Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, University of Maryland School of Public Health, College Park, Maryland, USA.
Fielding School of Public Health, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Environ Health Perspect. 2021 May;129(5):55002. doi: 10.1289/EHP8186. Epub 2021 May 4.
The twin pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism during 2020 have forced a conversation across many segments of our society, including the environmental health sciences (EHS) research community. We have seen the proliferation of statements of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and commitments to fight racism and health inequities from academia, nonprofit organizations, governmental agencies, and private corporations. Actions must now arise from these promises. As public health and EHS scientists, we must examine the systems that produce and perpetuate inequities in exposure to environmental pollutants and associated health effects.
We outline five recommendations the EHS research community can implement to confront racism and move our science forward for eliminating racial inequities in environmental health.
Race is best considered a political label that promotes inequality. Thus, we should be wary of equating race with biology. Further, EHS researchers should seriously consider racism as a plausible explanation of racial disparities in health and consider structural racism as a factor in environmental health risk/impact assessments, as well as multiple explanations for racial differences in environmental exposures and health outcomes. Last, the EHS research community should develop metrics to measure racism and a set of guidelines on the use and interpretation of race and ethnicity within the environmental sciences. Numerous guidelines exist in other disciplines that can serve as models. By taking action on each of these recommendations, we can make significant progress toward eliminating racial disparities. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP8186.
2020 年 COVID-19 和系统性种族主义的双重大流行迫使我们社会的许多领域展开对话，包括环境卫生科学（EHS）研究界。我们看到学术界、非营利组织、政府机构和私营公司纷纷发表声明表示声援“黑人的命也是命”运动，并承诺打击种族主义和健康不平等。现在，这些承诺必须转化为行动。作为公共卫生和 EHS 科学家，我们必须审视导致环境污染物暴露和相关健康影响方面存在不平等的制度。
我们概述了 EHS 研究界可以实施的五项建议，以应对种族主义并推动我们的科学发展，消除环境健康方面的种族不平等。
种族最好被视为一个促进不平等的政治标签。因此，我们应该警惕将种族与生物学等同起来。此外，EHS 研究人员应该认真考虑将种族主义作为健康方面种族差异的一个合理解释，并将结构性种族主义作为环境健康风险/影响评估的一个因素，以及环境暴露和健康结果方面种族差异的多种解释。最后，EHS 研究界应制定衡量种族主义的指标以及在环境科学中使用和解释种族和族裔的一套准则。其他学科中有许多准则可以作为模型。通过对这些建议中的每一条都采取行动，我们可以在消除种族差异方面取得重大进展。https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP8186.
