Environmental Health Hazards and Social Justice PDF Download

Author: Florence Margai
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136537813
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This book provides geographic perspectives and approaches for use in assessing the distribution of environmental health hazards and disease outcomes among disadvantaged population groups. Estimates suggest that about 40 per cent of the global burden of disease is attributable to exposures to biological and chemical pathogens in the physical environment. And with today's rapid rate of globalization, and these hazardous health effects are likely to increase, with low income and underrepresented communities facing even greater risks. In many places around the world, marginalized communities unwillingly serve as hosts of noxious facilities such as chemical industrial plants, extractive facilities (oil and mining) and other destructive land use activities. Others are being used as illegal dumping grounds for hazardous materials and electronic wastes resulting in air, soil and groundwater contamination. The book informs readers about the geography and emergent health risks that accompany the location of these hazards, with emphasis on vulnerable population groups. The approach is applications-oriented, illustrating the use of health data and geographic approaches to uncover the root causes, contextual factors and processes that produce contaminated environments. Case studies are drawn from the author's research in the United States and Africa, along with a literature review of related studies completed in Europe, Asia and South America. This comparative approach allows readers to better understand the manifestation of environmental hazards and inequities at different spatial scales with localized disparities evident in both developed and developing countries.

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309264146
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.

Author: Robert D. Bullard
Publisher: Avalon Publishing - (Westview Press)
ISBN: 0813344271
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
To be poor, working-class, or a person of color in the United States often means bearing a disproportionate share of the country’s environmental problems. Starting with the premise that all Americans have a basic right to live in a healthy environment, Dumping in Dixie chronicles the efforts of five African American communities, empowered by the civil rights movement, to link environmentalism with issues of social justice. In the third edition, Bullard speaks to us from the front lines of the environmental justice movement about new developments in environmental racism, different organizing strategies, and success stories in the struggle for environmental equity.

Author: Christopher H. Foreman
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815728788
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Are we environmentally victimizing, perhaps even poisoning, our minority and low-income citizens? Proponents of environmental justice assert that environmental decisionmaking pays insufficient heed to the interests of those citizens, disproportionately burdens their neighborhoods with hazardous toxins, and perpetuates an insidious environmental racism. In this critique of environmental justice advocacy, Foreman argues that it has cleared significant political hurdles but displays substantial limitations and drawbacks. Activism has yielded a presidential executive order, management reforms at the Environmental Protection Agency, and numerous local political victories. Yet the environmental justice movement is structurally and ideologically unable to generate a focused policy agenda. Ironically, environmental justice advocacy may also threaten the very constituencies it aspires to serve distracting attention from the many significant health hazards challenging minority and disadvantaged populations. Foreman recommends specific institutional reforms intended to recast the national dialogue about the stakes of these populations in environmental protection.

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309452961
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 583

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Book Description
In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Author: Symma Finn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319941089
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
This book explores various and distinct aspects of environmental health literacy (EHL) from the perspective of investigators working in this emerging field and their community partners in research. Chapters aim to distinguish EHL from health literacy and environmental health education in order to classify it as a unique field with its own purposes and outcomes. Contributions in this book represent the key aspects of communication, dissemination and implementation, and social scientific research related to environmental health sciences and the range of expertise and interest in EHL. Readers will learn about the conceptual framework and underlying philosophical tenets of EHL, and its relation to health literacy and communications research. Special attention is given to topics like dissemination and implementation of culturally relevant environmental risk messaging, and promotion of EHL through visual technologies. Authoritative entries by experts also focus on important approaches to advancing EHL through community-engaged research and by engaging teachers and students at an early age through developing innovative STEM curriculum. The significance of theater is highlighted by describing the use of an interactive theater experience as an approach that enables community residents to express themselves in non-verbal ways.

Author: Roger Detels
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019881013X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 1717

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Book Description
Sixth edition of the hugely successful, internationally recognised textbook on global public health and epidemiology, with 3 volumes comprehensively covering the scope, methods, and practice of the discipline

Author: Drue H. Barrett
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783319238463
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This Open Access book highlights the ethical issues and dilemmas that arise in the practice of public health. It is also a tool to support instruction, debate, and dialogue regarding public health ethics. Although the practice of public health has always included consideration of ethical issues, the field of public health ethics as a discipline is a relatively new and emerging area. There are few practical training resources for public health practitioners, especially resources which include discussion of realistic cases which are likely to arise in the practice of public health. This work discusses these issues on a case to case basis and helps create awareness and understanding of the ethics of public health care. The main audience for the casebook is public health practitioners, including front-line workers, field epidemiology trainers and trainees, managers, planners, and decision makers who have an interest in learning about how to integrate ethical analysis into their day to day public health practice. The casebook is also useful to schools of public health and public health students as well as to academic ethicists who can use the book to teach public health ethics and distinguish it from clinical and research ethics.

Author: Dorceta E. Taylor
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 0857241834
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 501

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Book Description
The environmental justice movement, an organized social and political force in America in the '80s, is a global phenomenon today as activists worldwide try to understand the relationship between environment, race/ethnicity and social inequality. This volume examines domestic and international environmental issues.

Author: Dorceta E. Taylor
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479805157
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
From St. Louis to New Orleans, from Baltimore to Oklahoma City, there are poor and minority neighborhoods so beset by pollution that just living in them can be hazardous to your health. Due to entrenched segregation, zoning ordinances that privilege wealthier communities, or because businesses have found the OCypaths of least resistance, OCO there are many hazardous waste and toxic facilities in these communities, leading residents to experience health and wellness problems on top of the race and class discrimination most already experience. Taking stock of the recent environmental justice scholarship, a Toxic Communities aexamines the connections among residential segregation, zoning, and exposure to environmental hazards. Renowned environmental sociologist Dorceta Taylor focuses on the locations of hazardous facilities in low-income and minority communities and shows how they have been dumped on, contaminated and exposed. Drawing on an array of historical and contemporary case studies from across the country, Taylor explores controversies over racially-motivated decisions in zoning laws, eminent domain, government regulation (or lack thereof), and urban renewal. She provides a comprehensive overview of the debate over whether or not there is a link between environmental transgressions and discrimination, drawing a clear picture of the state of the environmental justice field today and where it is going. In doing so, she introduces new concepts and theories for understanding environmental racism that will be essential for environmental justice scholars. A fascinating landmark study, a Toxic Communities agreatly contributes to the study of race, the environment, and space in the contemporary United States."