- My name is Luz Guel.
I'm the Director of Environmental Justice
and Community Engagement
at the Department of Environmental Medicine
at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Some of the main environmental issues
that a lot of community residents are facing,
especially here in the city,
are related to heat, flooding and air pollution.
So one of the reasons I'm really passionate
about community science is because I was not trained
to be a scientist through formal education,
such as having an advanced degree.
Some of the work that I end up doing
is that I end up organizing with communities
that are most impacted by environmental issues
by developing community science initiatives
that document these environmental issues.
Usually when we're working with communities,
we end up focusing on the issues that are priority to them.
So here in the city, most of the time it's air pollution,
so particulate matter and other sources of air pollution
so those are usually the topics
we end up focusing with communities.
We end up working together by meeting biweekly
and organizing community events
so that we can be able to identify these problems,
but also develop a community science initiative
that can document these environmental issues
in the community.
Instead of having researchers like me go into a community
and be like, "You should be focusing on all these issues",
but instead, they get to communicate to us,
"This is what's happening.
This is what we wanna prioritize.
Let's work together to be able to develop
this community science program."
We really, truly believe that those most impacted
by environmental issues know their lived experience
and experience these environmental issues every day,
which means that they observe them.
Particulate matter are really small particles in the air.
Many of the sources of particulate matter come
from cars, come from trucks, come from buses,
come from any sort of engine that ends up combusting
and usually when it's really hot outside,
then that air quality gets even worse
because it ends up reacting to those pollutants
and so those are one of the reasons
why we really focus on particulate matter.
After we end up collecting all this information,
one of the things that we end up doing
is how do we tell the story of what's happening
and really humanizing what is happening in southeast Queens
by having community members really tell their own stories.
One of the main policies that we've been able to stop
from happening in southeast Queens
is that there was this policy
that was trying to expand the waste of communities
that are already facing
all these environmental justice issues
and our group gathered together
and put together multiple testimonies
from community residents and from experts
to City Council to tell them
that they should not expand the waste
that is coming into southeast Queens.
So that was a really big win for us,
knowing that we could be able to come together
and testify in front of City Council.