Environmental Literacy

摘要

In 1988,New York City's West Harlem community had a problem.The recently opened North River Sewage Treatment Plant,which stretches eight blocks along the Hudson River,was doing a poor job of processing about 170 million gallons of raw sewage daily.Residents were concerned about the foul smells coming from the plant,and parents complained that their children were suffering from respiratory problems.The community knew it needed help,but it also needed something else:information on the exposures it was facing,on the health effects of those exposures,and on the courses of action open to the people.When the community mobilized months later to form West Harlem Environmental Action Inc.(WE ACT),it had taken the first step toward cultivating just that sort of environmental literacy.