Growing Smarter: Achieving Healthy and Sustainable Communities Through Environmental Justice

The Environmental Justice Movement in the U.S. has always emphasized prevention and precaution—taking on issues ranging from smart growth, transportation equity, food security, parks and green access, green jobs and green careers, clean and renewable energy, and climate justice. Communities that ensure access to quality services, that are designed to promote good physical and psychological well being, and that are protective of the natural and physical environment, are essential for health equity. Healthy places and healthy people are highly correlated. More than 100 studies now link racism to worse health and more than 200 environmental studies have shown race and class disparities. The poorest of the poor have the worst health and live in the most degraded environments. Race maps closely with pollution, vulnerability, and poor health. People of color make up the majority (56%) of those living in neighborhoods within two miles of the nation's commercial hazardous waste facilities, over two-thirds (69%) in neighborhoods with clustered facilities. African Americans in 19 states, Latinos in 12 states, and Asians in 7 states were more than twice as likely as whites to live in neighborhoods where pollution poses the greatest health danger. People of color bear more than half of the human health impacts from the top toxic air releases from the top ten companies on the nation's “Toxic 100 Industrial Polluters.” Environmental justice groups are working with government officials, planners, policy makers, and other practitioners to reshape the built environment to improve individual and community health outcomes.