- PFAS on our shelves and in our bodies
- Fractured
- Exposed: BPA science
- Agents of Change
- Cutting edge of science
- Climate catastrophe in the South
- Cancer risk in Pittsburgh
- PFAS contamination
- Breathless: Childhood asthma
- Peak Pig: The soul of rural America
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“Woodland Hills has provided me with many opportunities to get involved with climate action, which I’m very passionate about,” she said. “As a student with severe asthma, I’m also very concerned about the poor air quality in our region.”
Wypych and her co-presenter Lauren Palamara, a youth educator for the climate advocacy nonprofit Communitopia, reminded the board that thanks to student advocacy, Woodland Hills became the first school district in Pennsylvania to pass a climate resolution in 2020. With a goal of having net-zero emissions by 2050, the district has helped educators create climate change lessons for their classrooms, established a climate-friendly food and gardening program, improved recycling and energy efficiency in school buildings, and students hosted the region’s first youth climate action summit. In 2021, the district won a national “Best of Green Schools Award” from the U.S. Green Building Council.
“How do we continue to champion this phenomenal work?” Palamara asked. “Imagine our next news headlines if Woodland Hills takes steps toward becoming a regional leader in solar power.”
Abby Wypych presents to the Woodland Hills School Board, urging them to move forward with a proposed solar power project. (Credit: Kristina Marusic)
The pitch was effective: The school board voted to accept a letter of intent from solar developer BAI Group. As a next step, they’ll review the company’s proposal to conduct a solar feasibility study for the district.
Woodland Hills is not alone. The number of K-12 schools using solar power in Pennsylvania doubled from 2020-2021, according to a report published today by Generation180, a clean energy nonprofit.
The 108 schools using solar energy in the state represent nearly 5% of all K-12 students in the state (about 90,000 students), and about 2% of all Pennsylvania schools.
“If this growth continues, schools could set Pennsylvania up as a clean energy leader and not just the fossil fuels we’re known for,” Shannon Crooker, the Pennsylvania director at Generation180, told EHN.
In recent years, energy costs increased while the cost of solar panels decreased. According to Generation180’s report, a majority of solar projects at Pennsylvania schools were installed in low-income districts at little to no upfront cost, enabling schools to start saving money immediately.
“We’ve been able to put the money we’re saving on energy toward teacher resources and curriculum materials,” Joe Stroup, the district superintendent for Midd-West School District, which has the largest school district solar array in Pennsylvania, told EHN. “It’s also good for the community because it takes some of the burden of taxes off people in the district.”
Midd-West School District in Middleburg is located in rural central Pennsylvania. In 2019 the district began installation of its solar array, which covers 7.25 acres divided between two school properties and creates up to 2.56 megawatts of solar power. Since the system went online in 2020, the district has generated 90%-95% of the school district’s power, which is expected to reduce its electricity bill by $9 million over 40 years.Most of the schools that have installed solar panels are in the central and eastern parts of the state, with just a handful of projects in western Pennsylvania. Historically, energy costs have been low for schools in the western half of the state, but that’s beginning to change as energy rates increase statewide.
Generation180 has helped schools across the country switch to solar power. A 2020 nationwide report by the group found that the number of K-12 schools in the U.S. using solar power increased by roughly 81% from 2014-2020, and that more than 5.3 million kids and teens attend schools using solar energy. Generation180 is officially launching its Pennsylvania program with the publication of the new report on solar-powered schools in the state, and hopes to help additional school districts switch to solar with free technical assistance and resources.
“There’s a misconception in western Pennsylvania that we can’t go solar because it’s so overcast,” said Crooker. She noted that Pittsburgh’s weather is often compared to rainy Seattle, which is home to the greenest commercial building in the world, the world’s first net-zero energy high-rise apartment building, and the world’s first net-zero energy arena — all of which rely on solar energy.
Palamara hopes Woodland Hills will help lead the way. “I think this district could be a– model in the region for solar-powered schools,” she said.
Low installation costs
Solar panels at Shady Side Academy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Credit: Scalo Solar)
Solar array at Steelton-Highspire School District
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Credit: McClure Company)
Pennsylvania is one of 29 states that allows “third-party ownership” of solar arrays, which enables a solar developer to pay for, install, and maintain a solar energy system on a property owned by someone else (such as a school district), then sell the property owner the power generated at a discounted price.
Most school districts aren’t eligible for clean energy tax incentives because they’re public entities, but privately owned solar companies that install solar panels on schools receive substantial tax credits, making the relationship beneficial for both parties.
Nationwide, roughly 79% of the solar energy installed at schools from 2015-2020 was financed this way, according to Generation180, and in Pennsylvania, about 66% of existing school solar projects have been paid for this way. Most of the Pennsylvania schools with solar qualify for some sort of Title 1 assistance, meaning a significant portion of their students are from low-income households.
“I think many people assume solar is too expensive,” Tish Tablan, program director at Generation180, told EHN. “Many Pennsylvania schools in low-income areas have already used third-party ownership to go solar with no upfront costs.”
A school district in rural Arkansas made national headlines in 2020 after saving more than $1 million in two years by switching to solar, then raising teacher salaries by up to $15,000 a year (more experienced teachers got the highest raises). One longtime teacher in the district told reporters the raise allowed her to quit the second job she’d had to work for her entire career.
Not all solar contracts are so advantageous, so Tablan’s organization helps school districts work with independent consultants that assess schools’ needs and shop for the best deal.
Midd-West School District used third-party ownership. The district didn’t pay anything for the installation, and will instead pay the solar company, Greenworks, a set rate for the power generated by the panels for the next five years.
“That locks in what we’re paying for energy right now,” Stroup said. “As a school district with a budget, that’s very important for us.”
When five years are up, the district will have the option to purchase the solar array, which they intend to do. The district is also considering expanding its solar capacity to generate up to 110% of its energy needs, which would enable them to sell energy back to the grid.
The proposed plan in Woodland Hills School District would also take advantage of the third-party ownership option.
“The cost savings are a no-brainer in my opinion,” Palamara told the school board, “and 80% of our energy at the high school would be coming from renewable energy, which would help us meet our climate action plan goals for 2050.”
Clean energy job training for students
Philadelphia Junior Solar Sprint Artistic Merit winners. (Credit: Philadelphia Solar Energy Authority)
Frankford High School—where students can learn how to install solar panels, take field trips to solar sites, and can get paid summer internships. (Credit: Generation180)
Schools throughout the country are preparing students for one of the fastest-growing employment sectors: clean energy.
Pennsylvania has been ranked as a top state for solar employment growth since 2015, and school districts with their own solar arrays have a unique advantage. At Midd-West School District, for example, high school students taught fourth grade students about how the district’s solar array works this week as part of their STEM curriculum.
In 2020, the School District of Philadelphia launched “Bright Solar Futures,” one of the first solar career training programs in the country, as a three-year vocational program at Frankford High School. Students learn how to install solar panels, take field trips to solar sites, and can get paid summer internships.
“This program has enabled [students] to take control of their future in a way that will have a positive impact on their community and their environment,” Jordan Crolly, the School District of Philadelphia’s solar energy technology teacher, told Generation 180. “Having a meaningful career path to work towards that pays well has given many of the solar energy technology students a sense of direction and a reason to try in school.”
Room for more solar at Pennsylvania schools
Abby Wypych and Lauren Palamara, pictured in the Woodland Hills School District administration building after giving their presentation to the school board. (Credit: Kristina Marusic)
When Generation180 published its 2020 report on solar energy at schools across the country, Pennsylvania ranked 25th in the nation for the number of K-12 schools with solar energy, lagging behind neighboring states like New York and Maryland.
“We want to help more Pennsylvania schools flip the switch to solar, especially in low-income school districts that will benefit the most from the savings,” Crooker said.
Pennsylvania has one of the largest public education systems in the U.S. with more than 1.7 million students. If Pennsylvania schools keep adopting solar energy at the same rate over the next five years, they’d sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate equal to covering the cities of Pittsburgh and Scranton with forests, according to Generation180’s report.
The report also determined that if every K-12 school in Pennsylvania installed an average-size solar energy system of 267 kilowatts, it would eliminate carbon dioxide emissions each year equivalent to closing 3.8 natural gas-fired power plants.
“Growing up in my generation and hearing everything bad about climate change, it kind of feels like you have no hope, like what’s the point,” Wypych said. “Having opportunities in school to make [climate advocacy] something fun honestly changes your perspective. Climate change is still this horrible thing, but we have hope because we can still change things. Just because we’re younger doesn’t mean we’re any less powerful.”
Banner photo credit: Generation180
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For most obese people, reducing body weight to within the “normal range” is not accomplished by simply eating less and exercising more. Current approaches focus on intervention once someone is obese using diets, drugs, and surgery. If these approaches were working, there would be a decline in obesity rates. Yet, obesity continues to increase at alarming rates worldwide, especially in children and minority communities. A new approach is needed.
The bad news
There is good news and bad news about preventing obesity.
The bad news is that we are all exposed to synthetic chemicals that can promote obesity, such as bisphenols, phthalates, flame retardants, and perfluorinated chemicals, in our environment and in common household products. Exposure to these “obesogens” at any time of life can increase weight gain.
The most sensitive time for obesogens to affect weight gain is when a pregnant mother is exposed, and the chemicals cross the placenta and into the developing fetus. Obesogens disrupt the normal development of adipose (fatty) tissue, as well as the liver, gastrointestinal tract, brain, and tissues involved in regulating metabolism. These permanent changes lead to increased susceptibility to developing obesity later in life, making it easier to gain weight and harder to lose it and to keep the weight off.
Related: Chemicals in everyday products are spurring obesity
Obesogens can increase weight even without increased food intake because they can alter metabolism and promote increased storage of calories.
The good news
The good news is that we know that there are obesogens, we know a number of them by name, and we know where their exposures come from and how many act to increase weight gain. Reducing exposures should lead to decreased incidence of obesity. Decreasing human exposure to obesogens is a viable strategy to prevent obesity, particularly in pregnant women of childbearing age and children through adolescence. Focusing on prevention is a timely and critical component of any public health approach to stopping the obesity pandemic.
Understanding and acceptance of obesogens
Why do policymakers and regulators not focus on preventing obesity by reducing exposures to obesogens? Perhaps because obesogens are not well understood within the medical community. The long-term goal is to change public health policies, but an important short-term goal is to stimulate global understanding of obesogens.
Most medical practitioners wait until someone is overweight or obese and then try to mitigate the weight gain and associated diseases. Whatever the reason for this inappropriate focus, their ethical obligations as healthcare providers require that clinicians empower patients to make informed decisions about their health.
It is time to have clinicians— particularly in the OB-GYN field—become knowledgeable about obesogens, how and when they act, and how to reduce exposures to educate patients.
It is also critical that pediatricians explain to mothers how to reduce exposure to obesogens in babies, children, and adolescents during sensitive times when the metabolic system is developing.
Once the clinical community understands the importance of preventing obesogen-induced obesity, we hope this acceptance will stimulate policymakers and regulators to take action to regulate and remove these harmful chemicals from products.
We have written a series of reviews that underscore the role of obesogens in the current obesity pandemic and urgently call for an increased focus on preventing obesity. The data presented in these reviews support action by both clinicians and regulators to protect all of us, especially our sensitive babies, from the effects of these harmful chemicals.
Jerrold J. Heindel, Ph.D. retired Program Administrator from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has submitted this commentary on behalf of HEEDs Elders (www.HEEDS.org), a group of pioneering senior scientists in the endocrine disruption field who focus on improving the health of all the world's inhabitants.
Working occasionally in smaller shops with poor ventilation, he breathed in fumes released by the waxes. “The backroom is pretty cramped,” Arlein told EHN. “In the winter, you don't want to have the door open because it's freezing. The ventilation is not great.”
When he learned what ski wax was made of, though, he re-thought his career path. “It was kind of an ‘aha’ moment,” he said.
Most ski wax is a petroleum product filled with chemicals that can be harmful to human health. Some high-end wax can contain PFAS–a type of petroleum derivative added to make skis glide faster. PFAS, which stands for per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, are toxic chemicals linked to health problems such as certain types of cancer, reproductive issues, and birth defects.
“There was definitely a concern about personal health, for myself and my co-workers,” said Arlein. In response, he began a new venture to create a plant-based, non-toxic ski wax, called mountainFLOW.
Before starting his company, Arlein was one of the many workers across the country exposed to PFAS through their jobs. While PFAS exposure has been a concern in industries like firefighting and chemical manufacturing, there is mounting evidence that workers in other industries–including the auto industry, construction industry, and cleaning industry–are also exposed to the chemicals, sometimes without their knowledge. And workplace regulations may be inadequate for protecting workers.
“We need to know how much of our worker population is exposed to these,” Leena Nylander-French, the director of the NC Occupational Safety and Health Education and Research Center at the University of North Carolina, told EHN. “Can these exposures be prevented?”
PFAS in the ski industry
Arlein’s concerns are backed up by science, such as a 2010 paper that tested the blood levels of PFAS in professional ski waxers in Norway. The study found that professional ski waxers had up to 25 times as much PFAS in their blood as people in the general population. The median concentration of PFAS in the waxers’ blood was also 10 times higher than the “tolerable weekly intake” of PFAS set by the European Food Safety Authority.
Line Småstuen Haug, an author on the study and a senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said waxers they studied reported bouts of “Teflon fever” when they had been waxing a lot of skis. Teflon is a brand name of a chemical coating that contains PFAS that is sometimes used in ski waxes and other consumer products, such as non-stick cookware.
“This is a usage which I think is possible and important to get rid of,” she told EHN. “It creates a lot of exposure that is definitely unnecessary.”
The ski industry has been trying to get rid of PFAS-containing waxes: In 2020, the International Ski Federation, an international governing body for ski racing, banned PFAS waxes in professional races.
What are PFAS?
The ban, however, left U.S. ski shops with a surplus of PFAS-containing waxes that are still in use today because shops aren’t sure how to get rid of them. “It is being used recreationally because people are sitting on all of this inventory,” said Arlein. “It's too expensive to throw out.”
According to Arlein, the level of exposure depends on the type of ski resort, the ventilation in place, and whether personal protective equipment is worn. Larger resorts, for example, are more likely to have higher-end ventilation systems in their ski shops. With PFAS-containing waxes, said Arlein, workers are usually required to wear respirators. “I can’t say how many people actually follow that,” he said. “I know it’s not everybody.”
Arlein’s company, mountainFLOW, is developing a buy-back program to get the PFAS-containing waxes out of ski shops.
Four of the 13 ski resorts contacted for this article stated they had phased out the use of PFAS-containing waxes, or had never used the waxes in their ski shops. The other nine resorts did not respond to requests for comment.
Though professional ski shops at these large resorts no longer use waxes that contain PFAS, their health effects can still linger in the bodies of workers, as shown by a 2017 paper that studied occupational exposure to PFAS in upstate New York. The study, which observed 154 people who had spent years working in an industrial area of the state, found that those exposed to PFAS chemicals in the workplace had elevated blood levels of PFAS for a median of 28 years after they had been exposed.
“These chemicals are persistent,” Kurunthachalam Kannan, an author on the study and a professor at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, told EHN. “If you have higher exposures, higher levels in your body, it takes a longer time to clear.”
PFAS in the transportation industry
PFAS are typical components in fuel lines, brake lines, valves, and batteries in cars. (Credit: Nenad Stojkovic/flickr)
PFAS are also widely used in the transportation industry, according to a paper from NYU researchers that found PFAS in 18 of 18 automotive lubricants tested. The highest levels of PFAS were found in a brand of hydraulic fluid marketed for use in vehicles, boats, elevators, and construction equipment. PFAS are also typical components in fuel lines, brake lines, valves, and batteries in cars.
Kannan, who is also an author on the automotive study, said that the levels of PFAS in these substances probably put workers who are handling these oils and lubricants daily, like auto mechanics, at risk of exposure and possible health effects.
Kannan is also concerned about airport workers who spray de-icing fluids, which contain PFAS, on planes. These workers, he said, are not always wearing personal protective gear.
In a fact sheet about use of PFAS in the automotive industry, chemical company Chemours, which produces automotive lubricants for a wide variety of applications, wrote that PFAS chemicals used in the industry are “critical technologies with no viable alternatives,” and that they “do not pose a significant risk to human health or the environment when used for their intended purposes.”
Chemours was spun off from chemical company DuPont–the company responsible for widespread pollution of North Carolina’s Cape Fear River with the PFAS chemical GenX–in 2015.
Julie Massaro, the executive director for the Automotive Service Association, a trade association for repair shop workers and owners, said that the ASA was not aware of PFAS as an occupational hazard in the auto industry. However, she said, the ASA is “very supportive of protecting the workers and technicians working on the cars.”
PFAS in construction
Construction workers involved in demolition products are at risk of PFAS exposure through dust inhalation. (Credit: Victoria Pickering/flickr)
The construction industry uses PFAS in roofing coatings, certain paints, some types of flooring materials, sealants, adhesives, and even glass fixtures. According to a report from the Green Science Policy Institute, these products may give building construction workers and those working on home improvement projects elevated exposures.
PFAS chemicals used in these industries and in consumer products eventually make their way to waste streams and can accumulate in soil. The existence of PFAS in soils can pose a risk to construction workers, especially those involved in tunneling or digging projects, according to a 2022 paper out of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.
Construction workers involved in demolition products are also at risk of PFAS exposure through dust inhalation. Most PFAS in construction materials are chemically inert, said Charley Stevenson, founder of green building service MateriallyBetter. However, the products that contain the chemicals can degrade and accumulate in dust.
Scott Rayburn, a professor of civil and construction engineering and an author on the paper, said that PFAS are rarely discussed by the construction industry.
Neither North America’s Building Trades Unions nor the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers, and Allied Workers responded to multiple requests for comment.
Widespread PFAS use
PFAS pose a risk to workers in other industries as well. For example, PFAS are added to cleaning products used by professional cleaners and custodians–certain floor waxes or stain-resistant carpet cleaning agents contain PFAS. “Anybody who works in those places will get a full dose because the [cleaning agents] wear off and have to be reapplied,” Ranier Lohmann, a professor of environmental chemistry at the University of Rhode Island, told EHN.
Furniture manufacturers also sometimes add PFAS to products to make them stain-resistant, putting workers at risk, said Stevenson.
Nylander-French is also worried about paper manufacturing. PFAS are used in paper manufacturing in different waterproof coatings; for example, butcher paper used to wrap meat. The environmental wellness blog and community Mamavationtested various paper products last year and found low but detectable levels of fluorine, a PFAS indicator, in certain brands of parchment paper.
Nylander-French said that regulating PFAS use on the occupational side can greatly reduce its prevalence in the environment. “The workers are always exposed first,” she said. “It’s easier to contain the problem when it’s still in containable form than when it’s out in the public.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration does not have specific PFAS regulations. However, employers using PFAS in occupational settings are required to follow general regulations for hazardous chemicals under the Hazard Communication Standard. The standard states that all hazardous chemicals must be accompanied by an informational safety sheet, and that all employers with hazardous chemicals in the workplace must train employees on proper use of the chemicals.
Obstacles to research
Nylander-French said research into occupational exposure is difficult because researchers often lack access to workers.
She is particularly interested in personal protective equipment. Many workers in the industries mentioned in this article wear personal protective equipment, like respirators, when they’re on the job. However, Nylander-French added, little is known about how PFAS actually enter the human body, and whether personal protective equipment like respirators are actually sufficient to protect people.
“There are so many unknowns,” she said. “And I'm not sure that industry itself understands.”
Follow our PFAS testing project with Mamavationat the series landing page.
Want to know more about PFAS? Check out our comprehensive guide.
Have something you want tested for PFAS? Let us know and write us at feedback@ehn.org.
Banner photo credit: Ski wax technician. (Credit: ActiveSteve/flickr)
This decision raises significant climate change and environmental justice concerns, particularly for those disadvantaged communities who may live near future drilling sites.
Our recent study on community exposures to oil and gas production shows that historical redlining has perpetuated patterns of environmental injustice. Redlined neighborhoods have nearly twice the density of oil and gas wells than otherwise comparable neighborhoods that were not redlined.
This essay is also available in Spanish
Our findings may partially explain how it is that Black and Latinx people are more likely to live near oil and gas development infrastructure today.
In light of these findings, policymakers should consider the scientific evidence of the risks posed by oil and gas production to public health, and how historical racist policies contributed to the health disparities we see today.
Redlining and environmental injustice
Many environmental problems disproportionately faced by communities of color and the poor in the U.S. are rooted in discriminatory policies put in place generations ago by local, state, and federal governments. One such policy is known as redlining, in which the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, in trying to revive the housing market in the 1930s in the wake of the Great Depression, graded and mapped how risky neighborhoods were for real estate investment.
Neighborhoods comprised of largely low-income, immigrant, or Black residents were deemed “hazardous” or “definitely declining” and mapped in red (i.e., redlined), while whiter and wealthier communities were considered “best” or “still desirable.”
A 2018 study in Los Angeles found that at least some Home Owners’ Loan Corporation officials explicitly considered the racial makeup of neighborhoods and the presence of oil and gas wells when making decisions about redlining, which influenced future locations of new oil and gas development. Officials gave the highest grade to one predominantly white Los Angeles neighborhood near oil and gas wells after local leaders agreed to impose “racial restrictions in perpetuity,” to keep the neighborhood white while also stopping future oil and gas well drilling. In our recent study, we found that neighborhoods that already had wells were more likely to be redlined, and, in turn, redlined neighborhoods were more likely to have new oil and gas wells drilled after the policy went into effect.
These legacies remain imprinted on neighborhoods today. For many families who have stayed in their redlined neighborhoods for generations, significant environmental and health consequences remain. Research shows that historically redlined neighborhoods have worse air quality, a lack of greenspace, and higher heat island risks, as well as elevated rates of cardiovascular disease, asthma hospitalizations, poor birth outcomes, and other diseases.
Although redlining may not have directly caused these disparities, this discriminatory policy codified and accelerated them through disinvestment in already struggling neighborhoods, which, in turn, has shaped the present-day location of environmental hazards and associated health risks. In terms of oil and gas production, research shows that drilling and operating oil and gas wells worsens air pollution and puts residents living nearby at risk of respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, depression, and poor birth outcomes, including premature birth.
Shifting away from oil and gas
In California, policymakers, affected residents, and advocates are debating how to protect communities and workers from the impacts of nearby oil and gas production operations, including limiting new drilling permits and establishing buffer zones between active wells and the places where people live, work, play, and go to school. As the state seeks to phase out oil and gas production and prohibit drilling in residential neighborhoods, policymakers should account for the ongoing adverse impact of historical redlining on the environmental quality of communities of color.
This requires that decision-makers engage fence-line communities near oil and gas production facilities to reduce exposures. It also requires expanding programs such as California’s Climate Investments, which has invested over $4.5 billion in transformative, environmental justice projects that address climate change, including renewable energy initiatives. Similarly, the Biden Administration’s Justice40 Initiative, modeled closely on California’s program, would require that at least 40% of federal investments in climate-change mitigation and clean energy projects benefit environmental justice communities.
The worsening climate crisis, along with strained energy supply chains due to rising global tensions amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, make clear the urgent need for the U.S. to shift away from oil and gas production and toward renewable energy sources. Equally important is that hastening this energy transition would go a long way toward advancing environmental justice for those communities who have endured the health impacts of oil and gas development for generations.
David J.X. González is a Ford Foundation and University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow and Rachel Morello-Frosch is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health and Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Morello-Frosch is also a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
Banner photo: UCLA Law students and faculty participated in a toxic tour of Wilmington, CA, a predominantly Latinx neighborhood surrounded by the Port of Los Angeles, heavy industry, and an oil field in 2019. (Credit: Emmett Institute/flickr)
These last two points have been particularly salient as early-career researchers. Success as a researcher can be elusive — and job security is not a guarantee. We have seen faculty and students leave or be pushed out. We are speculating about the reasons for these departures, but we believe that some may be due to inadequate financial, social, and emotional support by institutions and individuals. Most of these individuals were people of color or from other systematically marginalized groups.
And many don’t even get a chance. Marginalized racial and ethnic groups are underrepresented in academia. While Black and Latino people represent 13% and 18% of the U.S. population, respectively, only 6% of professors in the U.S. are from these groups.
Research also shows biases in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — the main federal funding agency for academic health researchers — specifically for Black people. These differences are in part explained by the topic areas that researchers propose to study. Notably, Black researchers are more likely to propose studies that examine health disparities and studies that develop ways to prevent those disparities by collaborating with community groups, which in turn have historically received the least amount of funding.
Recently, there has been a groundswell of interest in addressing health disparities and working toward health equity, including in environmental health sciences. We hope it translates into improved health for marginalized groups and leads to more faculty representing those groups succeeding as researchers. We wanted to learn from Black and Latina researchers who are part of this positive trend and have achieved national stature for their work in environmental health disparities as well as developing interventions toward health equity.
We posed four questions to Dr. Paloma Beamer (Professor at the University of Arizona), Dr. Christina H. Fuller (Associate Professor at Georgia State University), and Dr. Chandra Jackson (Earl Stadtman Investigator in the Intramural Research Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences).
We hope you will learn as much from them as we did. Responses are lightly edited for brevity.
The funding environment is improving for research addressing environmental disparities and environmental justice, but that has not always been the case. Can you tell us how you have dealt with difficult grant environments? How did you persist through times when you had limited or no success in getting your research agenda funded?
Dr. Paloma Beamer
There was a time in my career that I started to believe it was impossible to get grants funded. I remember a colleague telling me that I should consider changing my focus area so that I could get more funding, especially from industry, like him. I ended up developing a line of research looking at the intersection of environmental and social determinants of health in development of asthma in a 40-year-old birth cohort. I was able to develop a team of mentors that really taught me how to write grants, conduct epidemiological analyses, and critically think in a whole new way. This cross-training is what allowed me to be more successful in writing NIH grants.
Dr. Christina H. Fuller
When funding is slim or none, I’ve forged ahead and done research without it. Even with funding, there is a significant amount of relationship building and investment in community dialogue that must be established beforehand. This work is almost never funded but is integral to ensuring benefit for the communities involved. Then I have been able to leverage these relationships for future proposals.
Dr. Chandra Jackson
I am an investigator within the intramural program at National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and consequently do not need to apply for grants to support my salary and research program. I, however, would seek to add value to and collaborate with more senior, well-funded investigators who conduct research of interest to me. This also presents an opportunity to sharpen grant-writing skills while the structural barriers to accessing funding are being addressed.
In recent years, there have been discussions of a shift from a large focus on discovery and knowledge generation to being more inclusive of service and political and community engagement. Do you support this transition? If not, why? If so, are you able to push forward this agenda in your work?
Dr. Paloma Beamer
I believe wholeheartedly that this is a necessary step toward achieving environmental justice and health equity. How many more mice need to die before we know that arsenic is bad for you? We need more funding for solutions that address the root cause of the health effects of arsenic. I would like to see more opportunities for community engagement to design interventions to address environmental exposures without having to extend the research to health outcomes, especially for contaminants whose toxicity is well characterized.
Dr. Christina H. Fuller
I definitely agree and advocate for this shift. Research in this arena must be grounded in and with people. A great deal of knowledge is already held by those in the community. The researchers do not necessarily discover new information, but instead can reveal and clarify data and associations for a new audience and with a defined purpose.
Dr. Chandra Jackson
I certainly support this shift because new knowledge can be generated in a variety of traditional and non-traditional ways. We need research that can be integrated along the entire translational spectrum — from basic science to global population health. So, everyone has a role, and technological advancements have made the integration of various scientific disciplines possible. Community engagement through citizen science approaches, for instance, are essential.
We get a lot of advice and imagine you do, too. What is the worst piece of professional advice you have ever received?
Dr. Paloma Beamer
I did have one person tell me I should work on my accent. |
Dr. Christina H. Fuller
I was once told that I should not pursue community-engagement in my work, because it would cause my research to be biased. This assumes that other frameworks for research are completely unbiased, which is not necessarily true.
Dr. Chandra Jackson
I was advised to not interview for a particular position since I had already received an offer from what was perceived as a more prestigious institution. Prestige, however, does not automatically equate to tangible benefits, and I think a person should select an institution that can provide the most material and social support to meet the person’s needs or goals.
What is the best piece of advice you received over the years? Or, do you have any advice you would like to share with early career researchers?
Dr. Paloma Beamer
One of the best pieces of advice from one of my first mentors as an assistant professor was to never to agree to anything without saying, “Let me check with my mentor.” While, as I got more experienced, I didn’t always check with my mentor, I learned that it gave me some time to think about the request and if it would benefit my career or the work I’m passionate about. I would tell early career researchers to get a mentor (or a few of them), to focus your time on things that advance your career and the communities you care about.
Dr. Christina H. Fuller
My advice is to not be deterred by nay-sayers or attacks on the validity of your research simply due to its topic or inclusiveness. Focus on elevating research around your interests by utilizing the scientific and lay tools that you have learned as a researcher and a human being.
Dr. Chandra Jackson
I would like to share the following advice: (1) Remain authentic. (2) Define professional and personal success for yourself, and do not rely on society’s definition. (3) Establish a team of mentors who are succeeding in a manner that aligns with your own definition of success along with values. (4) Establish healthy boundaries early and take care of yourself since you cannot “pour from an empty cup.” (5) Be prepared to and get comfortable with speaking up. Marginalized individuals and groups tend to “shrink” or assume their contributions are less significant, but unique backgrounds and experiences fuel innovation and are inherently, as well as demonstrably, valuable.
We feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from these three leaders.
We leave you with three of our takeaways.
Define success for yourself
Our experiences, and those of many others, in academia have been full of scrutiny and failure. Standards for success are high—getting promoted or tenure requires being the absolute best in your field. It’s no wonder that many junior researchers are plagued by imposter syndrome.
Dr. Jackson tells us to ignore what those around us define as success and think about what it means to be successful for ourselves, advice that can be instrumental in finding happiness and fulfillment for those constantly thinking about how to achieve the next research goal, be it your first publication, a grant, or a job.
As one might expect, the quest to be ‘successful’ in research leads to high rates of burnout. Only take on tasks that serve your best interests and do not come at the expense of personal happiness and well-being.Be creative
Just as we should define success for ourselves, we should define our own trajectories. The super stars whose work you admire came up in a different era, with different questions, different funding environments, and different strategies. The paths to success today are inevitably going to look different.
To improve chances for success, we should aim to have a team of mentors, at different stages in their careers, each with complementary expertise whose explicit focus is to elevate us through tangible sponsorship, as researchers and individuals.
Drs. Beamer and Jackson also offer excellent advice to collaborate with those with histories of success. Still, Dr. Fuller notes that we can make incremental, but important, progress even when funding is absent, especially in our local communities.
Have a strong moral compass to persevere
When we talk about environmental justice, we use the word justice because it is imbued with a notion of ethics and morality.
Hardships in research and academia are expected, but for those dedicated to advancing justice and equity, and especially those from historically marginalized groups, these struggles are even more common.
Our three respondents share vivid examples of overt and indirect threats to their research. Their persistence is noteworthy, but also necessary. Frequent rejection—papers that get rejected or are not cited despite rigor and relevance; grants that don’t get funded—is expected. And yet, each time hurts, and a strong moral compass will help us persevere.
Meaningful institutional and structural support would aid in our struggle for equity and justice.
Dr. Daniel Carrión is an Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Public Health and Dr. Carlos Gould is a School of Earth Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. They are both senior fellows of the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice program.
This essay was produced through the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice fellowship. Agents of Change empowers emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.