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Environmental justice activists defined an environmental justice, or community-led, research practice as an alternative conception of science to guide epidemiological investigations of the human health effects of hazardous wastes. Activists inserted their position into an ongoing scientific controversy where multiple epidemiologies existed--environmental, dumpsite, and popular--reflecting various understandings and interests of federal and academic epidemiologists, state public health officials, and anti-toxics activists. A 1991 national symposium on health research needs and the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, established in 1993 to advise the Environmental Protection Agency, provided important locations through which activists advocated an environmental justice research approach and pressed for its adoption by relevant governmental public health institutions. The shaping of environmental justice research by activists raises intriguing issues about the role of science and expertise in political protest and the importance of democratic participation in the making of environmental policy. / Ph. D.

Thesis advisor: Tara Gareau / Noise pollution is highly consequential to children’s learning and general well-being (Klatte et al., 2013; Balk et al., 2023; Masud et al., 2020). Sirens emanating from emergency services pose particularly adverse consequences to students’ well-being and academic performance (Gheewalla et al., 2021). As signals of danger, sirens are shown to induce psychological and physiological reactions, including emotional distress, changes in blood pressure, and increased heart rate and blood glucose (Lapid Pickman et al., 2021; Manor et al., 2023). Prior studies have shown that schools with higher proportions of students of color are disproportionately exposed to noise pollution. Through this study, I employ a multi-phase, mixed methods approach to examine whether students of color in Massachusetts are disproportionately exposed to sirens in the classroom, potentially compounding existing stressors and contributing to academic disparities. In Phase One, I draw upon spatial data science to determine which schools and students in Massachusetts are at risk of experiencing sirens frequently throughout the school day. In Phase Two, I build upon the results from Phase One to survey students and educators attending a school my initial findings deemed were at risk of exposure to emergency sirens to determine how sirens impact the learning environment. I find that students of color and schools in urban areas in Massachusetts are disproportionately exposed to sirens. Furthermore, I find that the majority of students report being distracted for at least ten seconds when they hear sirens in the classroom. Finally, I find that sirens can serve as a trigger of past traumatic events in both students and educators, potentially adding additional stressors to the learning environment. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Environmental Studies. / Discipline: Scholar of the College.

In order to meet emissions targets under the UN Paris Agreement, every nation must decarbonize its energy production. The US isn't reducing energy-related emissions fast enough to meet its targets for keeping overall warming under 2°C above pre-industrial levels. This constitutes a grave injustice to the most vulnerable populations of the world, who are suffering the ill effects of climate change already. The challenge of eliminating fossil fuels from the US energy system is not simply one of technological limitations, however. The aim of this dissertation is to provide an analysis of historical, political, and, most importantly, conceptual barriers to decarbonization of energy in the US. I believe not just our policies and our markets, but our thinking has to change if we are to avoid recapitulating the injustices of the fossil fuel energy system. I argue that energy policy in the US over time has ossified around a narrow conception of energy as fossil energy—as a substance, rather than as a service. I call this the fossil conception of energy (FCE). I follow historical traces of the FCE in three key areas: political discourse in the US, the relationships between the US dollar and OPEC oil (a complex web called the petrodollar system), and domestic energy markets. Through William Freudenburg's "double diversion" framework for analysis of society-environment relationships, I argue that the FCE grounds a privileged discourse that legitimates the supremacy of fossil fuels and contributes to the maintenance of US hegemony worldwide. I propose that one possibility for rethinking energy may be found in systems thinking, which leads me to conclude that any energy system organized around capital will recapitulate many of the injustices of the fossil fuel system.

abstract: The natural environment is becoming an increasing concern within the global society and within the realm of social work practice. Social work practitioners and scholars are advocating for incorporating environmental justice into social work education, but have yet to adequately develop the research and strategies to execute this task. To further develop the research behind this concept, 112 social work students’ attitudes toward the environment were analyzed using the New Environmental Paradigm Scale and questions regarding the intersection of social work and the natural environment. Analysis of the data found social work students were less pro-environment than populations within previous studies. Although, social work students reported the desire to learn more about environmental issues and felt as though it would help them become better social workers. Results also suggested social work students did not know where to find information on environmental issues and misconstrued information on environmental issues, whether or not they felt informed. It will be imperative to further develop the research on incorporating environmental justice into social work education through future pilot programs with student attitudes and cultures into consideration. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Social Work 2016

abstract: This study weighs the connection of environmental crisis with race and gender in different cases of environmental crisis and conflicts. The study documents how Indigenous cosmologies and cosmopolitics, and scientific arguments converge in unexpected alliances in the advent of environmental crises. This research focuses on specific instances, or situations related to environmental justice movements addressing the environmental crisis in Mexico (and its convergences to other similar cases). I examine and present a discussion of the research methodologies and methods used to study the ‘environment’ as well as indigenous cosmologies and cosmopolitics. With this, I embark on a research that includes feminist decolonial theory, eco-feminism and material feminisms into a larger project for autonomy and decoloniality. In particular, I discuss one of the concepts that have caught the attention of those studying race and ethnicity in the Americas: mestizaje as an ordinal principle in the context of Mexico. Also, I discuss the inscriptions of the mestiza body in relation to the materiality of race and gender in the context of Latin America. It is shown how the discourse of mestizaje is tangled with the idea of a modern civilization, such as in the Mexican state. Overall, this research analyzes different responses to environmental crises; from environmental activists, community organizers to plastic artists and scientific experts. Also, it includes a literary analysis of contemporary indigenous literatures to show how state sponsored violence and settler colonialism have an incidence in gender violence by placing the female body close to nature. As global environmental problems have risen, this research contributes to the understanding of the underlying factors in environmental crises and conflict that have been overlooked. Herein lies an important possibility to reach a broader audience in different disciplines, ranging from indigenous studies to the global politics of human rights. Furthermore, this research aims to contribute to the work of environmental activists, scholars and scientists with regard to the understanding of how different arguments are used in research and advocacy work, and how they can integrate an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach when addressing environmental justice cases. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2016

abstract: Air pollution is a serious problem in most urban areas around the world, which has a number of negative ecological and human health impacts. As a result, it's vitally important to detect and characterize air pollutants to protect the health of the urban environment and our citizens. An important early step in this process is ensuring that the air pollution monitoring network is properly designed to capture the patterns of pollution and that all social demographics in the urban population are represented. An important aspect in characterizing air pollution patterns is scale in space and time which, along with pattern and process relationships, is a key subject in the field of landscape ecology. Thus, using multiple landscape ecological methods, this dissertation research begins by characterizing and quantifying the multi-scalar patterns of ozone (O3) and particulate matter (PM10) in the Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan region. Results showed that pollution patterns are scale-dependent, O3 is a regionally-scaled pollutant at longer temporal scales, and PM10 is a locally-scaled pollutant with patterns sensitive to season. Next, this dissertation examines the monitoring network within Maricopa County. Using a novel multiscale indicator-based approach, the adequacy of the network was quantified by integrating inputs from various academic and government stakeholders. Furthermore, deficiencies were spatially defined and recommendations were made on how to strengthen the design of the network. A sustainability ranking system also provided new insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the network. Lastly, the study addresses the question of whether distinct social groups were experiencing inequitable exposure to pollutants - a key issue of distributive environmental injustice. A novel interdisciplinary method using multi-scalar ambient pollution data and hierarchical multiple regression models revealed environmental inequities between air pollutants and race, ethnicity, age, and socioeconomic classes. The results indicate that changing the scale of the analysis can change the equitable relationship between pollution and demographics. The scientific findings of the scale-dependent relationships among air pollution patterns, network design, and population demographics, brought to light through this study, can help policymakers make informed decisions for protecting the human health and the urban environment in the Phoenix metropolitan region and beyond. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Biology 2014