While little data exist on this topic, LGBTQI+ people also likely experience disproportionately high exposure to indoor environmental hazards, such as lead paint, lead pipes, asbestos, radon, and other pollutants, due to the many housing challenges these communities face these hazards are extremely common in substandard housing. This has resulted in LGBTQ+ people suffering higher rates of chronic diseases associated with environmental exposure, such as respiratory diseases, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Studies have found that areas with higher proportions of same-sex couples saw increased amounts of hazardous air pollutants compared with areas with lower proportions of same-sex couples. LGBTQ+ people have long been subject to a disproportionate burden of pollution compared with cisgender heterosexual people-due to discriminatory housing policies, “ heteronormative NIMBYism,” or the exclusion of LGBTQ+ spaces in certain communities, and higher poverty rates.
To help paint a more holistic picture of environmental justice, this column explores the harmful effects of environmental injustice on LGBTQI+ populations in particular.Įxposure to environmental pollution and hazardsĪ key pillar of environmental justice is the ability to live free of toxic pollution-in the air, water, and land. Environmental injustice disproportionately affects women, low-income communities, and LGBTQ+ people what’s more, people who share more than one of these identities may be even more disproportionately burdened. While race is the biggest determinant of environmental injustice, environmental justice should be viewed through the lens of the most marginalized communities-in particular, the multiple socioeconomic stressors and the unequal environmental burdens that such communities experience. For example, in 2019, environmental justice leaders co-authored and launched with national environmental organizations the Equitable and Just National Climate Platform-the first national climate agenda centered on advancing racial, economic, environmental, and climate justice. And as these movements evolve over time, they have grown increasingly intersectional in the issues they tackle. In response to this clear need for stronger climate solutions, the environmental justice movement grew out of the civil rights movement, promoting the idea that “all people and all communities have the right to breathe clean air, live free of dangerous levels of toxic pollution, access healthy food, and share the benefits of a prosperous and vibrant clean economy.” Spearheaded by Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, the environmental justice movement has since made significant strides in bringing racial and economic justice to the forefront of modern-day environmentalism and the fight against the climate crisis. While the environmental legislation of the 1960s and 1970s was historic, it did not go far enough in protecting all people from environmental pollution.
The decade of the Stonewall riots also saw key moments in the fight to protect the environment, such as the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Air Act, as well as in the fight for racial equality, such as the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. This momentous event helped to kick off the LGBTQI+ rights movement that saw the decriminalization of homosexuality, the legalization of gay marriage, and protections from discrimination in the workplace. Fifty-three years ago this month, members of the LGBTQI+ community, many of whom were people of color, stood up against a bigoted police force raiding the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City.