ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE

In the United States, poor people and people of color experience higher cancer rates, asthma rates, mortality
rates, and overall poorer health than their affluent and white counterparts. The Environmental Justice Movement
(EJM) links these health disparities to higher concentrations of environmental pollution sources in these
communities. This disproportionate exposure to environmental harms in low-income, minority communities is
known as “environmental injustice.” Since the EJM’s inception in the 1960s, empirical evidence of environmental
injustice along racial and socioeconomic lines has been produced time and again. Vulnerable populations,
however, continue to bear a disproportionate burden of society’s environmental harms, as illustrated in the recent
water crises in Flint, Michigan, and St. Joseph, Louisiana.

A commitment to eradicating environmental injustice requires a nuanced understanding of its causes. EJM activists
often highlight corporations’ role in creating environmental injustices, arguing that firms actively discriminate
against racial minorities when making decisions about where pollution sources will be placed. More recently,
however, many in the movement have recognized the causal complexity of environmental injustice.

Disentangling the causes of environmental injustice presents an empirical problem common in social science: it
can be nearly impossible to isolate causal variables when it comes to human phenomena. Attempting to address
this problem, researchers have developed innovative methodologies to test various theories of causation for
environmental injustices. While it is clear that discriminatory siting plays a role, other causes may help explain
both the behavior of firms and the disparate environmental harms experienced by low-income populations and
minorities: Regulators may enforce environmental laws and regulations unequally, affected communities may lack
political power, and market dynamics may drive both businesses and residents to low-cost real estate. It is
important to understand the contribution of each of these to environmental injustice because they may call for
different policy responses.