Environmental Equity: Broadening the Scope of Environmental Collections

Access to information on environmental equity, environmental justice, and environmental racism.

and racial biases in the distribution of environmental hazards."1 Motivated by the findings of these studies, activist organizations have sprung up across the country, and growing numbers of minority and low-income individuals are joining the cause.2 Libraries have an obligation to respond to the information needs of environmental justice activists. Many environmental justice groups are grassroots organizations and dependent on community libraries for information. For example, libraries may be consulted by urban dwellers close to the poverty level, minority activists concerned about the siting of waste facilities in their neighborhoods, representatives of rural communities, or Native American and women's groups. And, according to Dr. Dorceta Taylor, interest in these issues will continue to increase because "those who already belong [to the environmental justice sector] are committed to mobilizing more minorities around environmental issues."3 Of course, traditional environmental sources will provide some information on environmental equity, but these should not be considered comprehensive. Biomedical literature contains a wealth of information valuable to someone studying environmental equity. For example, health related information on lead poisoning in inner city children, dietary exposure to toxics through fish consumption in Native Americans, pesticide exposure in farm workers, and public health issues in the Colonias will be found in medical databases and statistical sources. An assessment of the increasing involvement of minority groups in environmental issues will be found in social science literature, along with studies of environmental issues from a civil rights perspective. Newspapers, wire reports, and popular magazines cover recent initiatives taken by equity advocacy groups and announce studies completed by government agencies and other organizations. Religious groups such as the Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ have been instrumental in drawing attention to environmental equity issues. Non-secular journals and newspapers are a valuable source of information on the connection between religion, social justice, and the environment. And, finally, an examination of traditional legal sources shows that law reviews have begun to address equity issues as well.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is examining the impact of environmental hazards on racial minority and low-income communities. In support of this activity, the EPA Headquarters Library scoured online and CD-ROM databases, reference sources, and newsletters for information on environmental equity.
The results of these efforts include a bibliography of books, reports, and journal and newspaper articles that address equity issues; a reference file of newspaper articles, congressional reports, and EPA publications; and a monthly current awareness service tracking equity issues in the popular press. Examples of resources located are listed below, followed by a description of useful databases and organizations.

Online and CD-ROM Databases
Enviroline is a good source for equity articles in general environmental journals. The term "Environmental Equity" was recently added as a descriptor (subject heading). This change should be reflected in the Winter 1992 version of Bowker's Enviroline CD-ROM. Unfortunately, when searching for older information, there is not any single descriptor that will find everything discussing environmental equity, racism, or justice.

PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service, Inc.) provides coverage of a variety of sources, including
Congressional hearings and reports. A useful descriptor is "United States--Environmental policy--Racial aspects," but it is not used consistently for items addressing environmental equity, racism, or justice. These can be found using the descriptors "Indians--Reservations--Environmental aspects" or "Indians--Reservations" combined with "United States environmental policy." Sources of information on international environmental equity issues may also be found in this database.
Medline and Toxline, both products of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), are useful for finding citations about the environmental health issues, such as the situation at the Texas-Mexico border. Useful Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) include: "Communicable-Disease-Control," "Occupational-Diseases-preventionand-control," and "World-Health, Mexico-". Using the NLM search system command "explode" on the MeSH heading "Ethnic groups" (which will include Blacks, Eskimos, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Indians) and combining this with subject headings such as "Rural Health," "Urban Health," "Environmental Health," "Rural Populations," or "Transients and Migrants" will provide information of peripheral interest to patrons studying environmental equity issues.
Sociological Abstracts lists demographic studies of the correlation between race and toxic waste sites, topics often examined in sociology journals and association papers. Successful search descriptors include: "Equity," "Racism," "Sociodemographic Factors," "Segregation," "Black Community," "Black Americans," "Environmental Protection," "Environment," "Environments," "Environmental," and "Environmentally." The terms "Environmental Racism" and "Environmental Hazards--Equity Issues" appear in the database, but are not, as of this writing, included as official descriptors.

Newspaper and Magazine Databases
For those databases offering the full text of newspapers and magazines, searching for the terms "environmental equity," "environmental racism," or "environmental justice" seems to work well. When searching Magazine Index on Dialog, useful summary articles were found using the following descriptors: Legaltrac (the law version of Infotrac) permits both keyword (includes title and abstract) and subject heading searching. The most efficient way to compile a bibliography on environmental equity using this database is to search for "environmental equity," "environmental racism," and "environmental justice" in the keyword field. The subject terms "Racism--environmental aspects" or "Environmental policy--social aspects" were usually, but not always applied to the articles retrieved by the keyword search.
The Index to Legal Periodicals on Wilsondisc also allows searching by keywords. Entering "environmental" as the first subject term and either "equity," "justice," or "racism" as the second subject term retrieves a number of relevant articles.

Conclusions
Librarians must be prepared to assist patrons whose environmental information needs go beyond traditional technical or scientific areas. Environmental equity is a particularly challenging subject for two reasons: the language of equity, justice, and racism has not yet been absorbed into the databases frequently used for retrieving environmental information, and discussions of environmental equity issues are found in a wide variety of sources. The print sources, bibliographic databases, and organizations listed in this article are one way to access environmental equity discussions.