhood playground when they were children, as well as a site where their parents would retrieve items to address economic shortfalls, today residents view the dump as the main source of high rates of cancer in the community and as a case study of environmental racism in Canada. Discussion: The experiences shared by participants about the health effects of the dump align with existing literature on hazardous chemicals emitted by dumps. Participants discussed their normalization of the dump, intersectional discrimination, the lack of response by their Town Council and their recommendations for addressing these issues. Conclusion: A new environmental justice law in Canada offers an opportunity for the first time for government to assess, address, and prevent environmental racism and provide compensation for communities that have been harmed. It will involve the engagement of impacted communities in the development of an environmental policy.
Introduction: Environmental justice mapping tools have been developed by governmental agencies to provide clear information on the spatial distribution of socio-environmental exposures and the distribution of risk. EJScreen, the nationwide tool created by the Environmental Protection Agency to make such data available, was taken offline by the current administration in February 2025. We explored whether remaining geographic risk tools may be effective in evaluating associations with respiratory disease and compared them with one another. Methods: County-level respiratory disease measures selected for this study include prepandemic asthma, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) hospitalization rates, as well as 2021 COVID-19 mortality rates. Data were regressed using a binary indicator of whether the county meets the definition of a disproportionately impacted community used by Colorado EnviroScreen. Rate ratios and 95% confidence intervals were estimated. Comparability with EnviroScreen was explored for the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI). Results: Higher hospitalization rates for asthma and influenza were identified in counties meeting the criteria for disproportionately impacted communities. Point estimates for RSV hospitalization and COVID-19 mortality were also higher, though not statistically significant. The SVI was found slightly more collinear with EnviroScreen than the CVI with EnviroScreen, although both were highly correlated. Conclusion: Remaining geographic risk tools may aid policymakers and public health agencies in decision-making and resource allocation for respiratory disease, guiding targeted public health campaigns such as mobile vaccination clinics, messaging campaigns, and available testing for infectious respiratory disease in burdened regions.
Environmental justice is closely related to corrective justice, procedural justice, and meaningful public participation. Effective communication of research-based evidence is critical but often overlooked in environmental decision-making processes. This article examines how scientific research findings frequently fail to influence policy decisions due to communication barriers between researchers, communities, and decision-makers. We propose that effective science communication strategies, including the accessible translation of complex findings into formats understandable to diverse stakeholders, can bridge this gap. This article advocates for adopting journalistic communication styles, strengthening evidence-based arguments, and strategically using mass media channels as specific approaches to simultaneously motivate greater public participation in decision-making processes although making scientific evidence more accessible and compelling for policymakers.
This study examines spatial inequities in the siting of utility-scale solar facilities in North Carolina from 2012 to 2023. Median housing value, distances to transmission lines, distance to roads, and solar irradiance are incorporated to generate scores and conduct matching for controlling siting suitability considerations. Logistic regression analyses indicate that the facilities are more likely to be located in Census Tracts with lower educational attainment and higher disability rates. This result may imply that the associations between socio-economic factors and utility-scale solar facilities siting remain statistically significant even after accounting for siting suitability considerations. This study offers an evidence-based planning perspective to improve solar energy deployment planning and evaluation.
