Empowering Community Based Organizations to Improve Air Quality in NYC Environmental Justice Communities
Presented By: Jalisa Gilmore, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance & Leslie Velasquez, El Puente Green Light District
Description: The clustering of facilities such as bus depots, waste transfer stations, food distribution hubs, and highways in low-income communities and communities of color unfairly concentrates air pollution and their health consequences. As a result, negative health outcomes such as asthma, heart disease, and cancer rates are significantly higher in environmental justice communities such as the South Bronx, East Harlem, and North Brooklyn.
The New York City Environmental Justice Alliance’s Community Air Mapping Project for Environmental Justice (CAMP-EJ) is a grassroots air quality monitoring research project led by low-income communities and communities of color in New York City’s most environmentally-overburdened neighborhoods. CAMP-EJ empowers four community-based organizations in the South Bronx and Brooklyn to measure and understand their local air quality, and to use this data to drive advocacy campaigns to address the disproportionate impacts of PM2.5. Utilizing hand-held air quality monitors, communities are able to collect and visualize the air quality data in real-time using the AirCasting platform -- an open-source platform for sharing environmental data.
Our presentation will focus on a citywide, environmental justice perspective of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution in New York, and how low-cost air monitors can serve to educate and empower communities, while also informing advocacy for policies that improve air quality and reduce exposures for all New Yorkers. We will then place the findings, challenges, and lessons learned from mobile and stationary PM2.5 monitoring within the neighborhood context of North Brooklyn where the work of CAMP-EJ is being led by a local community-based organization, El Puente.