Summary
Agricultural communities in California experience environmental injustice related to toxic exposures in environmental, household, and occupational settings. Environmental justice movements seek to ensure a clean and healthy environment for all communities by mitigating these toxic exposures and amplifying community voices to remove social, economic, and political barriers to healthy environments. This research project started in 2016 when Knights Landing, California residents revealed their suspicions that environmental carcinogens were potentially causing a high prevalence of cancer in their neighborhood.
Findings: The survey results were used by community leaders to establish the following action priorities: household pesticide exposure, addictive substance misuse, access to cancer screening, occupational safety, housing quality, and neighborhood isolation from health services. Feasible and prompt actions were implemented from 2017 to 2023 within the limited resources of this unincorporated community. Communities can initiate a swift, customized, representative environmental health assessment to serve as a starting point when seeking institutional support, funding, or larger research initiatives. This approach may serve as a model for environmental justice researchers striving to promptly reduce environmental health risks in marginalized communities.
This study uses 2005–2017 and 2016–2017 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) data.
