JaworskiSophia VtP Annotation: TRI and Census Data in LA

This visualization and caption suggest that by manipulating public environmental datasets, it can be learned how toxics share multiple geographical points of intensity in the region. These intensities include many forms of clustered harmful substances which undoubtably combine in the atmosphere, ground, and water, in long-term exposures for the surrounding residents and communities. The map raises a number of questions about the knowledge production of toxic emissions, and how a public’s “right to know” can or cannot lead to meaningful forms of environmental justice depending on how it is combined with various forms of technoscientific data within the limits of which types of data are available. It speaks powerfully about the intergenerational embodiment of toxicants, revealing how by 1990 in Los Angeles, the absence of preventative approaches to exposure resulted in widespread forms of state-sanctioned, and racialized embodiment, of toxics.