The manifestations of environmental racism in New York State do not stop at sewage treatment plants, incinerators, or toxic dumps. For children, lead poisoning is the number one environmental threat. Children who are exposed to lead on a regular basis may suffer irreparable intellectual and physiological damage. Due to the concentration in communities of colour of dilapidated housing with lead-based paint, an extremely high number of New York State's black and Latino children are at risk of lead poisoning. Tobacco addiction is another killer in communities of colour.
Blacks suffer high rates of tobacco addiction and cancers related to smoking in the United States.
Across New York, people are fighting back, demanding environmental justice. The traditionally divided communities of Latinos and Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, are working together to stop the proposed Brooklyn Navy Yard Incinerator. Continuous, unified work of community voices on the environment also bodes well for future activities that would ameliorate the ethnic and racial tensions prevalent in the community. In the past, environmental and civil rights organizations rarely formed alliances due to lack of diversity of perspectives and goals within the environmental movement and lack of interest within the civil rights movement. However, the separate movements have been converging.