Environmental justice and harm to humans - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 43

most likely to be uninformed of the risks, and less likely to be aware
of fish advisories and to change consumption habits (Pallo and Barken,
2010).
The subjective disposition and consciousness of people is crucial to
perceptions of threat, risk and imminent danger. The specific groups
who experience environmental problems may not always describe or
see the issues in strictly environmental terms.
In our communities, the smell coming from sewage plants
was never perceived as an environmental issue but as a
survival issue…In workplaces, when workers are being
poisoned or contaminated…we do not refer to them as
environmental issues but as labour issues. Again, the same
thing for farmworkers and the issue of pesticides. In the
60s and 70s, there was organizing around the lead-based
paints used in housing projects. When the paint curled up
and chipped off, children in the projects were eating it and
getting sick. When we dealt with this issue, we perceived it
as an issue of tenant's rights. (Moore, 1990: 16)
The unequal distribution of exposure to environmental risks, whether
it is in relation to the location of toxic waste sites or proximity to clean
drinking water, may not always be conceived as an 'environmental' issue,
nor indeed as an environmental 'problem'. For instance, Harvey (1996)
points out that the intersection of poverty, racism and desperation may
occasionally lead to situations where, for the sake of jobs and economic
development, community leaders actively solicit the relocation of
hazardous industries or waste sites to their neighbourhoods. Waldman
(2007), on the other hand, describes a local community in South Africa
that saw the contamination effects of asbestos as 'natural'. This was due
to a combination of religious beliefs (that stressed a passive stance to
the world around them) and the fact that harms that are imperceptible
to the senses often only exist as a problem if they are constituted as
such in public discourse (and in particular, the public discourse of the
village community). Otherwise, what is, simply is.
Consciousness of risk can also be studied from the point of view of
differential risk within at-risk populations. In others words, a particular
suburb or city may be placed in circumstances that heighten risks to
wellbeing and health for everyone (for example, dumping of toxic waste
in Abidjan, Ivory Coast; the spraying of chemical pesticides in New
York City). Particularly, however, where heightened risk is deemed
to be 'acceptable' in terms of cost-benefit analysis, as in the use of