Environmental Justice

August 24, 2014 12:33 PM

"EPA defines environmental justice (EJ) as "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies." To effectively address EJ concerns, the Agency recognizes that communities must be the driver for local solutions. However, far too many communities lack the capacity to truly affect their environmental conditions."

How does indoor air quality effect our health and development as humans?

Mold and cognitive function. Improvement of attention deficit symptoms in cases of known mold exposure with treatment by hyperbaric oxygen. Mold and the development of allergy and asthma.

"Because older homes and lack of air conditioning were also correlated with race and lower income, whereas carpeting was associated with newer homes, the multivariate analyses suggests that lower overall socioeconomic position is associated with higher moldiness index values. This may lead to increased asthma risk in homes inhabited by susceptible, vulnerable population subgroups."

Indoor air pollution and cardiovascular problems.

Formaldehyde and asthma. Formaldahyde levels in day cares exceed recommended levels according to Berkley study.

Benefits of improving indoor air quality on work performance.

"Why should we care about the physical school environment?"

posted by xarnop (4 comments total)

Speaking of indoor air quality, let's not forget the potential for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in schools.

Also, it's never a bad time to raise awareness about radon.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 1:41 PM on August 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

You buried the lede, imo. The carpet/mold thing is alarming as hell.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:06 PM on August 24, 2014

Whew! I got that backwards. My carpets aren't killing me. Still not sure if I should be freaking out about water damage and mold in general. For a study that seems to say mold and asthma weren't correalated, they talk a lot about mold. Argh.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:27 PM on August 24, 2014

It is pretty confusing, there are tons of studies I read through and just randomly stuck some here. Likely for some people there are mild or large effects, for others not so much. However economic factors mean that the poor who can't afford new homes and home renovations and repairs will bear this burden whether they want to or not, and I think we should assume to help people have clean indoor air, and that it should be a priority in schools and workplaces where people who may be affected might have little choice about their exposure. There's a lot more info in pubmed and health journals, but I think because of a lack robust finding people who find it convenient to ignore them tend to side with failure to act on them, which leaves those most vulnerable forced to endure more exposures. it may be among factors that adds to lower income children having more health, developmental, and scholastic problems, (and other children with health problems becoming I'll, or worsened)
posted by xarnop at 4:15 AM on August 25, 2014