THE ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE BEHIND HEALTH DISPARITIES

BY DAWN HILTON WILLIAMS

Environmental injustice isn’t just about climate change or polluted air. It’s about policies and systems designed to keep some communities sick, struggling, and unseen

From zoning and disinvestment to industrial site placement, these decisions have been deliberate. The generational health consequences have created an unyielding cycle of overexposure and harm in communities that are disproportionately impacted and systemically underserved.

The term environmental racism was first used in 1982 by Rev. Dr. Benjamin Chavis during protests against toxic waste dumping in a Black North Carolina community. He used it to name a truth that still applies today: highways, landfills, chemical plants and industrial farms are not randomly placed. They are systemically positioned near neighborhoods that have already been denied the right to clean air, safe water and long life.

Activist and Leader Rev. Dr. Benjamin Chavis, Jr.

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN CHARLOTTE

In Charlotte and across Mecklenburg County, the link between environmental injustice and poor health isn’t abstract, it’s visible, measurable and lived.

• Over 70% of permitted pollution sites are in neighborhoods where most residents are Black or Brown.

• Historically redlined areas like Beatties Ford Road and West Boulevard have the lowest tree coverage and the highest levels of air pollution and extreme heat.

• Black children in Mecklenburg County are nearly twice as likely to suffer from asthma as white children.

And the damage doesn’t stop at asthma. Exposure to environmental toxins fuels higher rates of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease, stroke, and even early cognitive decline, which is all more common in the overexposed communities.

Young activists rally for environmental justice, highlighting the urgent need to address inequities affecting marginalized communities.

Environmental injustice may have helped build the chronic disease pipeline but ancestral knowledge gives us the tools to dismantle it. Our traditional foodways were rooted in plants, healing and connection long before our communities were targeted by pollution, processed junk food and systemic neglect.

By reclaiming our foodways and embracing a 100% whole food, plant-powered lifestyle, we break our dependence on industries that profit from our demise, teach generational health and restore something we've always had: the ancestral knowledge that plants heal.

Two women collaborate in the kitchen, preparing a minimally processed, whole food, plant-based meal, embracing ancestral cooking practices.

So this Earth Month, don’t just talk about our planet, let's dig deeper by giving voice and face to the people most harmed most by its' harm.

Join us 4/25 free EDD Talks Lunch & Learn at the Allegra Westbrooks Library!

You’ll hear from Dr. Milton Mills, featured in What the Health, as he shares real tools to prevent, arrest and reverse chronic kidney disease all while enjoying a culturally rooted whole food, plant-based lunch by Chef Dawn Hilton Williams, Your Vegucator!

Registration Here: https://bit.ly/3R1oM2H or Directly via Eventbrite — seating is limited.