RESEARCH
SCLA-PUSH Project
Launched in January 2019, our community-academic collaborative brought together residents of South Central LA, community advocates, and academics to shape a community air training and monitoring program rooted in a local understanding of the multi-faceted dimensions of air pollution burden. Our project is grounded in the experiences and expertise of South Central LA residents, and our collective capacity to assess local environmental conditions. Since our inception, we have trained over 70 residents as air quality experts and community scientists, ground-truthed 6 census tracts in the South and Southeast community plan areas, and installed 5 new monitors to increase data availability around air pollution. We continue to engage residents to become air quality experts, increase monitoring in pollution-burdened areas identified by the community, and identify transformative and community-driven solutions.
RESEARCH
Get the Lead Out!
Supported initially by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this collaboration between University of California, Irvine, UCSB, and East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice examines lead pollution in neighborhoods where lead was emitted from Exide Technologies, Inc (Exide). Exide owned and operated a lead-acid battery recycling factory in Vernon, California, and for more than 30 years polluted the surrounding predominantly low-income Latino communities. The lead and arsenic exposure encompassed 10,000+ residential properties and over 110,000+ residents in East LA, Boyle Heights, Commerce, Bell Gardens, Vernon, Cudahy, Maywood, Bell and Huntington Park.
