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This National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research project compares the effectiveness of different interventions, both technical and social, at reducing unhealthy stormwater management processes and feedbacks between the environment and people. Specific research objectives and activities include documenting neighborhood issues and needs in informing stormwater best-management practices; evaluating stormwater volume and quality, flooding risk, trash accumulation, and mosquito production within the watersheds; developing a tool that uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to guide watershed management; and enhancing community awareness and positive behaviors to improve water quality and protect urban green space.
This app provides a way for community members to collect data on social, natural, and built features of their environments using the city block as the unit of measure. By collecting this data, CEEJH will be able to work with communities to study and address individual and neighborhood-level variation in exposure to ecologic determinants of health. This tool will facilitate future research on the quality of built and social environments in neighborhoods that are differentially burdened by environmental hazards and pollution.
Amidst community concerns of toxic emissions from a local metal recycling scrap yard and the impending expansion of the nearby Baltimore-Washington Parkway, the Town Council of Cheverly, MD approached the CEEJH Lab to establish a stationary air quality monitoring network throughout town. The proposed network will comprise more than 30 particulate matter sensors hosted by town residents, business, and public services buildings. The current memorandum of understanding addresses how the network will be maintained, how all resulting data will be hosted and managed transparently and openly available to the public, and how the results of the monitoring will be translated for, and disseminated to, community members through a user-friendly online platform as well as in-person community events.
The CEEJH Lab has hosted six symposia with the seventh to take place in August of 2021. Over the years, the overarching theme of the event has varied, ranging from the inclusion of environmental justice and health disparities in conversations about sustainability in the Chesapeake Bay watershed to grassroots activism to health, law, and policy tools for environmental justice communities to STEM innovations that can empower community stakeholders.
More than just a seasonal annoyance, mosquitoes represent a disease transmission vector and critical public health threat. This is especially true in urban communities where disinvestment in housing and infrastructure has left an ecological legacy of infestation and other social and environmental hazards.
From providing cooling shade to helping clear the air of pollutants, green space is absolutely vital to the health, vitality, and quality of life of local neighborhoods. CEEJH is working with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to develop a tool for mapping greenspace across the state.
The CEEJH team has worked in partnership with the National Center for Smart Growth, faculty at the School of Public Health, and the Maryland Environmental Health Network to develop an environmental justice screening tool for the state known as Maryland Environmental Justice Screen (MD EJSCREEN).
The Environmental Justice Plan 2025 (EJ Plan 2025) provides a description of environmental justice issues in Prince George's County, Maryland.
We are refining a method for collecting data on social, natural, and built features of urban environments block-by-block.
Many disenfranchised communities have a disproportionate burden of environmental hazards, a high concentration of psychosocial stressors, and inequities in planning, zoning, and development. Environmental Benefits Districts (EBDs) may be a solution to the problem of environmental injustice because of the focus on equitable and positive development.
Buzzard Point in Washington, DC, is a neighborhood facing the brunt of urban environmental injustice. Through pollution from multiple sources and a lack of environmental amenities, residents have been exploited and drowned out to make way for further development.
Residents of Bladensburg, Maryland, who are predominantly African-American and/or Latino, are faced with environmental hazards because Bladensburg is an industrial corridor with a school bus depot, a trash company, Ernest Maier concrete block plant, other industrial facilities and a high volume of industrial traffic.
Seeking to address concerns regarding air pollution related to local industrial activities and traffic, the goal of this study is to develop a hyper-local air quality monitoring network in Cheverly, MD.
The Ivy City Right to Breathe Partnership brings together members from grassroots organizations such as the Ivy City Civic Association and Empower DC, a neighborhood community, and universities including Howard University, the University of Maryland-College Park, Trinity Washington University, and George Washington University to work for Environmental Justice in a traditionally African American neighborhood in the nation’s capital.
Langley Park is a multicultural community composed of over 80% Latinxs with household incomes that are 83% lower than the rest of Prince George’s County. Individuals in this area are exposed to commuter and industrial traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) including particulate matter, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and other pollutants which can have adverse health outcomes including asthma, stroke, heart disease, and pre-mature mortality.
Brandywine, MD is an unincorporated community with less than 7,000 residents (approximately 72% are African-American) in Southern Prince George’s County. Being unincorporated means it does not have a mayor, town council, or representative government. This lack of political representation has led to Brandywine being exploited by County leadership and state officials to act as a dumping ground.
The local food environment serves as a critical driver of individual and neighborhood health. Research has shown that many low-income communities and communities of color have limited access to healthy food resources.
Project RECREATE focused on understanding exposure and health risks for low contact recreational users of the Anacostia River.
The Community-Based Assessment of Exposure to Substances in the Anacostia River Region (CAESARR) sought to understand exposure and health risks for urban fishers in the Anacostia River Watershed region.
The Latinx community is a growing population in the Washington, DC region—up more than 85,000 individuals from 2010 to 2017, according to the US Census American Communities Survey. To increase the environmental health literacy of this population, the CEEJH Lab works with Centro de Apoyo Familiar, CHISPA-MD, the Langley Park Civic Association, and the Children’s Environmental Health Network.
The Cove Point Liquefied Natural Gas Export Facility in Southern Maryland poses major concerns, not only for local residents but communities all along the pipeline route from the Marcellus Shale Formation in Western Maryland.
Dr. Wilson and CEEJH team members worked with the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project (SRAP), Protecting Our Indian River, and the communities of Sussex County, Delaware to protest the establishment of poultry processing plant in Millsboro, DE--an environmental justice community facing the environmental hazards of a coal-fired power plant, two superfund sites, a concrete factory, and an existing poultry processing plant.
In fall 2018, the National Science Foundation awarded 1.5 million dollars to a team of multidisciplinary investigators from Agriculture, Extension, Engineering, and Public Health from the University of Maryland including Dr. Sacoby Wilson to study stormwater management in Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD.
In 2012, Dr. Wilson began engaging residents in Curtis, Bay, Maryland, a South Baltimore neighborhood already overburdened by industrial hazards and port-related activities, in response to a plan for building Energy Answers, the largest trash incinerator in the country.