Mastodawn

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

As #Trump's #EPA ends #EnvironmentalJustice, *minority* communities pay a price
From her home on #Louisiana's "#Cancer Alley," Lydia Gerard looks down at her 8-month-old great-granddaughter & wonders if she will one day suffer the same fate as her many friends & relatives whose lives were cut short by the #disease.

#Musk #RFKJr #WhiteSupremacy #SocialCleansing #Eugenics #EconomicDiscrimination #HealthInequity #PublicHealth #health #disease #medicine #science #law #USpol
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/trumps-epa-ends-environmental-justice-minority-communities-may-pay-price-2025-04-23/

Gerard lives along the #MississippiRiver, just a few blocks from a synthetic rubber plant that the admin of fmr President Joe #Biden sued, claiming it posed an imminent #PublicHealth hazard. Gerard, like more than 90% of people living within 1 mile (1.5 km) of the plant, is #Black.

#Trump #Musk #RFKJr #WhiteSupremacy #SocialCleansing #Eugenics #EconomicDiscrimination #HealthInequity #GeographicInequity #EnvironmentalJustice #health #disease #medicine #science #law #USpol

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

"She's not even 8 months yet, & has to be subject to breathing all that," said Gerard, referring to the plant's #emissions of #chloroprene, which in 2010 the #EPA classified as a human #carcinogen.

7 wks after #Trump took over in Jan, new EPA leadership withdrew the suit against the plant's Japanese owners, Denka Performance Elastomer LLC, siding w/ the company who disputed the lawsuit's contention that emissions were linked to significant #cancer risk.

#EnvironmentalJustice #PublicHealth #law

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

The #Trump admin's press release announcing the end of the lawsuit said the dismissal fulfilled Trump's Day One #ExecutiveOrder to eliminate #diversity, #equity & #inclusion, & that it aligned with the #EPA's new pledge to "end the use of '#EnvironmentalJustice' as a tool for advancing ideological priorities."
[read as opposite of what they say]

#WhiteSupremacy #SocialCleansing #Eugenics #EconomicDiscrimination #HealthInequity #GeographicInequity #PublicHealth #disease #science #law #USpol

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

3 #environmental researchers & 5 fmr #EPA ofcls interviewed by Reuters say the end of the EPA's #DEI & #EnvironmentalJustice programs—which seek to ensure a healthy #environment for *minority* groups that often live closest to sources of contamination - will be most felt in #Black & #Hispanic [& #Latin] communities that have long endured the harmful effects of #pollution.

#Trump #WhiteSupremacy #SocialCleansing #Eugenics #EconomicDiscrimination #HealthInequity #PublicHealth #science #law #USpol

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

Those #health inequities are the legacy of racial #discrimination that was legal from the country's inception until 1965, the type of historical #injustice #DEI policies were designed to correct.

#Trump also rescinded a 1994 EO by fmr Pres Bill #Clinton that directed every #FederalAgency to develop an agency-wide #EnvironmentalJustice strategy to address adverse health or #environmental effects on *minority* & #LowIncome populations.

#WhiteSupremacy #racism #HealthInequity #PublicHealth #law

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

"It's #DEI being treated like a four-letter word," said Linda Birnbaum, a retired toxicologist & fmr director of the National Institute of #Environmental #Health #Sciences who spent 19 years at the #EPA. "People who are already most impacted by high #pollution are going to be most hurt by the loosening of #regulations."

#Trump #WhiteSupremacy #SocialCleansing #Eugenics #EconomicDiscrimination #HealthInequity #GeographicInequity #EnvironmentalJustice #PublicHealth #disease #law #USpol

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

Asked to comment on the findings of this story, an #EPA spox directed Reuters to a video stmnt by #Trump's new #EPA administrator, #LeeZeldin, who has outlined a strategy emphasizing #deregulation, saying the US can protect the #environment & promote economic growth at the same time [note the absence of concern for #PublicHealth & populations in #LowIncome communities].

#Trump #WhiteSupremacy #SocialCleansing #HealthInequity #GeographicInequity #EnvironmentalJustice #science #law #USpol

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

…On March 12, the new #EPA unveiled what it called "the most consequential day of #deregulation in US history" by rolling back 31 initiatives & eliminating the agency's #DEI arm & its 10 regional #EnvironmentalJustice offices, which worked w/communities to ID & mitigate local sources of #pollution. It *said* it has saved $2B in *wasteful* [because some people have no worth] spending by canceling hundreds of #grants in conjunction w/ #billionaire #ElonMusk's #DOGE.

#Trump #WhiteSupremacy #law

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

#Democrats on the #Senate Cmte on #Environment & #Public Works complained in a letter to #LeeZeldin in March that the cancellation of 400 #grants in the name of eliminating #DEI & #EnvironmentalJustice violated several #court orders & terms of #EPA contracts.

At least one #nonprofit group is suing to reactivate an $11.4M grant that was frozen for North Charleston’s Union Heights in South Carolina, one of the first #Black communities established after emancipation from #slavery.

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

…A $20M #EPA #grant was cut for San Diego's Barrio Logan, a predominantly #Latino community w/high rates of #asthma. A major highway cuts through the neighborhood, which is further affected by #pollution from waterfront industry & associated truck traffic.

…A program to provide electric buses for Barrio Logan has been canceled & a long-planned community park will be significantly delayed or canceled, as will free electric shuttle service & home upgrades to improve #AirQuality….

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

#CancerAlley, a nickname dating to the 1980s, is an 85-mile stretch from New Orleans to Baton Rouge that is home to some 150 #ChemicalPlants & #oil refineries.

Multiple studies over years point to elevated #health risks, including one in 2022 that found nearly EVERY census tract in the area ranks in the top 5% nationally for #cancer risk.

In 2023, the #Biden admin sued Denka, demanding it eliminate the dangers posed by #chloroprene #emissions.

#Trump #EnvironmentalJustice #PublicHealth #law

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

Denka said the lawsuit relied on flawed & outdated data that emerged from studies of mice, while an updated 2021 survey of humans showed no increase in #cancer deaths.

Denka criticized #Biden’s #EPA reliance on the data that assumed affected people would have to breathe chloroprene emissions 24 hrs a day for 70 yrs. Moreover, Denka said the plant's #emissions were reduced 85% after a $35M upgrade completed in 2018.

#Trump #WhiteSupremacy #science #law #EnvironmentalJustice #PublicHealth

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

One peer-reviewed 2021 study, the only one to examine effects in the surrounding community, found elevated levels of #cancer & other maladies for people living closest to the plant.

Denka dismissed this field survey, which was prompted by concerns from a community advocacy group & led by the progressive University Network for #HumanRights, as "flawed & biased" & cited an #EPA assessment that called it "uninformative."

#Trump #EnvironmentalJustice #GeographicInequity #PublicHealth #law

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

The 2021 study found 52 #cancer cases among people living within 1.5 km of the plant, a prevalence 44% higher than national levels, producing 36 cases.
That translates to an additional 16 people, out of a sample of 777, who contracted cancer within the previous 23yrs, said Ruhan Nagra, lead author & a #law prof at the U of Utah.
Within a 2nd concentric circle extending to a radius from 1.5 to 2.5 km from the plant, cancer rates dropped to virtually even w/the national level.
#Trump #PublicHealth

Nonilex Apr 23, 2025

#Children in the closer zone had higher rates of headaches & nosebleeds, adults reported more chest pain, heart palpitations & breathing difficulty than people in the outer zone…

Gerard lives in the inner zone. Her husband died of kidney #cancer in 2018 at 67. Her grandmother died of lung cancer.

"We had other people," she said, referring to those diagnosed w/cancer…"Cousins, & people in the neighborhood, next door, across the street, down the street—a lot of people."

#Trump #law #health

TC Won't Give In To Lies Apr 23, 2025

How long until America's rivers catch fire again?

#ThisIsAmericaNow

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/

The Cuyahoga River Caught Fire at Least a Dozen Times, but No One Cared Until 1969

Despite being much smaller than previous fires, the river blaze in Cleveland 50 years ago became a symbol for the nascent environmental movement

Smithsonian Magazine

EndicottRoad59 Apr 23, 2025

@Nonilex For as horrible as this situation is, the reasoning behind it has to do with money. The suit would force the company to change it's production processes, which would cost money and reduce profits. It's always been all about the money.