Interactive Map
Recent media investigations (CBS 5 2008) and environmental reports (Still Toxic After All These Years 2007) in California, as well as scientific studies in the broader US show growing levels of pollution released into the air and water, in particular potential carcinogenic substances -- sulphur dioxide, hydrocarbons, and oxides of nitrogen, affecting mostly the health of low income minorities. The evidence so far links cancer incidence (in particular breast cancer) with residential exposure to air and water emissions from petroleum and chemical plants, prompting us to look more closely at health disparities in poor minority communities living in California.
Contra Costa County
Take, for instance, the Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Contra Costa County is the industrial heart of Northern California where the Chevron Oil Refinery is located. Because we take very seriously the possibility of environmental contamination's role in the near-epidemic of breast cancer in low-income minority communities in the SF Bay, we address cancer as an issue of environmental justice. We argue a strong connection between environmental exploitation and human exploitation or social justice in the giant oil-for profit refining business. Our working hypothesis is that the prevalence of breast cancer (and perhaps other types, too) is not randomly distributed in the SF Bay, and in the state of California broadly speaking. Instead, the increased exposure to carcinogenic substances in the state, in particular those emanating from polluting industries, such as Chevron itself, Chemical Waste Management Corporation in Kettleman City, Evergreen Pulp Enterprises in Samoa, and ExxonMobil Oil Corporation in Torrance, affects mostly ethnic minorities living in poverty. These communities, however, have the right to know about their exposure to toxic waste, according to several human rights conventions, including the United Nations Treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants (aka POPs Treaty) signed by over 122 countries including the US at the 2001 Stockholm Convention.
