ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces community-based environmental laboratories as a new paradigm for achieving environmental justice. The post-disaster context of New Orleans, which simultaneously presents a long history of environmental injustice and the largest city-rebuilding effort in US history, is an ideal site for observing the possibilities for community-based laboratories. In New Orleans, testing by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Natural Resources Defense Council following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita revealed the presence of a range of contaminants in soils and sediment at levels high enough to pose potential health risks to residents. In the case of soil contamination, people are frustrated by the lack of clean-up action in the face of available scientific information, which only perpetuates their mistrust of government after the failure of the federally funded levees in New Orleans. Lead Lab is a nonprofit organization established by Howard Mielke and colleagues of Tulane University’s Center for Bioenvironmental Research.
