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.
One way to enrich this image might be to surround the initial map with other aerial images which represent sites from within the different TRI clusters, or locations of the emissions of particular air toxics, so that the harmful qualities of industrialization can be visualized.
Another possibility might be to compare this map with a more recent map, and pinpoint areas of recent deindustrialization, in order to see if it has a relationship with ongoing gentrification?
A third possibility would be to integrate “illegal” toxic emissions in some format—either through highlighting several industries which might get exemptions from the TRI, or marking other forms of toxic waste sites (continuing from image 1).
This found image from Laura Pulido (2000) is a GIS produced map which combines TRI data with census data to illustrate the scale of correlation between places of toxic release and racialized communities in Los Angeles. Its scale of attention is notable, as it shows not only the city limits of Los Angeles, but also the industrial infrastructure of the surrounding area, and how closely it corresponds to the location of non-white communities. This scale is part of the creative translation of data by environmental activists. The map’s aesthetic reveals multiple clusters of TRI sites, and how they are situated in residential areas at the county level.
The caption could be elaborated to comment more on how this image connects to current forms of data available about toxicity in Los Angeles— does updated TRI data show the ongoing reconfigurations of emissions and industry relative to environmental activism since 1990? Which forms of chemical toxicants and industries were not yet added to the TRI at this point in time, thereby making this map perhaps even an underestimation of uneven exposures at the time?
This visualization and caption advance ethnographic insight by providing a striking map of the uneven distribution of toxic release in Los Angeles and the surrounding area, and in particular, illustrating how activist translation of multiple forms of publicly available environmental data together problematize the clustering of racialized populations and heavy industry. Such a map is part of a historical archive of how toxic data has come to be represented in the United States in the wake of Bhopal. Its message exposes the massive scale of interrogating toxicant emission and movements, by showing the regional infrastructure of toxic exposure to racialized populations across multiple counties. Its sentiment troubles the systematized, not accidental, uneven exposure of racialized populations. It questions the intersection of industrial zoning and residential areas, and the toxicological frameworks used to justify particular arrangements, such as minimum buffer zone distances.