Document ID: EPA-HQ-OA-2021-0683-0056
Agency: epa
Document Type: Supporting & Related Material
Title: 
Posted Date: 2021-12-14T05:00Z

Hello.  My name is Dave Arndt, a Baltimore Maryland resident and a Climate, Environmental and Social Justice advocate.  These three areas have a lot of overlap and I am going to focus on topics at the intersection of these areas.  By design all of the injustice is burdened on Black, Brown and low-income areas.  
We have two incinerators within 10 miles of my house.  One is for municipal wastes and the other is for medical waste.  The Baltimore region ranks among the worst in the U.S. for air pollution. A study by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in 2017 found air quality in the region was ranked moderate or worse one of every three days, according to the EPA's Air Quality Index. The same study notes poor air quality triggers asthma and can cause other health issues. Little wonder then that children in Baltimore City have asthma at twice the rate of the rest of the country.  
The story doesn't stop there, it continues with Plastics, the new coal.  Baltimore has a single-stream recycling program.  In total only 3% of plastics are recycled in Baltimore.  Of the total trash collected, about 49% of it goes to the incinerator.  Where it is burned, then breathed in by residents.  The toxic ash is taken to the landfill, located in the same Black, Brown and low-income area.  At the same time petroleum companies are ramping up production of single use plastics to offset the decline in fuel use. Thus, increasing the waste stream being burned
Incidentally, on the medical waste incinerator, NIH's medical waste used to be burned in Bethesda, but now it is burned in Baltimore - a move from a white area to a Black, Brown, and low-income area.
Baltimore does not have composting, so it's the same story. 40% of compostable materials go to the incinerator. The rest goes to landfill, where a large amount of methane gas is produced.
Now add a few more layers, 36 RMP facilities, a chemical factory which is a large emitter of carcinogens, a working port with piles of coal, plus major interstates cutting through the neighborhoods.  All having a cumulative effect.
Another example is that we are trying to stop a crematorium from being built in a residential neighborhood.  The EPA has allowed the funeral industry to change the classification of these incinerators to a non-clean air act regulated industry, for marketing reasons.  So profits over the health of residents.  
I would like to end with a quote from Richard Moore, the National Co-Coordinator of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance:  "You can't separate health from environmental justice, because environmental justice is health. And you can't separate issues of climate change and global warming because environmental justice and economic justice is addressing global warming and climate change. And so those intersections are very crucial."