Mr. Chairman and members of the Council, I want to thank you for allowing me the time to address this body. My name is Robert D. Bullard. I am Ware Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. As a former member of NEJAC, I would like to offer these comments for you to consider passing them on to Administrator Carol Browner. Despite significant improvements in environmental protection over the past several decades, too many families and their children continue to live in unsafe and unhealthy physical environments.

In community after community I visit, I see to many families, young people, and children that are sick. We do not have to debate the cause. The fact is people tell us they are sick. And itís not just cancer. Too many of our people are suffering from asthma and other respiratory diseases. Asthma is environmental health problem that disproportionately impacts people of color and the poor. Between 4 to 5 million children under age 18 suffer from asthma. Asthma is the most common chronic disease among children. Asthma is the number one cause of childhood hospitalization in most major urban areas. It is asthma; not gun shot wounds or drive by shootings, that is sending our kids to hospital emergency rooms in record numbers. Hospitalization and mortality due to asthma exhibit wide racial differences. African Americans are two to three times more likely than whites to be hospitalized for or die from asthma. Asthma is 26 percent higher among African American children than among white children. From 1982-1991, the age-adjusted death rate for asthma for persons aged 5-34 was approximately five times higher among African Americans than whites.

Persons suffering from asthma and other respiratory illnesses are particularly sensitive to the effects of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxides, particulate matter, ozone, and nitrogen oxides. Pollution from smokestacks and from automobiles, trucks, and buses on the clogged streets and highways contributes to the rising asthma epidemic in our communities.

I offer the following recommendations for you to consider passing on to EPA Administrator Browner:

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• Given the extreme environmental stressors and disaster-like conditions that exist in many communities of color toured in Louisiana's petrochemical corridor (including Lake Charles) and other parts of the nation, the NEJAC needs to declare an "emergency" and advise EPA administrator Browner to respond with an "emergency plan" that is commensurate with the problem at hand.

   

• February 11, 1999 will mark the fifth anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 12898. We need a Presidential Summit on Environmental Justice to examine the state of affairs post-Executive Order 12898.

   

• February 10, 1999 will also mark the fifth anniversary of the EPA/NIEHS et al. Health and Research Symposium to Ensure Environmental Justice. We need EPA to take the lead in assessing what follow-up activities and steps, including interagency actions, have been taken over the past five years to implement the symposium recommendations.

   

• EPA should take the lead in sponsoring a national symposium that explores children of color environmental health issues (i.e., rising asthma epidemic).

   

• EPA should take the lead in coordinating a research roundtable that explores tools, methodologies, and protocols for assessing disparate impact and conducting environmental justice impact assessments.

   

• We need EPAís Office of Environmental Justice to take reinstate the Community-University Partnership grants. Also should provide the NEJAC with the findings of the evaluation of the CUP grants program.

   

• We need EPA to expand the targeting of resources, monitoring activities, and enforcement on crosscutting issues surrounding air pollution and the rising asthma epidemic in communities of color.

   

• We need an assessment of environmental justice training conducted in the regions and states. EPA needs to oversee the development of standardized and user-friendly environmental justice training modules and guidebooks for use by the regions and states. Modules need to have a common template. Training needs to be substantive and mandatory with built in incentives.

 

• Request EPA to obtain progress report from the North American Association of Environmental Educators (NAAEE) on its diversity initiatives and plans to include people of color partners.

Finally, we request that EPA prepare a Year-to-Date Report of the NEJAC.