JaworskiSophia VtP Annotation: TRI and Census Data in LA

This visualization and caption advance ethnographic insight by providing a striking map of the uneven distribution of toxic release in Los Angeles and the surrounding area, and in particular, illustrating how activist translation of multiple forms of publicly available environmental data together problematize the clustering of racialized populations and heavy industry. Such a map is part of a historical archive of how toxic data has come to be represented in the United States in the wake of Bhopal. Its message exposes the massive scale of interrogating toxicant emission and movements, by showing the regional infrastructure of toxic exposure to racialized populations across multiple counties. Its sentiment troubles the systematized, not accidental, uneven exposure of racialized populations. It questions the intersection of industrial zoning and residential areas, and the toxicological frameworks used to justify particular arrangements, such as minimum buffer zone distances.