Final answer:
Environmental inequality is illustrated by findings showing that race plays a crucial role in the placement of hazardous waste facilities, with African Americans and other people of color facing higher exposures to environmental health threats like lead poisoning.
Step-by-step explanation:
The evidence of race- and class-based environmental inequality is underscored by environmental racism statistics and research findings.
Sociologist Robert Bullard's twenty-year comparative study found that race is a more significant factor than socioeconomic status in predicting the location of the nation's commercial hazardous waste facilities.
This research highlighted that African American children are five times more likely to suffer from lead poisoning, a leading environmental health threat, compared to their Caucasian counterparts.
Moreover, people of color disproportionately reside near areas housing hazardous waste facilities. On a global scale, a United Nations report from 2016 indicated that people living in developing countries are more likely to dwell on land exposed to contamination and chemical pollutants than individuals in wealthier nations.
This disparity points to a wider issue of environmental burdens being unequally distributed across different races and classes, often due to those with resources using their influence to protect their own communities—a phenomena also known as NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) protests.