These are communities where both cultural and biological diversity are respected and highly revered and where distributive justice prevails. The environmental justice movement has generated a good deal of attention and debate. The arguments presented below are those I have encountered in various forms in conferences and in my work with community groups across the country. These arguments are by no means conclusive. Policy decisions should be based on a demonstration of a causal relationship between a given chemical and a corresponding health effect.
Causal relationships are most difficult to establish, even under the most ideal research conditions.
The use of control groups using human beings to test the effect of certain toxic chemicals is unethical, thus rendering it extremely difficult to demonstrate causality. The best we can do in many instances is simply to demonstrate an association between certain chemicals and certain corresponding health effects. Given these uncertainties, an alternative view is to focus on pollution prevention. Synthetic chemicals, such as the pesticide DDT, some radioactive materials, and toxic mercury and lead compounds become more concentrated in fatty tissues of organisms at successively higher trophic levels in various food chains and food webs. These bioaccumulate or amplify themselves hundreds of thousands of times as they move up the food chain.