Children’s Environmental Health, Environmental Justice and the state

Keywords: Environmental Justice, Children's Environmental Health, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Intersectionality, Environmental Governance
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

While Children’s (pre-conception to adolescence) Environmental Health (CEH), which recognizes the unique vulnerability of children, inherently addresses environmental justice (EJ) and EJ activists often fight to protect children from environmental harm, the two fields have remained surprisingly separate within academia and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). CEH and EJ programs were established in the early 1990s by Executive Order and have followed a similar trajectory within the US EPA. That is to say both have been marginalized, have limited funding and staffing, and while CEH has some legislative leverage that EJ lacks, neither has the leverage or legislative backing to accomplish their stated goals. One significant difference between EJ and CEH was the establishment of Children Environmental Health Centers (CEHCs) funded through a joint US EPA and National Institutes of Environmental Health Science grant that funded 24 centers through 46 grants totaling over $300 million dollars from 1997-2007. This paper draws on archival research and interviews with CEH scientists, regulators, and activists to understand the role of the state in the social and scientific development of CEH and why EJ was not integrated into the CEH framework. Drawing on intersectional frameworks we pay particular attention to how EJ organizations leveraged and navigated their relationships with CEHCs to understand how and why these two seemingly related fields are siloed. In doing so, we investigate the potential benefits and downsides to both CEH and EJ of this isolation and explore possibilities of coalition building between EJ and CEH.