If you live near an industrial facility, you are probably concerned about pollution for one important reason:
you worry about your health. Maybe you are convinced that your frequent asthma attacks are a result of
your local refinery's operations. Or maybe a number of your neighbors have cancer, and you suspect that it is somehow
related to the chemical facility next door.
No matter how much information you gather, you will probably never be able to prove--at least to a scientist's
satisfaction--that the health problems in your community are caused by pollution from local industrial facilities.
Establishing "causality" is very difficult, even for scientists who specialize in researching the effects that chemicals
have on human health.
But you can still do a lot to demonstrate that are probable links between industrial pollution and health in your
community. Evidence that shows that it is likely that pollution is affecting community health can be persuasive as
part of a campaign for action from regulators or companies. To make the link, you can:
There are several basic ways to document community health, or kinds of "health study":
Symptom Surveys
Registries
Diaries
If you want to conduct a health study in your community:
The Center for Health, Environment, and Justice publishes a guidebook on how to conduct
community health surveys and avoid their common pitfalls.
Document the health problems in your community, using
health studies.
Document the presence of chemicals in your community through
monitoring.
Research the
effects
of various chemicals on human health.
A community health study can help link health problems with pollution by
showing that your community has more cases of certain diseases or symptoms than less polluted communities do,
showing that particular diseases have become more common in your community over the period that a neighboring facility has
been operating, or
showing that residents experience more symptoms and illness at times when chemical levels are particularly high.
A symptom survey is a survey of health conditions in your community. The information that you collect can be compared to
information from a similar community without the same presence of industrial chemicals. If the survey shows that the
frequency of a health problem in your community is significantly higher than that in the other community, it could point
to pollution as a likely cause of the health problem.
A registry is an on-going record of a certain health problem in your community; it keeps track of the number of cases
of that problem over time. It ideally starts when the local industrial facility opens its doors so that a good
"baseline" for the health problem can be established. A registry that shows an increasing
frequency of the health problem as time goes on could suggest that pollution is the problem.
A diary is a personal record that each person in a community keeps about his or her health problems. If a health problem
worsens for a number of people at a time when chemical levels in the community are very high--during a reported accident,
for example--the diaries could support the claim that pollution is the problem.
Chemical Alert! A Community Action Handbook, edited by Marvin Legator and Sabrina Strawn, also provides information
on conducting health studies.
Communities wanting to conduct health studies frequently find help from local scientists or professors. Contact your
local college or university's public health department.
There are numerous techniques for environmental monitoring. Many of them require very expensive equipment and highly
trained operators. But one device, known as a bucket, has been designed specifically for residents of fenceline
communities to use. Buckets collect air in a non-reactive plastic bag. A laboratory then analyzes the air sample for
toxic chemicals. Community members then receive a report that lists the concentrations of the chemicals that were found in
their air.
View an example of bucket results.
For more information about buckets or for help starting a "bucket brigade" in your community, contact one of the
organizations that has helped provide buckets to communities around the country:
Communities for a Better Environment,
Global Community Monitor, or
Louisiana Bucket Brigade.
Other ways that community members can directly monitor chemicals in their neighborhoods are being investigated. In October
2002, a number of community-friendly air monitoring techniques were showcased and tested at a
Monitoring Fair
in New Sarpy, Louisiana. An overview of the capabilities and costs of the techniques is available
here.
Despite EJ groups' focus on community monitoring, monitoring is routinely conducted by state and federal
environmental agencies and by industrial facilities themselves.
The results of government-sponsored monitoring should be available to the public on request, and is often posted on
agency websites. Industrial facilities have no obligation to make their results public, but some do.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's website provides an overview of their
air monitoring program. But air quality monitoring is usually
conducted by state agencies, and specific monitoring initiatives can differ from state to state, and even community to
community depending on what type of monitoring local industry conducts. I have compiled an
overview of government and industry air monitoring activities in Louisiana
that can offer an example of the kinds of monitoring you might expect in your area.
Monitoring the levels of chemicals in local air, water, or soil can also help make the link between pollution and health
effects. Monitoring can show whether toxic chemicals are present in your neighborhood at higher than normal levels.
What effects do chemicals have on your body?
Some environmental justice organizations also compile information about how chemicals affect your body. The
Center for Health, Environment, and Justice, for example, publishes a primer called "Common
Questions about Health Effects."
What levels of chemical exposure are dangerous?
A number of government agencies have calculated "levels of concern" for a variety of toxic chemicals. "Regulatory
standards" are levels that the actual, monitored concentrations of pollution in the air legally may not exceed. "Screening
levels" are thresholds above which agencies feel chemical concentrations could be dangerous to human health. Like
screening levels, regulatory standards are usually developed with reference to health effects.
Do measured levels of chemicals in your neighborhood threaten your health?
Compare your monitoring data to levels of concern.
Health studies can document the symptoms and diseases in your community, and environmental monitoring can document the
levels of chemicals that are present in your neighborhood. But to link those pieces of information, you also need to know
how different chemicals affect the human body, and at what levels those effects occur. If you document high rates of
cancer in your community alongside high levels of a chemical that causes respiratory illness but not cancer, you
will not be able to persuasively argue that pollution is causing your health problems. But if you can show the presence
of a chemical at levels known to cause the health problems your community is experiencing, you can make a very convincing
argument that industrial pollution is at fault.
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry compiles information
that can help answer that question. On their website, you can find
"ToxFAQs" for a long list of toxic chemicals. Written for a
general audience, these fact sheets describe the chemicals, the ways you are likely to be exposed to them, and the
health effects they can cause. They also contain links to the more detailed, technical "Toxicological Profiles" prepared
by the agency.
Being exposed to a tiny amount of a toxic chemical may or may not have health consequences. Some chemicals are
dangerous at extremely low doses. But others are only dangerous if you are exposed to them at very high concentrations.
View levels of concern developed by government agencies.