♪ here's how garbage, would for most us us. we put it in cans around our house, once a week take those cans to the house and then the garbageman comes and puts it in his truck and drives it far away. if you live here in chester, pennsylvania, they put that garbage in the back of the truck and they take it right over there.

and while they're burning ha garbage over there and making money, a lot of people in this community think they're being made sick. on this episode of "united shades of america" we're talking about toxic environments. manmade disasters. here in chester, pennsylvania, not that far away from philadelphia. i'm done with this. normally i just throw it away but i feel bad. maybe i'll take it home, turn it into an art project. ♪ >> you know it, come on, it's

like i'm going to make you treat me like i'm an american. >> oh, yeah. >> understand me? >> i hear. >> you the same rules that you apply in other communities. >> uh-huh. >> why you think we want any less for our children or our families? >> uh-huh. >> this is the incinerator. >> what are these trains? >> they carry chemicals, okay. >> i smell something. >> no shit. that's what you basically going to smell. >> oh, okay. >> i want you to smell that, get the full effect. it's foul. it's fought. it's nauseating. you will feel it in your athlete, in your eyes and every membrane you have. >> some problems are nobody's fault like the dayne sauers wiped out by an asteroid. that's real bad luck. other problems seem unsolvable like traffic or sugar free things always tasting sugar

free. but then there are some problems that are completely manmade and are clearly solvable. that's why i brought us here this week. see, every few weeks on my twitter feed i see someone holding a sign that tells me that flint, michigan is still without clean drinking water. that is 100% a manmade problem. and the same men who made it can fix it but they haven't. even though the government guaranteed the country the right to clean water through something called the clean water act. we found surprise, fries, flint isn't the only place suffering from a toxic environment. lead, asbestos, cow farts, technically methane. what does a toxic environment do to people? if we're talking lead, the long-term consequences depend on age and length of exposure, it can lead to cognitive delays to behavioral issues to seizures. if it's business, shortness of

breath, lung disease, tes tech you cue lar cancer. i wonder if trump had thoughts about asbestos. >> a lot of people could say if the world trade center had business, it wouldn't have melted. >> and mercury can make you more regular. if it's chemicals related to air pollution, you can get cancers. respiratory issues, hundreds of other conditions. fact is, kids, whether you live in raurl, rural, suburban america manmade disasters are becoming more common it's not surprising in america native people, black people, latino people and other people of color tend to get it to the worst. while you can basically go anywhere in america and find toxic haven'ts this week i'm headed to philadelphia and chester pennsylvania, neighboring cities with two different version of the same story. while most of us have i don't know been thinking about these issues since flint, many people have been working ob these movements for years, like hazel

johnson ought of check and doris wear ta from california. today i'm in philadelphia to meet with the father of the environmental justice movement. >> environmental justice embraces the principle that all communities are entitled to equal protection of environmental laws. >> this is dr. robert golden. he's worked with both republican and democratic administrations and he's received several awards for his work on environmental justice issues. >> i traveled all across this country and never seen a black or brown neighborhood that has more than its full share of full service grocery stores. landfills, petrochemical plants, we get more than fair share. >> we don't get organic food marks or affordable housal. >> those things that make us healthy. poor people are relegated to some of the most hazardous

locations. you would think we would protect our children but we don't no community should become the dumping grounds just because it's poor or a community of color or physically located on the wrong side of the tracks. >> okay. >> it's simple. it's not rocket science. these are basic human rights. most people i know breathe air and drink water and eat food. but a lot of people say i'm not an developmentalist. if you drimplg water and concerned about what's in the water, you're an environmentalist. how we define the environment. >> you don't sleep in a michael jackson oxygen tank. >> fact is that it's not a democratic process. people don't vote to get poisoned. usually it happens to them. usually it happens in a way that people find out later. >> after they have a kid who has asthma or after they have learning disabilities. >> we say that's truly. that's unfair, unjust and say it should be illegal. right now the zip code is the most important predictor of

health and well-being. you tell me your zip code, i can tell you how healthy you are. all zip codes renot created equal. they can can adjacent to each other and have a disparity of 10, 15 years depending what's in the neighborhood and what's not. >> just by the zip code. >> just by your zip code. >> breaking it all the way down. >> hey, kids, let's play the zip code game right now. let's start with chester, pennsylvania, 19013. while the average life expect an answer in america is 7, the sfaekt answers in chester is 69. but up the road in the more affluent swarthmore, 190 1, the life expectancy is 81. if you live here and you're rich and let's be real whiter, get rewarded with three extra years on the planet. if you've got more melanin and you're poor, racism docks you nine years. >> we allow government to grant permits and a permit is nothing

more than a license to pollute. you get all these what they call locally unwanted land uses or lulus placed over there. once you get one, it's easy 0g get two. one pore won't make a difference but oftentimes it will make a difference. >> you say you called them lulus. >> locally unwanted land use. >> sounds so cute when you say lu lu. >> ain't nothing cute about being poisoned. >> yeah. do you have hope. >> i have lots of hope. i've been doing this a long time. this is a marathon relay. you run 26 miles, pass it off. that's how i think we can take these issues and take it across the finish line. (paul) when you get a wireless plan, wouldn't it be great to get a phone too? switch to sprint and get an unlimited plan with the samsung galaxy s10e included. for just $35 a month. it's a big deal.

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what is that? uh mine, why? it's just that it's... lavender. yes it is, it's for men but i like the smell of it laughs ♪

♪ when i think of philadelphia, a lot of the lot of things come to mind, "rocky," prebel air fresh prince, bradley cooper, eagles hatred of santa and love of batteries and of course, america's favorite mascot gritty. what's less known is the high rate of lead and toxic materials in the city. you know, calling a place toxic city. >> yeah, people hate us. >> today i'm with two pulitzer prize winning journalists like the cagney and lacey of investigative reporting. how about this. they're like the sandra bullock and mccarthy from that one cop

mauve i didn't see. like the abby and alana. they're friends, women and bad asses behind the toxic city investigative series. they spent three years collecting samples, and interviewing residents and find out how the city's past led to the poisoning of over 2700 kids a year. >> we found the kids in philadelphia are actually poisoned and exposed to hazardous amounts of lead at much higher rates than flint, michigan year after year. we're still like above the national average and still have thousands of kids every year getting poisoned by lead to levels that are damaging to their brains. >> wow. >> so what he skills did you you have to figure out what's going on? pooh we wanted to do our own testing and started with lead and looked at it in homes, in soil and schools and found it everywhere. >> that scene in beautiful mind" it's everywhere. yeah, yeah.

>> the sixth sense, he's like i see dead people. all i see is lead. it's very thick. it peels like an alligator skin. when i walk around my house, all i see is lead. >> you can spot it. >> lead has a sweet taste. tan actually tastes sugary. >> really. >> so they used to put it in everything. wine. >> really? >> alcohol. that's why little kids often eat it off of window sills because they see it chipping.they'll put a chip in their mouth and it eight ofs sweet like candy almost. so they keep eating it. >> kids age 2, they're developing something like 700 neural connections every couple of seconds. so whale lead does is it's like throwing a big pile of sludge in front of a freight train moving on your development. >> that's heart breaking. > it's really heart breaking to know like lead poisoning is 100% prevent credible. >> 100%. >> yeah. >> those are pretty good odds. >> those are pretty good odds,

right? if you don't have the kid around lead, they're not going to have their brain irreparably harmed. it's simple. we very this thing in the philadelphia we call it the philly shrug yeah kids are getting lead poisons. nobody seems to realize this impact them. the fact it's all i don't have the schools is criminal. >> one of the most frightening parts of their investigation was the dangerous levels of lead and asbestos found in philadelphia schools. and look, the kids in philly are already exposed to elevated risk since 92% of the city's housing was built before the lead paint ban. cassidy elementary case in point. it was built in 1924 which is why it's on the national register of historic places and one of the worst performing schools in the philadelphia school system. this is chelsea. she's a fifth grader at cas sid. >> do you play on the playgrounds. >> the little kids do, yeah. >> do you play over there. >> yeah. >> the investigation uncovered

alarming amounts of asbestos dust throughout the school. >> it's got to go beyond the status quo because there is a public health crisis. >> sharon bryant, a teacher with over 25 years of experience taught at cassidy. last year chew see was a star student. >> i believe it was supposed to have been closed a few years ago. >> last year, they told people that we couldn't stay here anymore so then we had to move to a different classroom. >> the closet had this dust that made people sick. >> okay. so in here, i don't want you to get sick by coming in higher. >> is that my room in 302. >> yes, that's 302. >> that was the room when the dust sample testing came back, the results were alarming. i broke down because i herd my kids turn that closet into a playground.

an indoor playground and they were in there playing and rolling around on the floor. >> the results for the closet that the kids had converted into a playground were 50 times higher than the highest results for asbestos found in apartments near ground zero after the 9/11 attacks. if that doesn't sound like environmental injustice, i don't know what does. >> huh-uh. these, see i'm starting to get a little -- >> that's all right. this is. >> the children like that's our future, man. >> uh-huh. >> and a just think about all right, i'm going for 60 but they were 10. >> uh-huh. >> what did your parents think when they heard about this? >> they thought i shouldn't go to the school anymore. >> do you still want to go to the school? >> no, even though you've been here since you were in kinder gatten and have friends? are you going to try to go somewhere else? >> yes. >> chelsea's got to be one of the youngest people in her

community fighting it make sure cassidy is improved. when she was in mrs. bryant class, she wrote a letter to state senator vincent hughes demanding help. >> you see how she was writing in fourth grade. we were in fourth grade when of this written. >> just scanning this, i know he's not a rapper but there's bars in here. maybe we can take the money from donald trump's wall and use it for schools. i want a real playground. we need more and we deserve more. why does the color of a student's skin matter how much money we get for our school? >> she's the truth. >> have you seen a lot of major changes since you sent the letter? >> no. >> do you think there will be changes before you graduate? >> maybe. >> maybe? okay. i'm glad you're optimistic. >> i love my children and i'm -- i need to be able to be look myself in the mirror and ask myself, sharon, did you give your kids all you had? >> when was the last time you

saw chelsea. >> i haven't seen her. >> she's doing great. kids can be incredible but teachers don't always show them that they're incredible that's what you have done here. >> thank you, kamau. >> can i give you a hug. >> thank you. thank you for continuing the fight and caring about your kids. lease the 2019 rx 350 for $399/month for 36 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. in every trip, there's room for more than just the business you came for. ♪ let's make the most of ♪ ♪ what we've been given whether that's getting a taste of where you are... ♪ let's get to living ♪ ...or bringing some of that flavor back home. that's room for possibility. ♪ ♪ let's get to living

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as we all know, america is lousy with injustices. and environmental injustice is just one of them. the federal governments started really working on this program in 1970 when the environmental protection agency was founded by richard nixon be? they got a lot done in those early years but recently things have been more complicated. >> trump hates the environment. hates epa. hates the federal government. and so it was. >> not a good match. >> no. >> he's in a bad marriage. >> right. and he's had three, you know. >> yeah. >> all bad. >> i was not going to get along really well. >> this is ron i eleven. she worked at the epa for 37 years and she keeps it really, really so real she quit when trump took office and see wasn't the only one who left. about 8% of the workforce took off after his arrival. >> it was a great place to work.

people who were there really were committed to protecting human health and the environment. >> yeah. >> but what a lot of people don't know while the epa sets regulations and has an enforcement policy, it's usually up to local agencies to do enforcing. local agencies sometimes do tricky things to look like they're following the rules. >> part of the program is water' utilities have figured out ways to essentially make their live easier by what's called gaming. so they gamed the system in order to have water that met the standards. and philadelphia actually uses a lot of the same techniques. >> gaming is basically like that thing where lance armstrong passed a lot of drug tests but we know he wasn't clean except it's your water and you're drinking it. >> for a lot of people environmental problems are too hard, too expensive, to approach. i don't think that's true.

i think it's really just like life. >> it doesn't sound like it should be a partisan issue. >> it's a hassle issue. it's a has. we all make decisions based on what's a hassle. >> yes, yes. i got three kids, do it all the time. no pancakes we're doing cereal. >> it's a choice that's being made. everybody is on the hook to do their bit. >> and while, of course, there are people in philly doing their part, is the philly shrug is real. the feeling is children can be continue to be poisoned. more and more families are being affected by this pre day. >> what is this? >> a robot buffalo. >> what made you come up with it. >> just come out of my head. >> nice. that's where my best ideas come out of it. >> this is avril and jalen. he is one of 2700 kids affected every year by lead poisoning in philly. >> i'm going to take this home, okay. >> you can take the picture but

not the frame. >> i like that. i have to leave the frame is too expensive. i'll leave it here. thank you. >> avril invited me into her home to talk about his lead poisoning. he doesn't fully understand it. like most kids he's more interested in watching cartoons than talking to this years old dude from gentleman. >> he was often at the window sills just eating paint chips. >> while tried to stop him from eating things he shouldn't eat, she didn't know they were made from lead and it could lead to permanent daniel. >> at some point they stopped getting information. you give it to them and it's a backwards and forwards and he wasn't doing that. i took him to the doctors and said something's not right. he couldn't understand simple language which he was able to before at least direction, a little bit of direction. >> so you thought there was some slip and, falling back. >> yeah, i did. dr. friedman said jalen's lead

numbers are very high. >> yeah. >> that point in philadelphia, lead level of 10 for children was acceptable. and his was 29. >> wow. >> just to be clear, the city of philly at that point eating the paint chips, they knew that was a cause of lead poisoning. > they knew. >> they were not spreading the message. >> they were not which should be as important as any serious disease. >> uh-huh. the mess and itself is confusing. the national threshold for public intervention is 5. philly's threshold is twice as high as ten. jalen's level was 29. i think he snuck some juice. >> oh. >> uh-huh. it happens to me, too sometimes. got to let the normal rules go out the window when company comes over. >> the way the doctors explained this is if we can help him with speech, occupational therapy. the word poisoning is never

used. the word delay is used a lot. >> a delay implies that eventually things will be caught up. >> yes. >> you're lulled into a false sense of hope because this isser. the. >> jalen's a great kid. he's friendly, punny, he knows how to sneak juice but according to his mom, the cognitive delays he's experiencing put him behind his peers. >> 18-year-old kids going off to college. we don't know what's going to happen to him. we don't know if he's going to be able to get a job. we're still at two-step instructions. when we get to step number two, he's lost. we have to come back to one again. only in the last year, he understood the planet. it's been hard. >> it's one of those things as a parent that you enjoy watching your kids hit new levels and you can see your kids open up and yesterday, they couldn't do that and jalen is not opening in same

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ now it wouldn't be an episode of "united shades of america" without a lit talk about gentrification. this has a twist. i'm meeting with gregory who

grew up in kensington, an a neighborhood formerly overrun with toxic famts that leave their mark decades later. >> what was this like when you grew up. >> immigrants. >> was there tension between the different groups of immigrants. >> rel basis. i'm 3/4 polish, 1/4 irish. >> that was a mixed marriage back then. >> sure was. >> starting in the early 1800s, there were over 1 million immigrants who entered the u.s. through philadelphia mostly europeans. believe it or not, that caused riots between the american born white people and yernian white people. if you weren't born on american soil, you weren't worthy of her protections. sound familiar. just pump it out carcinogens. >> yeah. the crap that came out of those doors was horrifying. > could you smell it and see it.

>> my god, yeah, it burned your eyes. >> several companies were polluting this neighborhood. at one time, there were 36 lead smelters in philadelphia. anzon was one of 148 smelters in just the river wards. >> i knew about this growing up but i didn't know the severity of it all. >> what was the time you said i've got to get involved? >> my children and every other child in this neighborhood. >> of an years of abuse, gregory and his neighbors had enough. they sued anzon for putting their families at risk. >> there's a lot of complicated feelingeds around this thing. they were employing people and you wanted them shut down. >> they hated us. >> it was a long fight but gregory and his neighbors continued their push and won. the community was never properly cleaned up so the neighborhood continued to grow on top of a toxic terrain. 20 years later, wendy and barbara still found unsafe levels of lead throughout the neighborhood. >> we got a settlement out of

that, a paltry $6 million and they had to get out of dodge. should have been $60 million, $600 million for what they did. now anzon people the goodness of their hearts said well, we're going to give us all new carpets and a vacuum cleaner that's what they did with the rest of the money. >> its alike washing your car. >> yeah. >> it will look better but it's not going to be better. at this point it would be nice if it went now the families are safe from an pollution in their homes and community. nice and history don't always go together. with the last of the polluters out of the way, this once working class neighborhood was ripe for gentrification. >> because you held the smelters accountable, it open the neighborhood for newables that pushed out the old neighborhood. >> they built $300,000, $400,000 homes now. >> nothing behind your back, man. >> what's going on. >> i'm greg from hazard street about the anzon people.

>> what about them? >> about how they polluted the neighborhood. >> it's still polluted. >> lead doesn't go away. >> let them know what's going on with the damn mayor downtown. let them know. zinc oxide, arsenic, mexicans going in there removing asbestos without anything to protect them. that's why they want them here. cheap labor and do what this he want. >> would you like to talk to us on camera, ma'am? >> "hell no." >> i'll finish talking to him. thank you very much. >> she's right. all that's true. all that is true. >> it was a great victory for gregory and his neighborhood. while it was the end of one environmental injustice, it was only the beginning of another. and once the development boom hit the river wards area of philly, decades of long buried toxic lead dust was unearthed. janet is another parent who had to figure out how to deal with lead poichbing. > pressure wash your steps, take off your shoes. >> right now we came in, i took my shoes off and said it's a

shoeless house, no big deal. here you wanted us to do that because it keeps the house free of whatever's out there. >> we're asking people to take off their shoes instead of dealing with what's outside the door. the epa, cdc and philly department of health did a study in the neighborhood. maybe a couple months later we got soil results back and they were really high. at that moment, i had a crawling kid and, of course, our first reaction was to take them to the pediatrician. her blood level came back at 14. as she copied to grow, we recognized her speech was delayed. at 1 months, she had two words. we took nutrition counseling, speech therapy and she really is thriving. she's an awesome kid. she's so tough. some of that i think might be due to the number of blood tests she's had to endure. but you know -- >> do you believe that your daughter will that it is a delay, she will be able to catch up? >> academically, i think she's

going to be fine. impulse and choice are two places where she struggles a little. we want to give her the tools to do that whether it's another kid you might put them in soccer. she's probably going to go to yoga. maybe direct her this way. >> i learned developers are not required to test the soil for lead before developing. how is that even possible. >> i think when you demolish a house the city should not only notify people it's going to come down but they should tell those people what to do to protect themselves including close your windows, don't leave your stroller outside, scrub your steps. it lands on your doorstep and then it lands on your shoes or stroller wheels or inside your stroller. you put your kid in it. how often do you wash your stroller. >> not one time. >> now you put your kid in therein an they chew on buckle. >> i feel like i should back up. my wife would hate me to say we have never washed our stroller. we have washed it a few times.

my wife of will say you just said on tv never in life. in california, we don't have the same concern about lead. >> i imagine you have buildings built before 1978. >> yeah. >> they're full of lead paint. >> janet and other moms in the area are activists and often use social media to spread the word "in" order to prevent other children from being poisoned. >> there's a moment where women want to come forward and have their voices heard. i'm going to take care of my baby and make sure she gets everything i can give to her despite the setback she got in the lead poisoning and make sure no other mama has to do it. this is not a bed...

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america we have a problem. and it's not one of those problems where people on the left and people on the right can disagree whether or not it's a problem. no, no, this is an everybody problem. we make too much trash. >> watch your step here. >> hey.

>> that is a smell. >> that's a smell of money. >> that's the smell of money. >> that's right. >> this isn't debatable. this is facts. even if you're one of those people ho doesn't use plastic and compost their compost, you have to admit we as a whole make too much trash. i got 13 different bins where i can separate all the things. we buy something, toss it away, picked up by sanitation workers who bring it to landfills where it creates long lasting air pollution and water contamination. instead of the landfill, the trucks can go to a place like this where they will wurn waste and convert into energy. that's good, right? there's a lot of debate which is worse for the environment. let's be clear, this factory isn't burning trash in the middle of nowhere. it's in the middle of somebody's neighborhood. whichever side of the debate you fall on, nobody wants any of this in their neighborhood. the question then becomes where thud is go. this is america's largest trash incinerator in the city of

chester, pennsylvania. chester conveniently positioned along the delaware river is about 20 miles south of philly. chester's story is influenced by the legacy of industrialization. like they said in chester back in the day, what chester makes makes chester. you about the post-war era hit it hard as the u.s. economy became less dependent on manufacturings. 30% of the jobs were lost between 1950 and 19 0 and white flight took it from 20% black to 80% black and hispanic. with an economy in free fall and local politicians indifferent to the needs of constituents, it was prime for the staging of several toxic facilities along the river. kimberly-clark, del cora and yvonne nick. how does a city that only has 35,000 people create this much trash? well, they don't. the trash is brought in by trucks and trains from up and down the east coast and some of that trash is y'alls.

>> do you ever sort of go come on people, stop throwing so much crap away. feels like you start to have existential crises about the amount of stuff. >> this is john and bill gill, two of covana's represents. i'm sure some of you are filled with righteous rage. remember of all the facilities, they gave us a tour. since they took over, they've made a concerted effort to repair long-standing issues the community had with past owners of this facility and believe they're good corporate citizens. we and john kind of of a rapport. >> when you've removed as much as possible, either it goes to a landfill or it can go to a burn facility like ours. so when we burn one ton, we save about a ton of greenhouse gases. >> it can be true that incinerators provide fewer greenhouse gas, nationally it's still a problem because. >> anytime you burn, that's bad. >> okay. >> incinerators productive

pollution, the trucks that come in with the waste most times they're diesel trucks. diesel is bad. diesel is fumes. you're talking about cancer. you're talking about a lot of problems. >> so how safe is it and how do they make it safe? >> this is just a general overview of the plant. this right here is our environmental controls. >> does that mean it's clean. >> absolutely. that is key to make sure we're well below our limits. >> what is coming out of here? >> just sort of -- >> okay. >> what i'm saying aside from the heat, could i breathe that and be okay? >> the way it works, i mean, probably. i guess i'll say probably. i guess i'll say yes. >> i'll say yes. the way it's done. >> all right. that's pretty good, right. >> we have standards set by the government and on the ones that matter, that matter about health, we're 90% to 99% he

below or in statistic jargon 1 to 2 orders of magnitude lower. >> highway that's the case turns out a number of harpful pollutants can still be released in the burning process. >> how you doing? kamau. this is the deck of the trash ship enterprise? i feel like you're looking at the matrix. >> are you from chester. >> no, i'm from new jersey. >> you drive from new jersey? >> yes. >> all right. >> do you employ the people in the community here? >> everybody lives within about a 30-my radius of the plant. >> chester has a high unploimt employment rate. they see the factory and good-bye how cop i'm unemployed but there's jobs over threw. >> often they say if we live here, we should get go the jobs. what about the person who lives right outside the boundary and say why are you discriminating against me. >> people drive in and drive out.

people who live across the fence, they don't get the jobs and get polluted. >> they don't get the benefits. >> we re15% of their budget. >> i hear you. >> let's say we weren't here, where senior that other 15% of their budget going to come from? >> yeah, it's great that other companies are contributing to chester's budget but at what cost? back in 1995, 60% of tested children in chester had elevated lead in their blood. in 2010, 3% had asthma. last year the children suffered the highest blood lead levels in the state and all residents face an elevated cancer risk. these companies are mostly complying with federal regulations and being assessed fines when they don't but it falls short of what people in the community can live it. >> welcome to chester. >> oh, it comes when the wind kicks in. >> oh, yes, absolutely. >> yep, this is zulin e-mailfield. after growing up across the

street from a place like this, they became a force for environmental justice in chester. >> this is where people live. don't say environmental racism. what the [ bleep ] you it sucks the life out of every community wherever they go. that's why you have abandoned houses, houses, houses, houses. >> so, people don't sell their houses. >> you can't sell them. >> because nobody wants to buy them. >> who wants to buy it? people tell you not to be angry. you see this shit and you better be angry. i hope one day we shut [ bleep ] down. okay? >> yeah. >> and if we don't shut them down, they gone know they been in a [ bleep ] fight. is fast enough? ♪ or, do you want speed and style? power and attraction?

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now you're going to take me on a tour of the neighborhood. >> shit, shit, shit, there's the tour. >> everybody needs a neighbor like zulin. if you crosser had, she's coming for you. her skills aren't kicks and punches. her skills are fighting against

those taking advantage of her community. she educated herself on the dangers facing her town. this wasn't her job. she was doing this for town. >> you used to live down here, right? >> right here. >> right here on the corner? >> yes. >> first protest we had was three days before christmas. that's how serious we were. i would call a protest at 3:00 in the morning and we would stand out on the streets and stop those trucks. >> stay in the line. somebody get back in the line. >> wow, so you were literally putting your bodies on the line. >> absolutely. i didn't care if it was five people or 50. >> the protest prompted a study that found that air emissions were connected to cancer risks. the city had the highest infant mortali mortality rate in the state. it soon became a focus of the protesters. >> what do you think of the department of environmental protection.

>> we call them don't expect protection. >> we used to call tem had the department of pollution. now i hear because of me they have an office of environmental justice. >> so, even though they have an office that has the words environmental justice in it, you don't feel like it's doing -- >> it's a joke. it's such a joke. >> so, we got a tour of covanta. what do you say about the fact that they told me once they put the garbage through the processes and filters -- >> it's bull shit. it's just bull shit. >> they say it comes out the top and it's just steam. i said if i was to stand at the top, could i breathe that safety. they said probably yes. >> better yet, would you allow your children to go to the top of that stack and stand up there and breathe that bull shit? better yet, you all think that this shit is so safe, there's a lot of empty properties around

here, come and regentry identify our neighborhood. then i'll have comfort knowing we're safer. we're not against capitalism. we're not against industries. but i have a problem when it comes to you operating your business and you hurting my mother. >> they are there to make money. they were clear about that in the way i was shocked about how clear it was. >> absolutely. >> it was so honest that i was like well, there it is. >> you're here to make money and we're here to live. >> even with the victory zulin gained which made it harder to get permits, dep continued to give them out as companies adjusted. >> chester ain't supposed to look like this, not with the hundreds of millions of dollars that come through this city every single day. again, what benefit is it to the people here who can't even open up a freaking window? what is happening here is happening in other communities. we weren't the first. we're one of the worst.

any time you allow someone to come into your home -- i don't care what it looks luke to nobody else. this is my home. and do what they do to people here. when i think of the people that i have lost in my life to cancer, why do you have to fight to make people respect you as human beings? i want to make sure when i leave here my family is safe. >> yeah. >> it's just that simple. that's what zulin wants. that's what everybody wants. it's not just a chester problem or a philly problem. it's a united states of america problem. like chevron in california, cancer ally in louisiana, the most toxic town of america in alaska. there's pollution all over, indiana, houston, kentucky, baltimore, arizona, chicago,

utah, a ranch in california had a gas leak, fracking in western pennsylvania, oil spills in the gu gulf of mexico that affect texas, mississippi, alabama, and florida. it's everywhere. don't sit on your couch feeling sorry for these people. we have to take their kparpal and fix these issues in our own neighborhood. change has always started with the individuals, the individuals who fight and all out the injustice to make change, who risk themselves for future generations because they know have to have clean air and water is an essential basic human right.

>> this is jared. he's 18. he's in city hall in oregon and according to him, he's high on mushrooms. so, he starts a fight with cops. they all wrestle and jared grabs a cops gun and shoots it. more cops jump in. nu takes seven cops two full