A Health Justice Agenda for Local Governments to Address Environmental Health Inequities

Abstract

This article explores how structural failures in major federal environmental regulations —which set a foundation for environmental protections nationwide— have helped create many of the environmental injustices that people of color and low-income communities experience. It continues by examining how local governments have reinforced and compounded the failures in the federal environmental regulatory framework, particularly through local land use decisions. Although states play an important role in environmental policymaking, we propose that local governments are uniquely positioned to utilize a health justice approach to address environmental health inequities. This approach centers partnerships between frontline communities and local governments to develop just solutions that fill gaps within the federal environmental regulatory system and anticipate and mitigate the compounding effects of environmental health inequities.

Rebalancing commercial and public interests in prioritizing biomedical, social and environmental aspects of health through defining and managing conflicts of interest

“…Federal environmental regulations weigh, through cost/benefit analysis (CBA), protection of human health and environment against cost to existing business interests of complying with those regulations (CBA). CBA justifies health harms and even death when it is judged to be too costly to avoid them, largely precluding primary prevention ( 33 ).…”