🌱EPA Administrator Zeldin cancels 400 Justice40 grants worth $1.7 billion

Minority and low-income neighborhoods face higher exposure to industrial toxins, contaminated water, and polluted air that wealthy communities successfully avoid. Federal environmental justice programs target these disparities by requiring companies to assess community impacts before building polluting facilities near vulnerable populations.

Asthma, cancer, and developmental disorders occur at higher rates in communities near industrial facilities, landfills, and highways. Environmental justice initiatives connect public health outcomes to zip code, demonstrating how location determines life expectancy and disease burden.

Federal agencies must weigh community health against business interests when approving facilities that provide jobs but create pollution. Environmental justice ensures vulnerable communities have voice in decisions that affect their health rather than bearing costs while others receive benefits.

Redlining and discriminatory zoning placed hazardous facilities in minority neighborhoods while protecting white communities from environmental harm. Current disparities reflect decades of intentional policy choices that concentrated pollution in communities with less political power to resist.