Who's behind the news?
Who's behind the news?
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National network · Administered through Coming Clean · 28 Vernon Street Suite 434, Brattleboro, Vermont 05301
The Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA) — whose public web presence operates under the tagline "EJ for All" at ej4all.org — is a national network of grassroots environmental and economic justice organizations and advocates in communities that are disproportionately impacted by toxic chemicals. It is organized in strategic partnership with Coming Clean, a Brattleboro, Vermont-based nonprofit that serves as coordinating hub and administrative infrastructure for the network. EJHA is rooted in the history of the environmental and economic justice movement — a movement whose founding principles were articulated in the 1991 Principles of Environmental Justice adopted at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, and whose intellectual foundation includes landmark research documenting the relationship between race, poverty, and proximity to toxic facilities.
The network's model is explicit about its organizing logic: leadership of, by, and for environmental justice groups, with additional engagement from allied organizations and individual experts. The communities EJHA works with live along the "fenceline" of industrial facilities — the people who bear the greatest burden of chemical exposure while having the least institutional power to change the policies that produce it. EJHA's work moves between this grassroots base and the federal regulatory and legislative arena, combining community-level organizing and testimony with national policy advocacy in the EPA rulemaking process and in Congress. National Co-Coordinators Michele Roberts and Richard Moore were selected to serve on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council during the Biden administration, reflecting the network's standing as one of the recognized institutional voices of the environmental justice movement at the national level.
Environmental justice as an organized movement in the United States emerged most visibly in the early 1980s, crystallized by the Warren County, North Carolina protests of 1982 — in which residents of a predominantly Black rural community lay down in front of trucks carrying PCB-contaminated soil to a landfill sited in their community — and by the 1987 United Church of Christ report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, the first national study to document systematically the relationship between race and the siting of toxic waste facilities. The report found that race was the most significant factor associated with the location of commercial hazardous waste facilities in the United States — more significant than poverty, land values, or any other tested variable. Its findings were reinforced by a 2007 follow-up report, Toxic Wastes and Race Revisited, which found that racial disparities in proximity to hazardous facilities had not diminished in the intervening two decades.
President Clinton's 1994 Executive Order 12898, "Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations," directed all federal agencies to incorporate environmental justice into their missions — the first significant federal acknowledgment of the movement's core argument. Subsequent administrations varied in their commitment to implementation; the Biden administration created the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council on which EJHA's national co-coordinators serve, and launched the Justice40 initiative directing 40% of the benefits of certain federal investments to disadvantaged communities. The Trump administration's approach has been to roll back the regulatory infrastructure that gave environmental justice policy its operative force — a reversal that has sharpened EJHA's advocacy focus on defending EPA rulemaking against deregulatory pressure.
Campaign for Healthier Solutions
Coalition campaign targeting toxic chemicals in dollar store products — dollar stores being the primary retail channel in many low-income and rural communities. The campaign delivered 150,000-plus petition signatures to Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, and 99 Cents Only stores demanding elimination of toxic chemicals from their product lines. Released a 2014 report "Buyers Beware" showing that nearly 75% of canned goods from discount retailers contained BPA. Annual Retailer Report Card grades dollar store chains on chemical policy performance.
Mind the Store
National campaign — coordinated with the Campaign for Healthier Solutions — pressing major retailers to adopt comprehensive chemical safety policies and eliminate the most hazardous chemicals from their supply chains. Produces annual report cards grading retailers on the strength of their chemical management commitments and implementation.
EPA Risk Management Program (RMP) Reform
EJHA affiliates testified and submitted public comments to the EPA urging strengthening of the Risk Management Program — the federal rule intended to prevent chemical disasters at more than 12,000 hazardous facilities. The program requires facilities to have accident prevention plans and emergency response procedures. EJHA has advocated for community notification requirements and for applying the program to more facilities in frontline communities.
Disaster Chemical Preparedness
Research and advocacy on the intersection of climate disasters and chemical hazard — documenting how hurricanes, floods, and extreme weather events at chemical facilities create acute toxic exposures in adjacent communities. The 2021 report "Unprepared for Disaster: Chemical Hazards in the Wake of Hurricane Ida" profiled three Louisiana facilities that had not implemented climate-readiness measures. The 2025 "Disaster Déjà Vu" analysis mapped six Texas facilities with histories of back-to-back chemical incidents and assessed the risks of proposed EPA deregulation.
Environmental Justice for All Act Advocacy
Support for the A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice for All Act — the most comprehensive federal environmental justice legislation ever proposed, requiring federal agencies to consider cumulative environmental burdens on communities and establishing community rights to participate in permitting decisions. First introduced by Rep. Raúl Grijalva and the late Rep. McEachin in 2018; repeatedly reintroduced in the House and Senate. EJHA co-coordinators and affiliates have testified in support and organized public pressure for cosponsors.
Justice40 and Equitable Climate Policy
Advocacy with the Equitable and Just Climate Platform partners to secure environmental justice funding in federal climate legislation — helping shape the community benefits provisions of the American Jobs Plan during the Biden administration. EJHA monitors implementation of Justice40 commitments and advocates for accountability mechanisms ensuring that promised benefits reach frontline communities rather than being absorbed by intermediaries.
EJHA's network model distributes power to its grassroots affiliate organizations rather than concentrating it in a national staff. Affiliates are organizations located in communities directly impacted by toxic chemical exposure — fenceline communities adjacent to industrial facilities, rural communities near legacy contamination sites, and urban communities subject to cumulative pollution burdens. The network includes PODER (People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources) in Austin, Texas; the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition in West Virginia; and organizations from states across the country that are working on chemical policy reform and just transition initiatives. National Co-Coordinators Michele Roberts and Richard Moore provide leadership continuity and federal-level representation, while affiliate leaders drive campaign priorities based on their communities' specific needs and exposures.
Coming Clean, the strategic partner through which EJHA is administered, is a national network in its own right — a hub for environmental health and justice organizations working on chemicals policy reform, climate justice, and corporate accountability. The partnership between EJHA and Coming Clean provides EJHA with organizational infrastructure, communications capacity, and connections to a broader coalition of environmental health advocacy organizations, while EJHA provides Coming Clean with a specifically environmental-justice-centered network of frontline community organizations. The physical address for correspondence is Coming Clean's office in Brattleboro, Vermont.
EJHA's research, reports, and interactive mapping tools are directly relevant to accountability journalism covering chemical industry regulation, environmental racism, and climate-disaster preparedness. The "Disaster Déjà Vu" interactive map — illustrating the impacts of gutting regulations for the nation's most hazardous chemical facilities, as proposed by the Trump administration's EPA — is a data journalism resource tracking specific facilities, their histories of chemical incidents, and the specific regulatory changes that would reduce their safety obligations. Journalists covering EPA rulemaking, petrochemical industry accountability, or environmental health in communities of color will find EJHA's research a primary source for community-level impact documentation that official EPA communications typically do not surface.
EJHA's campaigns, reports, interactive tools, and affiliate directory are freely accessible at ej4all.org. The Campaign for Healthier Solutions and Mind the Store campaign resources are at ej4all.org/campaigns-and-projects. The environmental justice history timeline and movement overview are at ej4all.org/about/environmental-justice. Contact for the network is through Coming Clean: info@comingcleaninc.org or (802) 251-0203. Mailing address: EJHA–Coming Clean, 28 Vernon Street Suite 434, Brattleboro, VT 05301.