OEHHA

Quantifying Environmental Justice (& Injustice) in California–An Update

California Improves an Already-Powerful Environmental Justice Analytical Tool

A year ago, I wrote about an important environmental justice initiative pioneered by the California Environmental Protection Agency and its subsidiary entity, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. That 2013 initiative, titled CalEnviroScreen, divided up the State of California by zip code, applied 11 environmental health and pollution factors, assessed each of the state’s …

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Environmental Justice, Metrics & California’s San Joaquin Valley

This week the California Environmental Protection Agency issued a disturbing but worthwhile report on environmental justice issues in California. That report confirms what many environmental justice advocates and state residents already assumed: that the San Joaquin Valley is–far and away–the most environmentally-challenged region of the state. According to the CalEPA press release accompanying the report, …

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UC San Francisco Throws Its Hat Into the Nanotechnology Policy Ring

The UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment recently released a draft set of policy recommendations to address  nanotechnology meeting for comments on May 5 in Oakland, CA. The report is in draft form and the authors are seeking comment, so there will likely be a fair amount of modification as commenters with different perspectives and …

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Regulatory Fees in California: Killing Two Birds with One Stone?

The meltdown of the State of California’s budget raises a host of questions about governance, taxes and politics in the state and beyond.  One of those questions implicates other concerns regarding the design and implementation of effective environmental regulation.  As my father used to say, “Sometimes cheap is too expensive,” an adage that is borne …

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