Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution and Residential Mobility By Dorceta E. Taylor NYU Press. 2014. 352 pages. $79 cloth

This book is the latest addition to a conversation about environmental racism that began on September 15, 1982, when more than 500 African Americans in Warren County, North Carolina, lay down in front of dump trucks to stop the dumping of PCB-contaminated soil in their community. The disaster at Love Canal had already led to the creation of the Superfund program to fund the cleanup of hazardous wastes and restore the safety and rights of people living near abandoned toxic-waste dumpsites. But in communities of color, people facing similar situations saw the presence of environmental hazards as an intrusive violation of their civil rights, occurring within a context of other racial injustices. They claimed that unwanted polluting or hazardous facilities were planned for their communities because they still lacked equal status with Anglos or whites (Chavis 1993). People in communities from California to New Jersey began to protest what they saw as the targeting of their communities as dumping places because of the color of their skin, or because they were poor—often both.