Wash Day: Supporting Air Justice

SHIRLEY MALCOM, American Association for the Advancement of Science

     Abstract Number: 628
     Working Group: Plenary Lecture Invited by Conference Chair

Abstract
As a child growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, in an intergenerational household, there was a routine to our lives, including when the laundry was done. Monday was Wash Day. The old agitator washer was moved from the back porch to the kitchen with easy access to the sink for rinsing the clothes that, in good weather were then hung on clothes lines in the back yard. Of course, when it rained, or on “bad air days” wash day might be postponed. Bad air days, often exacerbated by a temperature inversion, were routine in our lives as well, by way of Birmingham’s steel mills, coke plants and other heavy industry, and made worse because of Birmingham’s topography, sitting as it did in Jones Valley. Clothes hung outside on a bad air day were quickly dirtied.

I experienced Los Angeles’ pollution during graduate school in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But it was while serving on the board of the Heinz Endowments that I was brought full circle from the Pittsburgh of the South to Pittsburgh, where I was able to gain a new perspective on bad air, its disproportionate effect on the health and education of minoritized and poor communities and its connection to structural inequalities. I also gained insights on what communities could do to mitigate the impacts-- seeing the science, communications and community empowerment come together. In this presentation, I will share my personal journey of awakening to environmental justice and injustice and what these mean for the science community.