OPINION: An open letter to the mayor

Dear Mayor Horhn, 

We are the Community Noise Lab, a group of researchers dedicated to exploring the relationship between environmental exposure and human health. Our lab based in Jackson, Mississippi, is an extension of the Department of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island. We collect measurements, conduct laboratory-based experiments, and organize community engagement activities to better understand visual pollution, air pollution, water quality, and waste exposure in our partner communities. Creating tools, data reports, policy templates, and educational resources that enable communities to protect their health is our primary goal. Previous resources that our lab has produced include an activity book “Light, Blight and Sight” and an online Environmental Explorers educational program, both of which are free and open to Jackson residents. We have also collaborated with students at St. Andrews Episcopal School on an inventory of abandoned buildings in Jackson. 

We are reaching out to share about our research on illegal dumping sites throughout Jackson. We are the first research group to conduct comprehensive data collection on illegal dumping sites and their impact on human health. Illegal dumping sites can contain hazardous waste that expose residents to dangerous chemicals while contributing to blight and visual contamination, which may negatively impact the public health and wellbeing of Jackson’s residents. Our investigation has been led by Kelsey Mathews, a native of the Jackson area and a current environmental science PhD student at Jackson State University. She was inspired to track illegal dumping sites after observing first-hand how the sites contributed to pollution, blight, and community dissatisfaction. Kelsey drove around Jackson to quantify illegal dumping sites; she recorded site locations, took photographs, and classified the kinds of waste deposited at each site. 

What started a year ago as grass-roots science has grown into a database of more than 70 illegal dumping sites in Jackson. Our findings are now accessible via our Illegal Dumping Site Data Repository (https://communitynoiselab.org/community-illegal-dumping-repository/), which community members can contribute to by reporting sites via our website. Presently, the majority of cataloged illegal dumping sites are located in West and South Jackson, areas that have borne the brunt of historical disinvestment. 

We share this resource with the hopes of initiating collaboration between our lab, your mayoral office, and the Jackson Rising Initiative to address illegal dumping. Using our database to initiate cleanup and remediation of illegal dumping sites can help reduce blight in Jackson and create safe and clean public spaces. We all want to see Jackson succeed and addressing illegal dumping is one way we can move our city forward. 

We hope our database on illegal dumping sites can enact meaningful change to improve health and quality of life for Jackson residents. Thank you for your time and please reach out to Community Noise Lab’s Founder and Principal Investigator, Dr. Erica Walker, a proud Jackson, Mississippi, native. Her email is erica_walker@brown.edu.

Sincerely, 

The Community Noise Lab Team