5.7 Environmental Justice and Equity

According to Massachusetts’ environmental justice policy, environmental justice “is based on the principle that all people have a right to be protected from environmental pollution and to live in and enjoy a clean and healthful environment.”  The environmental justice movement has focused attention on the quality of the urban environment, especially as it affects low-income and people of color. 

Dr. Daniel R. Faber and Dr. Eric J. Krieg at the Green Justice Research Collaborative developed a scale for measuring the concentration of environmental burdens on communities.  The scale assigns hazard points to 17 different types of environmentally hazardous sites and facilities such as hazardous waste sites, landfills, polluting industrial facilities and solid waste transfer stations.  Communities are ranked (with 1 being the worst) by the number of hazard points per square mile.  This analysis was performed for Boston neighborhoods and Massachusetts cities and towns based on 2005 data in a report entitled Environmental Injustice in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  The report found that 6 of the top 10 most environmentally overburdened communities in Massachusetts were located in the City of Boston.

One aspect of environmental justice that has received particular attention involves recent increases in asthma and other respiratory illnesses and their relationship to local air quality.  In 1999, the State’s Department of Environmental Protection placed one of five fine particulate (PM-2.5) monitors for the Boston area in Roxbury to study the impact of vehicular emissions on the health of residents.   Environmental burdens in Roxbury include high levels of toxic diesel emissions from buses and trucks.  The MBTA’s Bartlett bus depot, located near Dudley Square in Roxbury, was closed in 2004.  Roxbury residents also have demanded the use of clean fuels in public transport fleets in areas that depend heavily on buses. 

High rates of childhood lead poisoning and fewer acres of public open space per capita are also environmental justice issues for some of Boston’s neighborhoods.