September 2003
Uncovering Environmental Injustice
& Health Impacts
Similar to documenting job loss from NAFTA
& trade policies, researching environmental injustice
& health impacts in your community means piecing together
a lot of different information.
By using the Environmental Scorecards
you can see which companies are the biggest polluters in
your region and then run a news search on Lexis
Nexis or on Google
to locate any articles that show if they were proponents
or benefactors of NAFTA. You can also run a search on the
NAFTA-TAA
database (see job loss section) to see if the company comes
up as having laid-off workers due to NAFTA. This shows that
the company not only laid-off workers due to NAFTA but may
have also left a toxic legacy in its wake.
The
Center for Disease Control's National Center for Health
Statistics
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/
Scroll down to see breakdowns of health data by state. The
state profiles link takes you to a section that offers a
state-by-state breakdown on air quality. This includes a
table with a percentage of people living in counties not
meeting EPA air quality standards.
Environmental
Defense Scorecard
http://www.scorecard.org
Find detailed reports on chemicals released by more than
20,000 industrial facilities in the US (air pollutants,
toxic chemical releases, animal waste from factory farms).
Search by company and location (city, zip, county, state,
etc.). Maps. Includes rankings of plant compared to its
industry. Regulatory controls on specific chemicals and
information on the health effects of the chemicals.
Right-to-Know
Network (RTKNET) Databases
http://www.rtk.net
The Right to Know Network (RTK) provides free access to
government information on toxic releases, toxic spills,
Risk Management Plans, housing, superfund sites and other
environmental results of manufacturing/industry. You can
search by company, industry or geographic area. Databases
go back a number of years. Once on the homepage, click DATABASES
to the left of the screen, now you need to decide which
databases to search. A MASTER search will search all of
the databases simultaneously by geographic area, facility
or industry. RTK NET was started in 1989 in support of the
Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA),
which mandated public access to the Toxic Release Inventory.
Southwest:
Border Health
http://bphc.hrsa.gov/bphc/borderhealth/region.htm
The Health Resources and Services Administration of the
US Dept of Health and Human Services has a Border Health
Home Page which gives statistics on low rates of access
to health care, border demographics and information on respiratory
illnesses that are common due to air pollution from industry
in many border towns.
Create your own NAFTA-Polluter
Fact Sheet
Using the research you collect on NAFTA in
your community you can build your own NAFTA
Polluter Fact Sheet (35k PDF
file, requires free Adobe
Acrobat®Reader).
A project of the DataCenter's Economic
Justice Program.
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