--- title: Growing Justice From Grassroots Science date: 2022-05-26T14:30:00-04:00 author: University of Maryland canonical_url: "https://terp.umd.edu/growing-justice-from-grassroots-science" section: Articles --- # Growing Justice From Grassroots Science *May 26, 2022* — by [Liam Farrell](/authors/liam-farrell) - *Photo by John T. Consoli* - *Photo collage by Valerie Morgan* > Trash and toxic substances are often dumped where poor people and communities of color live. Public health researcher Sacoby Wilson is empowering them to fight for cleaner, safer conditions. *Sacoby Wilson* **BORDERING A MAJOR** East Coast port and braided with highways, Baltimore’s southern edge is a rushing two-way conduit for products constantly flowing in and the detritus of modern life continually flushing out. Much of this effluent is headed for the neighborhood of Curtis Bay, home to a trifecta of foul final destinations: a landfill, a medical waste facility and an animal rendering plant. When Destiny Watford was growing up there more than a decade ago, adults urged her to get out as soon as possible. Brick rowhomes, churches, corner stores and school playgrounds share the air with a coal silo and fleets of diesel trucks, and Watford saw neighbors die of lung cancer and her mother struggle with asthma attacks. The community already had some of the nation’s most polluted and deadly air, according to a collection of studies, when plans were announced in 2012 for a new trash incinerator—permitted to burn 4,000 tons a day and spew up to 1,240 pounds of lead and mercury annually—less than a mile from her high school. Anger overcoming her shy nature, then-16-year-old Watford co-founded an activist group and looked for allies in what became a four-year quest to stop it. One important guide would be Sacoby Wilson, an assistant professor in the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health. An expert on environmental toxins and the sociopolitical structures that make them so abundant where people of color live, Wilson helped the teenagers make contacts with legal and environmental groups and get their hands on the data they needed to mount a challenge to an international corporation. “We weren’t lawyers or experts in any way, shape or form,” Watford says. “Sacoby ended up being one of those folks. He was really influential in making sure we had those connections.” Now an associate professor with the [Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health](https://sph.umd.edu/academics/departments-units/maryland-institute-applied-environmental-health) and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Wilson is at the forefront of investigating how the places where people live can determine their health. A proponent of community-based participatory research, he trains and assists people in getting the information they need to protect their families and homes. Wilson and his [Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health](https://www.ceejh.center/) (CEEJH) have worked alongside overburdened and underserved people of color and low-wealth populations from Houston and New Orleans to Washington, D.C., aiming for the nexus of pollution, zoning and community development practices that disproportionately hurt vulnerable neighborhoods and reflect the ingrained biases of government and private industry actors. By teaching people how to take water samples, read air monitor data from their homes and understand complex legal and regulatory structures, Wilson tries to do more than just document what happens to someone who lives near or works in a power plant or hog farm. Ultimately, as climate change intensifies and new threats like COVID-19 show how deadly historic health disparities can be, Wilson wants to help people “liberate themselves from the toxic trauma they are experiencing every day.” “In working with people, you got to provide services,” he says. “(It’s) about solutions, about action, about mitigation, about investments.” --- *Sacoby Wilson plays as a toddler — Sacoby Wilson plays as a toddler at a relative’s house in Vicksburg, Miss., in the late 1970s. He lost his hair to alopecia a few years later, spurring his interest in connections between public health and the environment. (Photo courtesy of Sacoby Wilson)* *Sacoby Wilson graduates — Wilson received his Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the education he gained working with local residents and activists was as valuable as his academic training, he says. (Photo courtesy of Sacoby Wilson)* > “It’s about where we live, where we work, where we play, where we pray, where we learn ... We’re talking about food, faith, family, health and jobs.” — Sacoby Wilson, associate professor, Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics *Funding Seeds Expanded Research Sacoby Wilson’s Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health (CEEJH) has attracted more than $3.5 million in recent months from private and public agencies to study and combat pollution in disadvantaged communities.* --- *Sacoby Wilson works with students conducting local air monitoring in Langley Park, Md. — Sacoby Wilson works with students conducting local air monitoring in Langley Park, Md. (Photo courtesy of School of Public Health)* > “He lived with those disparities. He’s not just talking about them from an academic point of view. It’s in his heart.” — Omega Wilson, co-founder, West End Revitalization Association “We can provide information that will help people who have sensitive conditions,” Moe says. “Give them guidance—don’t work outside today, limit your outdoor time.” Environmental justice, Wilson says, requires long-term vision and support, and CEEJH is capable of that. Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, recently made a $1.75 million gift to the center, supporting a new paid internship program, staff hires and its annual symposium. “You’re trying to make up for 40, 50 years of stuff. It’s generational to even get incremental change,” he says. “That’s how insoluble, how deep, how entrenched these issues are.” Wilson is an expert at preparing people for this “marathon,” says Omar Muhammad, the executive director of the North Charleston, S.C., LowCountry Alliance for Model Communities, which has partnered with Wilson for more than a decade on air pollution monitoring efforts, health disparity mapping and environmental health education. *Researcher’s Environmental Justice Footprints — Illustration by Valerie Morgan* **Issue:** [Spring 2022](https://terp.umd.edu/editions/spring-2022) **Types:** [Features](https://terp.umd.edu/category/features)