Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States"I just got mad. I couldn't breathe in my own house." —Ruth Reed, a resident of Ocala, Florida, who lives next door to a Royal Oak Charcoal factory Across the United States, thousands of people, most of them in low-income or minority communities, live next to heavily polluting industrial sites. Many of them, like Ruth Reed, reach a point at which they say "Enough is enough." After living for years with poisoned air and water, contaminated soil, and pollution-related health problems, they start to take action—organizing, speaking up, documenting the effects of pollution on their neighborhoods. In Sacrifice Zones, Steve Lerner tells the stories of twelve communities, from Brooklyn to Pensacola, that rose up to fight the industries and military bases causing disproportionately high levels of chemical pollution. He calls these low-income neighborhoods "sacrifice zones"—repurposing a Cold War term coined by U.S. government officials to designate areas contaminated with radioactive pollutants during the manufacture of nuclear weapons. And he argues that residents of a new generation of sacrifice zones, tainted with chemical pollutants, need additional regulatory protections. Studies show that poor and minority neighborhoods are more polluted than wealthier areas located farther away from heavy industry. Sacrifice Zonesgoes beyond these disheartening statistics and gives us the voices of the residents themselves. We hear from people like Margaret L. Williams, who organized her neighbors to demand relocation away from two Superfund hazardous waste sites; Hilton Kelley, who came back to his hometown to find intensified emissions from the Exxon Mobil refinery next to the housing project in which he grew up; and Laura Ward, who found technicians drilling a hole in her backyard to test groundwater for pollution from the nearby Lockheed Martin weapons plant. Sacrifice Zonesoffers compelling portraits of accidental activists who have become grassroots leaders in the struggle for environmental justice and details the successful tactics they have used on the fence line with heavy industry. |
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Contents
Community Blanketed by Black Snow from | 19 |
Health Problems near Mount Dioxin Require | 41 |
Public Housing Residents Breathe Contaminated | 73 |
Copyright | |
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activists Addyston African American Agency Air Force air pollution Army Corps asthma ATSDR base benzene breathe campaign Canales cancer cause Citgo Citizen clean cleanup contaminated soils Cossaboom County Dioxin disease dumped elevated levels emissions environmental justice Eramet ExxonMobil facilities Fallon federal fenceline communities Gambell grassroots Greenpoint groundwater hazardous waste health problems health survey heavily polluting heavy industry homes housing complex Ibid jet fuel Kelley Kelly AFB Kuhl Lanxess Lawrence Island lawsuit leukemia cluster lived located Lockheed Martin low-income manganese Marietta Midway Village military million Motiva Mount Dioxin move neighborhood neighbors Northeast Cape Ocala odor organized PAHs PCBs percent petrochemical PG&E pollution control Port Arthur protect public health refinery regulators regulatory officials releases relocation residential respiratory Royal Oak sacrifice zones samples Savoonga says soot spill Superfund Tallevast testing Texas tion told town toxic chemicals tungsten Wilma Subra Yupik
Bibliographic information
| Title | Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States Urban and industrial environments |
| Author | Steve Lerner |
| Publisher | MIT Press, 2010 |
| ISBN | 0262014408, 9780262014403 |
| Length | 346 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |