Data, Science, and Environmental Justice

多种环境危害汇聚在低收入和少数族裔社区，仍然是这个国家最严重和最顽固的环境问题之一。20世纪80年代和90年代的环境正义运动首先强调了累积暴露问题，然后在科学和技术研究(STS)和其他科学领域中作为一个新兴概念加以阐述，并通过以社区为基础的公民科学，累积暴露问题对美国主要的环境监管机构环境保护局(EPA)提出了特殊的挑战。这个项目将研究环境保护局以科学和数据为基础的污染控制如何与环境正义社区日益增长的累积暴露知识相抗衡和适应。它的目的是提高国家的集体能力，以实现更大的环境正义，无论是在智力上，还是通过寻找可能需要重新审查和改革的与科学相关的环保局做法，以及通过扩大公众意识。它的许多分析和外联产品包括三篇文章、一份白皮书、一本为公众和学术受众撰写的书、公共数据库、讲习班和为环境保护局工作人员以及其他政策制定者举办的网络研讨会，以及环境正义团体和社区的新数据工具和其他能力建设。这项为期三年的调查是对环境保护局处理低收入和少数族裔社区面临的累积环境风险的40年跟踪记录进行的，将研究机构在三个领域的累积接触：科学方法，包括公民科学；数据的定义和收集；以及在与环境正义社区相关的决策中对这种科学和数据的官僚使用。它将利用采访、出版物和档案以及通过信息自由法获得的文件，为更新的STS领域做出学术贡献，如关键数据研究、未完成的科学/数据和公民科学，以及更广泛地理解联邦官僚机构对数据的依赖和社会运动对其影响的限制。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Multiple environmental hazards converging in low income and minority communities remain among this nation’s most significant and recalcitrant environmental problems. First highlighted by the Environmental Justice movement in the 1980s and 90s then elaborated as an emerging concept in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and other scientific fields and through community-based civic science, the problem of cumulative exposure has posed special challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the premier environmental regulator in the United States. This project will study how EPA’s science-based and data-based pollution control has contended with and adapted to the growing knowledge of cumulative exposures in Environmental Justice communities. It aims to boost the nation’s collective capacity to achieve greater environmental justice both intellectually, by looking for science-related EPA practices that may require reexamination and reform, and by broadening public awareness. Offering substantial training in graduate and post-graduate education as well as for younger members of two collaborating Environmental Justice groups, its many products of analysis and outreach include three articles, a white paper, a book written for public as well as academic audiences, public databases, workshops, and webinars for EPA staff as well as other policymakers, and new data tools and other capacity-building for Environmental Justice groups and communities. This three-year investigation of the EPA’s forty-year track record of handling the cumulative environmental risks faced by low income and minority communities will study agency contentions with cumulative exposure in three realms: scientific approaches, including civic science; the definition and collection of data; and bureaucratic uses of this science and data in decision making associated with Environmental Justice communities. Drawing on interviews, publications, and archives as well as documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, it will make scholarly contributions to newer STS fields such as critical data studies, undone science/data, and civic science, and more broadly, to understanding of the data-dependence of the federal bureaucracy and the limits to the impact of social movements on it.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.