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Paul Mohai

Paul Mohai
Professor
Environmental Justice
Climate + Energy
Cities + Mobility + Built Environment
[email protected]
(734)-763-4598
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About

Professor Mohai recently returned from a leave of absence to serve as Senior Policy Advisor at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Justice. His teaching and research interests are focused on environmental justice, public opinion and the environment, and influences on environmental policy making. He is a founder of the Environmental Justice Program at the University of Michigan and a major contributor to the growing body of quantitative research examining disproportionate environmental burdens and their impacts on low income and people of color communities. In 1990, he co-organized with Dr. Bunyan Bryant the “Michigan Conference on Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards”, which was credited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as one of two events bringing the issue of Environmental Justice to the attention of the Agency. He is author or co-author of numerous articles, books, and reports focused on race and the environment, including “Black Environmentalism“, Environmental Racism: Reviewing the Evidence”, “Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards”, “Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty”, “Which Came First, People or Pollution?” and “Environmental Justice and the Flint Water Crisis”. His research involves national level studies examining the causes of environmental disparities and the role environmental factors play in accounting for racial and socioeconomic disparities in health. He is currently Lead Investigator on a project for the U.S Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) to advance development and use of the EPA’s leading environmental justice screening tool, EJSCREEN.

Professor Mohai is a member of the Michigan Advisory Council on Environmental Justice to the State of Michigan and a past member of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) to the U.S. EPA (2007-2013). He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Environmental Justice Movement Project (ENVJUSTICE) which is documenting and mapping environmental justice conflicts around the world (http://www.envjustice.org/). Professor Mohai has provided testimony on environmental justice to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1993, 1999, and 2019, the U.S. Senate in 2007, and the Michigan Civil Rights Commission in 2016.

Publications

Mohai, Paul. 1990. "Black environmentalism." Social Science Quarterly 71(4): 744.

Research
  • 2018-2023. Racial Inequalities in Health throughout Adulthood: The Cumulative Impact of Neighborhood Chemical and Non-Chemical Stressors on Epigenomic Pathways-National Institutes of Health (NIH). (Co-I with PI Margaret Hicken).
  • 2022. The Environmental and Climate Justice Analysis of Gulf Coast LNG Export Facilities Project -Texas Southern University/ Climate Imperative Foundation. (Co-PI with PI Robert D. Bullard and co-PIs Beverly Wright and Robin Saha).
  • 2021-2022. Advancing the Development and Use of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s EJSCREEN-Industrial Economics, Inc./U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (Lead Investigator with team of 10 others).
  • 2015-2019. Schools and Air Toxics Risk: State and National Policy Development – Kresge Foundation. (PI with co-PI Byoung-Suk Kweon).
  • 2015-2018. Examining the Causes and Consequences of Environmental Inequality over Time: A Data-Driven Computational Approach – National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). (PI with co-PIs Michael Ash and Mary Collins).
Education

PhD, Pennsylvania State University (environmental sociology, environmental/natural resource policy)

MS, State University of New York-Syracuse (statistics, environmental science)

BA, University of California-Berkeley (mathematics)

Affiliations
In the News
a mural that reads we want clean air
News date
July 11, 2023

Mapping Environmental Justice and Uplifting Community Survival in Southwest Detroit

Unhealthy air quality created by smoke from the Canadian wildfires has been a topic of concern across Michigan and much of the U.S. lately. But for residents of the 48217 community in Southwest Detroit, known as the most polluted ZIP code in Michigan, breathing toxic air has been their daily experience for decades. SEAS graduates sought to bring awareness to 48217 and its environmental burdens through their master’s project, “Mapping Environmental Justice and Uplifting Community Survival in Southwest Detroit.”
In the Media