call me a dirty communist radical but I think everyone should know if they live near toxic waste
if youre in the united states and would like to learn new and terrible things about where you live, you can visit the EPA's Environmental Justice Screening map and put in your location or zipcode
click on superfund proximity to see how close you are to a superfund site (location contaminated with hazardous material)
heres Niagra Falls NY! google love canal!
its a good tool to see what environmental factors could be harming your health that you may not know about. this is not limited to toxic waste so look around at it
my favorite is looking at roads. there are some interesting correlations. Here is a map of Buffalo NY with traffic proximity
here it is again but with where people are getting asthma :P
crazy
heres where the people of color live in Buffalo btw
in case you where wondering what the explanatory factor here is, its the 6-lane expressway that they ran through a residential community in the 50s. a redlined neighborhood btw. the road used to be beautiful parkway. thank you Urban Renewal, thank you Robert Moses, and thank you Kensington Expressway
ok heres the link again because now you really want to go look at it lol
anyways yeah um environmental health issues are super insidious and not talked about enough. i know thinks seem daunting and scary when we talk about environmental problems, things like climate change are huge and all-encompassing. The way you can make the most impact, real tangible impact is by learning about things local to you!!!!
learn about them, talk to other people about them, organize or find a way to get involved with orgs that already exist. grassroots activism is infinitely more effective than they want you to know and its your responsibility to yourself and your neighbors to try to make things better good luck I love you all
One day I showed up to D&D and one of the guys in our group, before we could even start playing, was like "guys, look at this thing I found." And pulled up either this exact map or a very similar one that cross checks environmental hazards from industrial facilities with average income (more detailed than by zip code, it was pretty cool). And we use a big TV embedded in the game table for maps and stuff, which he pulled this up on, so we spent like half an hour looking at where we all lived and going "oh. Shit." And then we sat there a bit kind of ambling through some cool down small talk.
And like, the thing that kind of made it real for everyone was the context of it being on the screen we use to look at world maps for a fantasy game. It was very surreal for some of the guys at the table, the more conservative ones in particular, like they could see the map and it was showing them the forces of Mordor marching to their doorstep. And for a short time they understood that there are actually vast and evil forces in this world that they could defeat with a weapon, they were just large corporations commiting environmental crimes with very well protected CEOs and fantastic lawyers.
check out your location while you can!!! Part of Trumps immediate changrs includes getting rid of public information sources like this one. I don't know if they will keep this website up for much longer so go on and download any reports or pollution information you might want
so as of today, February 5th 2025 this website is down. This is coinciding with mass censorship of other government agencies online from the Trump administration. Those who were able to download their data before the removal, keep it and learn it and share it with your peers. Those who did not get the chance, know that there are other avenues and follow them. Information is power and they are trying to take it away from you. Do not let them.
here are some other mapping resources from the notes. this is not everything, but it is a start.
Check the quality of your tap water here:https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/
Check your climate vulnerability here: https://climatevulnerabilityindex.org/
explore historical redlining maps here: https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining
this is just the wikipedia page of current superfund sites, take a look and see where your state has hazardous waste sites.
look into the history of your area and TALK ABOUT IT. be annoying and loud about it. don't stop learning and don't stop talking.
update! here is a clone of the website, thank you @boots-fastened-slip-fashion for linking this in the replies I'm putting it here so it can be accessed along with the other sites :)
hey! if you're in the notes worrying about how the website is down, you should be rbing this version, which has a replica of the site and a bunch of other resources!!!
