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Environmental Inequality in Postwar America

The Craft of Research

The Craft of Research
Wayne C. Booth et. al. 4th edition. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2016.Rutgers-restricted Access

Milestones

Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation With Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities
In 1983, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined the correlation between the location of hazardous waste landfills and the racial and economic status of the surrounding communities in eight southeastern states. The GAO found that African Americans made up the majority of the population in three of the four communities where the region's four offsite hazardous waste landfills were located. At least 26 percent of the population in these communities had an income below the poverty level.
Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites
United Church of Christ, Commission for Racial Justice, 1987.
Documented that three out of five African Americans live in communities with abandoned toxic waste sites. Available?
Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: 1987-2007: Grassroots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism in the United States
Found that 20 years after the release of the original Toxic Wastes report, significant racial and socioeconomic disparities persist in the distribution of commercial hazardous waste facilities. Available?
The Principles of Environmental Justice (EJ)
Principles developed by delegates at the First National People Of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, held in Washington, DC, in October of 1991.

The Federal Government's Response

Failed Promises: Evaluating the Federal Government's Response to Environmental Justice
David M. Konisky, editor. Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 2015.
Chapters focus on federal environmental justice policy as it has been carried out over the past two decades, with an emphasis on the performance of the Environmental Protection Agency. Rutgers-restricted access
Federal Highway Administration: Environmental Justice
History, legislation, data tools, etc.
U.S. Department of Transportation Environmental Justice Strategy
November 15, 2016.
Assessing and Managing the Ecological Impacts of Paved Roads
National Research Council, Committee on Ecological Impacts of Road Density, 2005. Rutgers-restricted access
Technical Guidance for Assessing Environmental Justice in Regulatory Analysis
Guidelines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Pied Piper of the Ghetto: Lyndon Johnson, Environmental Justice, and the Politics of Rat Control
Malcolm McLaughlin. Journal of Urban History 37(4), July 2011, pp 541-561.
"This article focuses on the issue of rat infestation to explore the conditions of “urban blight” that disproportionately afflicted ghetto communities in the United States during the 1960s and that represented a form of environmental inequality linked to racial marginalization and poverty." Rutgers-restricted Access

"The Forgotten Guinea Pigs"

"The Forgotten Guinea Pigs:" A Report on Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation Sustained as Result of the Nuclear Weapons Testing Program Conducted by the United States Government
Report Prepared for the Use of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, United States House of Representatives and Its Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1980.

Emporis Database

Emporis Database
Good source of basic technical data as well as images of specific buildings.