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Back to Native Nations and Ethnic Cultures Toxic pollution frequently causes disproportionate harm to low-income people who can’t move away from polluted neighborhoods. Low-income people often can’t afford water filters, air filters or organically grown foods at the store, and rely instead on local homegrown foods, and fishing and hunting for subsistence. Their children grow up in these neighborhoods with constant exposure to local pollutants. For example, PCBs are elevated in Green Bay air, Green Bay soil, and can be absorbed through the skin while swimming or playing in the sand or dirt along the Fox River or Green Bay shoreline.

The demographics of Brown County and the City of Green Bay show that low income people are much more likely to live in the polluted inner city, while the wealthier people (inluding paper mill workers and plant managers) tend to live on the outskirts of town or in the country, away from the toxic exposures. In the summer, wealthier and middle-class residents can afford to take their families and escape the local pollution to fish or swim "up north" at remote cabins or resorts, while low-income residents can only swim or fish locally. It’s common to see low-income people fishing along the Fox River to feed their families, exposing them to dangerous levels of PCBs, furans, dioxins, mercury and other pollutants in the fish.

Disadvantaged people, especially homeless, illiterate or transient people, often lack information and are unaware of the health risks associated with harvesting local foods. For many years, local and state governments, and business leaders, have tended to downplay the toxic contamination of the Fox River and Green Bay, in an effort to boost local business development and the valuable outdoor recreation industry. (The tourism industry is worth more than $8 billion annually in Wisconsin.) As a result, only very few waterfront docks, fishing sites or boat launches have been posted with signs warning anglers to limit or not eat their catch, and the state has chronically underprinted copies of the state fish consumption advisory, which is NOT included with the fishing license guidebook. These frankly immoral practices have served to keep the public, and particularly new residents and visitors, ignorant of local PCB health risks. This deliberate censorship and lack of warning is especially harmful to low-income people.

Other at-risk groups include ethnic minorities who consume local foods, particularly fish and waterfowl, as part of historic cultural traditions, sometimes linked to strong religious beliefs. The inability to consume fish is a major social loss to these ethnic communities.

Low-income and ethnic minorities often lack the political power to demand corrections of these problems; therefore, it is the duty of the governments, and the wealthy and powerful, to intervene to correct this situation. In Northeast Wisconsin, justice demands that the PCBs and related pollutants be cleaned up as much as possible, as soon as possible. In addition, the 7 corporations responsible for the pollution should pay the maximum in compensation funds ($400-600 million) as calculated under the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment.

Furthermore, local, state and federal governments must fund comprehensive public epidemiological health studies which include the most exposed low-income populations, particularly regular local fish consumers. (Such studies have not been done.) If health problems are detected, affected people need medical and legal assistance to help repair the damage and gain personal compensation from the polluters.

Environmental Justice Links

For detailed information on the legal and moral basis for immediate Environmental Justice in polluted areas like ours, please visit the links below: 

• The Center for Health, Environment and Justice
• Environmental Justice Research Center at Clark Atlanta University
• EPA site on Environmental Justice
• Working Group on Environmental Justice – Harvard University
• The Thurgood Marshall School of Law – Environmental Justice Clinic
• Environmental Justice --- Project of the School of Natural Resources and Environment

at the University of Michigan