W. Haywood Burns Environmental Education Center

Urban Watersheds & Their Impact on Communities

Donna A. Perry
staff@ahej.org

Project Description

The primary and innovative focus of this five year project will be to investigate health impacts due to the synergistic effects of exposure to contaminants within an urban watershed and a variety of other factors including heredity, lifestyle, land and zoning decisions, mental stress and others. Critical to the analysis in this project will be the cumulative effects of such environmental and personal factors over time. The goal of the program will be to create and enhance the awareness and understanding of these synergistic effects by members of the community and in the process of this research, record the reactions and challenges of the effort. This will lead to creation of community-based database of the ethical and social issues involved in eliciting very personal information regarding the above factors. It is the intent of this effort to create a model for other low-income, minority urban communities to enable them to: facilitate the gathering of scientific data and pollution information regarding watershed, and; survey community residents in a culturally sensitive and non-threatening manner and establish sustainable networks and partnerships between the scientific community and residents.

The critical foundation of this project will be laid by performing meaningful assessment of the low income, minority urban community to determine its knowledge of environmental health issues related to the heavily pollute Patroon Creek/Hudson River Watershed. Based upon the assessment, culturally sensitive material will be produced to educate communities regarding risks due to exposure pathways to the watershed including: recreational, other casual research /monitoring and diet, including reliance upon a fish based diet.