study Toxic Wastes and Race brought national attention to this problem.
In preparing the study, the Commission was moving into a new arena-
research on environmental injustice. But we already knew then what we
know now -- injustice must be fought wherever and whenever it is found,
The environmental arena is no exception.

Robert D. Bullard important 1990 book Dumping in Dixie exam-
ined this type of racism in our nation's own underdeveloped "Third
World" region, African-American communities in the South. However,
no one segment of the population and no one region has a monopoly on
this problem. It is national and international in scope.

Environmental racism does not only involve the siting of toxic
waste facilities. This insightful new book, Confronting Environmental
Racism, extends the analysis and coverage even further to explore the
problems of lead, pesticides, and petrochemical plants that have a
disproportionately large impact on communities of color. This book also
examines sustainable development, job blackmail, discriminatory pub-
lic policy, and dispute resolution strategies.

As is typical of the environmental justice movement, Confronting
Environmental Racism has brought together a diverse group of acade-
micians and activists from all across the country to write about these
life-and-death environmental justice issues. Many were active partici-
pants at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership
Summit. Held in Washington, D.C., in October 1991, this Summit
brought together more than 650 grassroots and national leaders from
all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the
Marshall Islands.The delegates adopted the "Principles of Environmen-
tal Justice," which have since been disseminated throughout the United
States and were taken to the 1992 United Nation's Commission on
Environment and Development (UNCED) and to parallel Global Forum
meetings in Rio de Janeiro.The goal is to have these principles resonate
throughout the globe wherever unjust, racist, and nonsustainable envi-
ronmental and development policies exist.

The struggle for environmental justice has intensified in commu-
nities that have become "sacrifice zones." Chicago's southeast neigh-
borhood of Altgeld Gardens has been described as a "toxic doughnut
because it is surrounded by polluting industries. Similar threats exist in
East St. Louis, in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," on Navaho lands where
uranium is mined, and in farmworker communities where laborers and
their families are routinely poisoned by pesticides.

Environmental justice struggles have now been extended beyond
U.S. borders, as threats multiply in the Third World. Many of these
threats are beyond the control of the world's poor nations. Toxic wastes,
banned pesticides, "recycled" batteries, and scrap metals are routinely

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