Fighting Environmental Injustice Essays

Fighting Environmental Injustice Essays Fighting Environmental Injustice Essay Fighting Environmental Injustice Essay Fighting Environmental Injustice Crystal Rainey SCI 207 Dependence of Man on the Environment Richard Hoagland March 30, 2011 Fighting Environmental Injustice Our envirment has been poorly treated by humans for years. It should be everyones job to help take care of our enviroment. Taking care of our enviroment and trying to make our environment healthier is a big job and is something everyone care partake in, but who fights for enviromental injustice. The Environmental Protection Agency or EPA you could say is the main fighter when it comes to fighting for environmental Injustice but are they doing enough and should they be doing more? I think that the EPA should be doing more for fighting for environmental injustice but being that the EPA is an government agency could their view have become distorted by finantional gain. I will be demastrighting what the epa was done for enviromental injustice but more importanly what they are not doing. In 1990 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published Envi- ronmental Equity: Reducing Risks for All Communities, (Easton, T. 2008)a repost that acknowledged the need to pay attention to many of the concerns raised by environmental justice activists. At the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, a set of principles of Environmental Justice was widely dis- cussed. In 1993 the EPA opened an Office of Environmental Equity (now the Office of Environmental Justice) with plans for cleaning up sites in several poor communities. In February 1994 President Bill Clinton made environ- mental justice a national priority with an executive order. Since then, many complaints of environmental discrimination have been filed with the EPA under Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964; and in March 1998 the EPA issued guidelines for investigating those complaints. : However, in April 2001 the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that individuals cannot sue states by charging that federally funded policies unintentionally violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 2009 the EPA administered the Recovery act( Recovery Act, 2009) The Recovery Act provides $7. 22 billion for specific programs administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Program-Specific Recovery Act Plans accompany thisdocument and represent the heart of EPA’s contribution to the nation’s economic stimulus. The six Program Plans are: Clean water revolving fund recovery act plan:Investing in construction of water quality protection and wastewater treatment infrastructure. , Drinking water state revoling fund recovery act plan: Ensuring clean drinking water, Brownfields Recovery Act plan : Cleaning up former industrial sites for newcommercial or community use, and training and placing persons in environmental careers. Superfund Recovery Act:Cleaning up uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. Clean diesel: Supporting the use, development, and commercialization of strategies to reduce diesel emissions. The EPA may be on to something but its not having an effect on everyone. There are still hazardous waste, unclean water and many many things that are not accomplished. For example we have people to come pick our trash up but no one to pick up our recycable, so why make that extra trip when we can just throw everything in with the trash. This is what I think apart of the EPAs jobs they should make these kind of things more assessable for people. I think this would make people want to contribute more. The Epa also has been on board of the clean air act Prior to 1990, the Clean Air Act required EPA to set standards for each toxic air pollutant individually, (Environmental Protection Agency,2007) based on its particular health risks. This approach proved difficult and minimally effective at reducing emissions. As a result, when amending the Clean Air Act in 1990, Congress directed EPA to use a technology-based and performance-based approach to significantly reduce emissions of air toxics from major sources of air pollution, followed by a risk-based approach to address any remaining, or residual, risks. Under the technology-based approach, EPA develops standards for controlling the routine emissions of air toxics from each major type of facility within an industry group or source category. These standards known as maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards are based on emissions levels that are already being achieved by the better-controlled and lower-emitting sources in an industry. This approach assures citizens nationwide that each major source of toxic air pollution will be required to employ effective measures to limit its emissions. Also, this approach provides a level economic playing field by ensuring that facilities that employ cleaner processes and good emission controls are not disadvantaged relative to competitors with poorer controls. So far sould like the EPA is doing a job but what are some of the problems the EPA is not paying closer acattention to and are these problems effecting our enviroment? A hudge problem is that of monitoring and enforcement of the nations environmental regulations. This could mean many things for example a company is not being monitored for how much toxons that are being put into the air. Restuccia, A. 2011)The Environmental Protection Agency is not doing a good enough job monitoring the potential public health hazards associated with a controversial natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or â€Å"fracking. Fracking in which water, sand and chemicals are injected into the ground to release valuable natural gas deposits – is a major drilling techni que for accessing the country’s massive shale gas reserves. But environmentalists have long raised concerns that the process pollutes drinking water and harms the enviroment. EPA is in the process of conducting a study on the health effects of fracking. But a recent invertigative series by the new york time found that fracking wastewater has been released into waterways withoutbeing teated for radioactive isotopes. The investigation also found that federal scientists concerns about fracking have been removed from key EPA documents on the issue. This is unacceptable, anything that could have a effect on human health needs attention. By the EPA doing this they are not doing their job. These toxions the EPA has resting in their hands even involve the food we eat (Resnik,B. D Portier. C. 2005) . Faced with higafety standards for a variety of chemicals, some pesticide companies decided to conduct experiments on human subjects to produce data that they hoped would convince the U. S. EPA to lower the interspecies safety factor. From 1996 to 2004, the U. S. EPA received 20 studies from private companies providing human dosing data on pesticide toxicity. However, a Law that was intended to provide additional safety protection for children had the unintended effect of encouraging some companies to test toxic compounds on human beings to avoid the regulatory impact of the law. So not only were these people testing on other humans they were putting toxions in the air. There are many strategies we are now using to help with minimizing toxic effects (Cunningham Cunningham, 2008) A fundamental concept in toxicology is that every material can be poisonous under some conditions, but most chemicals have a safe level or threshold below which their effects are undetectable or insignificant. Each of us consumes lethal doses of many chemicals. over the course of a lifetime. One hundred cups of strong coffee, for instance, contain a lethal dose of caffeine. Similarly, 100 aspi- rin tablets, 10 kg (22 lbs) of spinach or rhubarb, or a liter of alco- hol would be deadly if consumed all at once. Taken in small doses, however, most toxins can be broken down or excreted before they do much harm. Furthermore, the damage they cause can be repaired. Sometimes, however, mechanisms that protect us from one type of toxin or at one stage in the life cycle become deleteri- ous with another substance or in another stage of development. Let’s look at how these processes help protect us from harmful substances, as well as how they can go awry. With most things there is going to be a reaction. Most things put off some type of toxon. Being that most of them are at a human level of saftey does not mean we should be careless. While the EPA seems to be doing their job, seems that they are missing some big issues that need to be address. I still think that taking care of our enviroment is a big job and it should be everyones job. I think that the job of the EPA is to try to stay on top of making sure that if people are not doing things they should not be doing when it comes to our enviroment they should be punished. People that do not go by the guidelines for the EPA should be punished and not just a slap on the hand. This is not a game everytime these companies produce more toxions then they should or dump waste into waters. It is not just effecting one person. This type of behavior effects everyone but it still seems whenever money is involved anything goes. This could be how people are getting away with doing these acts and nothing is being done. We have to face that when money in envolved many things get passed and this very well could be happening because a lot of these companies could be making millions even billions. It would be nothing for the EPA to get paid off to keep out of EPA reports. Its really a shame that money has become even more important then protecting the enviroment. Resources Easton, T. (2008) Taking sides: Clashing views on controversial envirmental issues. (Custon 13th(. New York: McGraw-Hill Environmental Protection Agency(2007) Taken Toxics out of the air. http://epa. gov/air/oaqps/takingtoxics/p1. html Restuccia, A. (2011) EPA not doing good enough job monitoring. http://thehill. com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/147701-house-democrat-epa-not-doing-a-good-enough-job-monitoring-fracking Resnik,B. D. Portier. C. (2005) Pesticides Testing on Human subjects. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/pmc/articles/PMC1257640/ Cunningham, W. P. , Cunningham, M. A. (2009). Questions for baloney detection. In Principles of enviromental science.