Community-Based Environmental Justice Research Models

• In Event: Environmental Justice Case Studies from the Past and Around the World

Abstract

In May 2000, NEJAC members in Atlanta, Georgia listened to panelists discuss community-based environmental health research. Mohawk women’s health advocate and founder of Akwesasne Task Force On The Environment (ATFE), Katsi Cook described the disproportionate effects of environmental pollutants in her community. Beginning in the 1950s, St. Lawrence–FDR Power Project proved cheap hydroelectric power to attract industries to the area and since polluted waters, land, and air. As a result, the Akwesasne community has encountered the worst pollutants in the Great Lakes becoming one of forty-three Areas of Concern (AOC). Due to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) releases into St. Lawrence River the toxins have endangered Mohawk subsistence lifestyles and cultural practices. Cook suggested the need to find solutions to health problems by designing community-based environmental health models. Beginning in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the environmental justice movement found strength among low-income people of color communities facing serious threats from hazardous wastes and other toxic material. The Mohawk Akwesasne are an important to the grassroots environmental justice movement, but they are also important for applying new public health research models to promote active community engagement in all aspects of the research process. Using community-based health research models, community members enlisted federal funds and joined academics to discover toxic contamination levels in human beings. This paper is a retelling of an alternative parallel strand to the environmental justice movement to uncover the efforts of environmental justice activists, government agencies, and academics who worked together to improve community-based health research models and prevent and interrupt environmental threat from toxic chemicals. Many are familiar with the environmental justice movement strand. However, this narrative is about a forgotten strand that shows the power given to non-expert communities through the translation of complex PCB scientific information to create solutions using community-based participatory research.

Author

• Mark M Chambers, Stony Brook University