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Two months have passed since Mayor Brandon Johnson introduced the Hazel M. Johnson Ordinance to his City Council. The Hazel M. Johnson Ordinance aims to protect communities from disproportionate pollution burdens by improving the zoning review process. The ordinance is a major milestone for the city of Chicago in protecting population health. Other cities are watching our ability to stand up critical legislation during an onslaught of deregulation from the federal government.
While the President Donald J. Trump Administration gleefully announces the slashing of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s budget in half, and the EPA itself proudly brags of the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history, environmental justice advocates persist in fighting for clean air, water and soil in their neighborhoods.
Their fight is for each of us, whether we know it or not.
In Chicago, environmental justice advocates were invited to co-lead, along with governmental officials and researchers, a citywide effort to assess the cumulative exposures residents experience in their community areas. This community-engaged, systematic cumulative impacts assessment (CIA) explored and selected environmental exposures and conditions, sensitive populations and socioeconomic factors at the census tract level to produce a cumulative impacts index and an environmental justice map of Chicago. Critical to the process was a community engagement plan that centered people with lived experience with environmental pollutants at the table to inform the methodology and select indicators.
Data from the CIA was used to inform the Hazel M. Johnson Ordinance, named after Hazel M. Johnson, the “mother of the environmental justice movement,” for her decades of advocacy protecting Chicagoan’s health from industrial pollutants. The ordinance improves the zoning review process for heavy and intensive land uses with significant potential for pollution exposure. It is a major accomplishment of Chicago environmental justice advocates.
On a national level, the EPA was established by President Richard Nixon in 1969 to set and enforce standards for air and water quality and pollutants after a decade of increasing environmental disasters including mass deaths due to poor air quality in New York City and the spontaneous combustion the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland which also inspired the first Earth Day April 22, 1970.
Industry regulations for environmental protection were put in place after years of relentless advocacy, from community members most impacted, to minimize impact on population health by controlling the amount of toxins industry that are allowed to be released into the environment.
As a community health scientist and professor at University of Illinois Chicago, I work to ensure that people know the exposures in their neighborhood and understand how they impact their health. I also work to build the capacity of community members to function as community scientists, community members who use research methods to advocate for the health solutions.
Toxins like PM 2.5., diesel PM, and ozone pollute the air and contribute to respiratory infections and chronic disease. Air pollution overly burdens Chicagoans on the South and West sides of the city, which are neighborhoods composed of racially minoritized residents and contributes to the 11.4 life expectancy gap between Black and white residents.
Community members who live in areas with a lot of industry complain of headaches, smells, noise and poor air quality. Residents also worry about exposures to pollutants and may avoid outdoor activity and engaging with their neighbors and their environment; activities with known positive health outcomes.
Chicago is the third most polluted major U.S. city with particulate matter of PM2.5 of 9.7 micrograms per cubic meter, up 15% from 2024 and higher than the national level of 7.3 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
To be sure, recent technological developments have made it easier to identify industrial facilities that release chemicals into the air, water, and land and community and health researcher advocates have worked collectively to create whole air monitoring networks. Open Air Chicago is a citywide project consisting of 277 air sensors collecting data on fine PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), providing air quality information for Chicago communities and residents.
Community scientists and environmental justice advocates work to build the critical consciousness of residents to connect the smells, sounds and feel of environmental pollution with their health.
I know something about the importance of knowing the health risks we face. My mom grew up in the Rubber Capital of the World, Akron, Ohio. Her dad worked for the Firestone Tire Company and her family lived in company housing, two blocks from the Goodyear factory. She used to tell my six siblings and I that her dad would put her to bed with a perfumed handkerchief because the smell from the Firestone plant was so unpleasant. She said she and her family never considered that the smells could indicate that they were being exposed to environmental hazards. Rather, her father would praise Firestone senior leadership because they would offer to re-shingle company housing every three years. It never occurred to her family that the need to replace roofing that frequently surely meant that a toxic in the air was deteriorating the roofing material at an alarming rate. Her father died from lung cancer when my mom was in high school.
Despite having regulations in place, Industry has a history of ignoring and evading the regulations and instead of reducing emissions comply by paying citations or violation fees. This is the case for the MAT Asphalt plant in McKinley Park. Despite its 2018 permit being expired and after hundreds of complaints, a class-action settlement, and being ticketed by the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) for environmental ordinance violations, MAT Asphalt continues its operations.
People don’t experience one environmental exposure at a time but rather the exposures accumulate, compounding health impacts. Scientists are exploring these complex mechanistic pathways.
To this day, environmental justice organizations across the country still struggle with raising the critical consciousness of community residents to be aware of environmental hazards and their sources and to build power to fight for regulations that protect their health.
Given our current exposures and related health risks, the Trump Administration’s move to shrink the EPA and deregulate already weak regulations is unfathomable. The Hazel Johnson Cumulative Impacts Ordinance is evidence of what can come from community collective power. If you are lucky enough to live in Chicago, call your alderperson and ask them why there has been no movement on the ordinance.
And then consider using this form to urge your alderperson to vote “yes” on the Hazel Johnson Cumulative Impacts Ordinance for a healthier Chicago. If you live in another environmental justice community outside of Chicago, please stay in the fight, and push for evidence and lived experience-informed ordinances to protect population health.
