Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice

The notion of environmental justice, or “environ-mental inequality ” as it is often expressed in the UK, explores the association between environ-mental exposure and affluence, social class, age profile, gender or ethnicity. In the USA, the idea of environmental justice grew because evidence indicated associations between greater exposure to harmful environmental outcomes and residen-tial locations of black and ethnic minority com-munities. A recent review of research in the UK highlighted a number of mechanisms through which environmental inequalities manifest in society, from local to global issues (Lucas et al., 2004). As the need to understand environmental out