Fluoride Action Network

Report Documents Black, Latino, Low Income Communities at Higher Risk for Chemical Catastrophe

Source: HuntingtonnNews.net | January 16th, 2015
Industry type: Chemical Industry

Note from FAN: The top 10 chemicals in this report include hydrofluoric acid.  In estimating exposure to fluoride It is important to include air emissions of fluoride-containing chemicals as well as fluoride levels in food,

Environmental Justice and Health Alliance (EJHA), a national coalition of grassroots groups working on toxic chemical exposures that impact communities of color, released a new report in collaboration with the Center for Effective Government (CEG) and Coming Clean. The report – Who’s in Danger? A Demographic Analysis of Chemical Disaster Vulnerability Zones – uses data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Census to demonstrate an association between lower average housing values, incomes, and education levels, and greater Black, Latino, and low-income populations living within chemical disaster “vulnerability zones” of 3,433 industrial facilities across the U.S. The danger is much greater for Black & Latino communities than for the U.S. as a whole – the very definition of an unequal or disproportionate danger.

“How can it be that since 1987, when the issue was first researched and published in Toxic Wastes and Race, and two decades later in 2007 in Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty, that people of color today are more, not less, in harm’s way from toxic chemicals and chemical catastrophe 27 years later?” asks Robert Bullard, PhD, Dean at the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs, Texas Southern University in the Houston area. “This is one of the most urgent human rights and civil rights issues of our times, and this new report documents this tragic fact.”

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