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Toxic Legacies of Hazardous Waste and the Fight for Environmental Justice
PFAS foam in Van Ettan Lake in Oscoda, Michigan. Credit: Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, & Energy
A toxic legacy threatens the health of frontline and fenceline communities across the United States. From Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” to neighborhoods in Chicago built on top of toxic waste landfills (read our blog on Altgeld Gardens here), hazardous waste has long been both a product of and a contributor to racial, socioeconomic, and environmental injustice.
Legacy of Contamination and Injustice
The U.S. hazardous waste problem exploded in the post-World War II industrial boom. Chemical plants, refineries, and factories expanded their operations, generating more toxic byproducts. Companies often dumped this waste near low-income and Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, all without proper oversight. In addition, redlining practices effectively confined marginalized workers and their families to polluted neighborhoods.
The 1978 Love Canal disaster in New York became a national wake-up call. In the 1940s and ’50s, a working-class neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, was built on top of over 21,000 tons of toxic waste dumped by the Hooker Chemical Company. After years of alarming health issues—cancer, birth defects, and chemical burns—residents organized and demanded action, led by activist Lois Gibbs. Their efforts led to federal intervention and inspired the creation of the Superfund program.
However, it was the 1982 protests in Warren County, North Carolina, where a predominantly Black community resisted the illegal dumping of PCB-contaminated soil, that catalyzed the environmental justice movement.
Through the research commissioned by Reverend Benjamin Chavis Muhammad, the term “environmental racism” was coined, affirming the experiences of numerous fenceline communities and highlighting how systemic neglect and racism led to the placement of hazardous waste sites in their neighborhoods.
Hazardous Waste Today is an Unequal Burden
Regulations and policies have changed to relieve this unequal burden, but the patterns of harm persist. According to EPA data, communities of color are significantly more likely to live near hazardous waste sites and polluting facilities, with Black Americans being 75% more likely to live in fenceline communities. These toxic exposures can include:
- Heavy metals like lead and mercury in soil and water
- PFAS (“forever chemicals”) in drinking water near military bases and airports
- E-waste and medical waste with long-lasting impacts on community and ecosystem health
- Chemical and fossil fuel industries in fenceline neighborhoods
Two major federal laws were designed to manage hazardous waste and protect public health: the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976 and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund), passed in 1980. RCRA regulates the generation, transportation, treatment, and disposal of hazardous waste, while CERCLA focuses on the cleanup of the most contaminated sites in the U.S.
These laws laid important groundwork, but they have not prevented the ongoing targeting of vulnerable communities for hazardous waste siting or addressed the full scope of environmental harm they face. Many Superfund sites have remained in disrepair for years, especially in under-resourced areas where residents lack the political power or funding to demand urgent cleanup.
Exposure to hazardous waste can have devastating health and economic consequences. Short-term effects include respiratory issues, nausea, rashes, and headaches. Long-term exposure has been linked to cancer, neurological damage, reproductive harm, and developmental delays in children.
Communities also suffer economically—through lowered property values, higher medical costs, and the long-term drain of government resources required for remediation. Local governments are often forced to bear the cost of managing these impacts, while corporations responsible for the pollution walk away with little accountability.
Despite the disproportionate and ongoing burden these communities carry, the federal government recently announced the closure of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECR), placing over 170 of the office’s staff on administrative leave and dismissing over 700 staff in total across the EPA, signaling a disturbing rollback of hard-fought protections.
Since 1992, OEJECR—then called the Office of Environmental Justice—has played a critical role in investigating environmental discrimination and ensuring that federal environmental policy included the voices of communities most impacted by pollution. Its dismantling threatens to leave millions of Americans—particularly those in low-income, rural, and BIPOC communities—with even fewer resources to demand clean air, safe water, and protection from toxic exposure.
Read more about the OEJECR’s closure and the communities impacted here.
Even with the few legislations and policies still in place, industries often follow the path of least resistance when deciding where to place hazardous waste sites. This path almost always leads these polluting facilities to minority and low-income communities—those with much fewer resources and political power than white affluent neighborhoods.
A national database of commercial hazardous waste facilities found that more than half of all people in the United States who live within 1.86 miles of a hazardous waste facility are people of color.
Learn more about where hazardous waste issues exist with our EJ mapping tool.
The improper and dangerous disposal of hazardous waste doesn’t happen in a vacuum—it’s deeply tied to systems of injustice, with a long history of discrimination and neglect that shapes the present. It’s about who gets protected from environmental harm and who’s expected to live with the mess.
When we look around at the overlapping crises we’re facing—climate change, pollution, deep-rooted inequality—we have to stop and ask: Whose homes, neighborhoods, and lands are we still putting at risk? And what would it look like if we truly honored everyone’s right to live in a clean, safe, and healthy place?
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