ABSTRACT
The environmental justice movement arose in the early 1980s from social and environmental movements of the previous decade or two. Prior to Federal Executive Order 12898 of February 11, 1994, environmental laws did not directly address environmental justice issues. Environmental justice studies most commonly have been conducted with respect to waste sites or waste-generation facilities. Although there is considerable debate as to what population characteristics to measure in an environmental justice study, most studies use population characteristics defined in data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Environmental justice studies have been conducted using population characteristics that are defined at many different scales and distances from the facilities. Because many subjective judgments are involved in evaluating whether or not an environmental justice issue exists, alternative approaches should be used in order to examine a range of results.
