The National Academies
09/30/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 09/30/2024 14:55
Involving LatinX Communities in Science Journalism: An Interview with Yvette Cabrera
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Involving LatinX Communities in Science Journalism: An Interview with Yvette Cabrera
Feature Story| September 30, 2024
Yvette Cabrera is a senior reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, an investigative news nonprofit, where she covers inequality in economic and social well-being with a focus on environmental justice issues. She has reported extensively on the pervasiveness of toxic lead contamination, and her most recent series, Ghosts of Polluters Past, was honored with a 2023 Sigma Award for data journalism. She is also the immediate past president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and a founding member of the Uproot Project, a network for environmental journalists of color.
Cabrera is also a 2023 top award winner of the National Academies' Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications, which honor exceptional science communicators, journalists, and research scientists who have developed creative, original work to communicate issues and advances in science, engineering, or medicine for the general public.
In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, we spoke with Cabrera about her experiences involving LatinX communities in her science journalism.
How and/or why did you begin communicating about science within local communities?
Cabrera: I began reporting on soil lead contamination in Santa Ana in 2015 after I had an epiphany while reporting a story about California probation agencies that were turning minors in juvenile detention over to immigration authorities. As I interviewed mothers across Southern California, documenting the history of how their sons ended up in juvenile hall, I noticed these mothers had similar stories - their sons had trouble learning in school, couldn't sit still or focus, and had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
At the same time, I serendipitously came across a magazine article featuring a hypothesis about the link between lead and crime - how the rise and fall of leaded gasoline in cars may have contributed to the rise and fall of violent crime in America - and, intriguingly for my work, a link between lead exposure and ADHD.
I came to the realization that I was only covering half the story. I was writing about the environment of these young boys in terms of the violence, poverty, and high police presence in their neighborhoods, but I wasn't considering how their physical environment - neighborhoods next to freeways, surrounded by polluting industries - might be contributing to their behavioral issues.
Many of the minors in Orange County's juvenile hall are from neighborhoods in Santa Ana where young Latinos face many of these issues.
I wondered, "Is there a way to address this issue by digging deeper for a root cause?"
I discovered that the number of children in Santa Ana with elevated blood lead levels was much higher than in any other city in the county. I wanted to know why. Could science provide the answers?
That's how I began walking the streets of Santa Ana in 2015 to test the soil to see if the ground on which the city's children were playing was a potential source of lead exposure.
That quest led me to the environmental justice beat where I've focused on the health impacts of systemic inequities in communities that bear the brunt of unequal exposure to pollution in the United States.
Your series, Ghosts of Polluters Past, exposed widespread lead contamination in a Southern California barrio. Can you walk us through the process of uncovering this story, from initial idea to publication? What challenges did you face, and what impact did the series have on the community and policymakers?
Cabrera:In 2015, there wasn't any publicly available local or state data that could show whether the soil might be contributing to children's elevated lead levels in the city. So I decided to undergo training to test the soil by following the protocol of one of the leading soil experts in the country. At the time, I was a freelance journalist, so I applied for and received a community health reporting grant from the International Center for Journalists to help cover the costs of soil testing.
I consulted with investigative reporter Alison Young, who did a groundbreaking USA Today series on lead contamination by testing the soil around abandoned lead smelters, and ultimately, I followed the steps that Alison recommended: to test onsite with an X-ray fluorescence, or XRF, analyzer and to collect dirt samples to be analyzed in the laboratory run by Tulane University's Howard Mielke, one of the country's leading soil lead experts. Mielke also helped me design my testing protocol.
A representative from Massachusetts-based Thermo Fisher Scientific trained me to operate a Niton XL2 600 X-ray fluorescence analyzer, which produces X-rays to measure the lead content of soil. The company generously loaned me the XRF analyzer and calibrated it for soil testing.
To conduct two investigations, including "Ghosts of Polluters Past," over a span of five years I gathered and analyzed more than 1,600 soil samples in Santa Ana. The soil testing was the greatest challenge. To get accurate results, the soil needed to be dry, which meant testing primarily in the summer and fall. The upshot: It was a hot, grimy, and tiring process, and I walked a lot!
To get permission to test in yards, I felt it was important to provide residents with as much information as I could to explain why I was testing, as well as the dangers of lead exposure. While walking the neighborhoods, I was also documenting details such as the location of industrial facilities, proximity to freeways and thoroughfares, and inquiring about the age of homes.
My first investigation, which I published with ThinkProgress in 2017, presented the first citywide view of soil lead contamination in Santa Ana. I showed how the ratio of Santa Ana children who had dangerous levels of lead in their blood exceeded the state average by 64 percent, and examined policy shortcomings in state and federal lead regulations.
I conducted more tests in 2018 and 2019 for the Ghosts of Polluters Past series, returning to neighborhoods that were formerly segregated, had been industrialized, and where my initial tests had shown higher lead levels. Those tests revealed that more than half of the samples I collected contained levels of lead that California considers unsafe for children.
I focused on the plight of the Mexican American Logan barrio and its residents' multigenerational struggle to fight industrial pollution. I combed through six decades of historical business directories, as well as industrial siting and zoning records, to understand how land-use decisions and policies shaped neighborhoods. With the help of county archivists, I also traced how segregation policies and racial covenants exposed areas such as the segregated Logan barrio to freeway emissions and polluting industries.
The 92701 zip code, where the Logan barrio is located, not only ranked among the top five zip codes with minors booked into juvenile hall, but it also had the highest percentage of elevated soil tests and young children with elevated blood lead levels.
These findings galvanized a coalition of residents, environmental justice advocates, and academic scholars to raise community awareness about the dangers of lead exposure and press the city of Santa Ana for action.
As a result:
- The community and academics created ¡Plo-NO! Santa Ana! Lead-Free Santa Ana! - a coalition that conducted its own soil lead testing and published a 2020 study confirming high lead levels near the city center.
- Community residents petitioned and convinced the Santa Ana city council to approve a general plan update in April 2022 that commits to comprehensively address lead contamination hazards.
- In 2023, coalition partners at UC Irvine received a $2.7 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to study the connection between low-level lead exposure during pregnancy and early childhood, and children's school performance and behavior in Santa Ana.
- The coalition's work continues today with several projects underway to collect data to understand cumulative exposure over a Santa Ana resident's lifetime, as well as research on health, educational, and juvenile justice interventions for lead-exposed children.
- In 2024, the Santa Ana city council approved a moratorium on permits for industrial development near the Logan and Lacy barrios, two of the neighborhoods featured in my investigation where my soil tests showed a lead hotspot. The moratorium suspends new industrial activity and halts existing expansion projects until next year while the city investigates the health impacts of industry in these neighborhoods.
For the series, you deeply integrated yourself into the community. How did this approach change your perspective on the story? Can you share a specific instance where community involvement led to a breakthrough in your reporting or understanding of the issue?
Cabrera: The Santa Ana community's involvement was essential to reporting my soil lead investigations. First and foremost, their willingness to allow me to test the soil in their yards was key. Without their cooperation, I would not have been able to gather the soil lead data. But secondly, and just as importantly, the residents, particularly from the Logan barrio, opened their homes and shared their deep well of local knowledge.
I relied heavily on the expertise of longtime residents, who shared books they authored, served as leaders of their neighborhood associations, and were long-time activists with a wealth of knowledge about the zoning history and land-use decisions made by the city across decades. Their historical records (news clips, photographs, and archival documents) as well as their memories of important city votes and decisions, aided me as I did archival research to confirm key historical moments. That evidence was crucial in illustrating how the transformation of Logan from an agricultural, residential hamlet to a segregated barrio surrounded by toxic emissions was not an accident. It was rooted in decisions made by planning commissions, city officials, and business leaders throughout the city's history.
As a Latina journalist, how has your heritage influenced your approach to environmental and science reporting? Can you discuss any unique perspectives or insights your background brings to your work, particularly in covering issues affecting Hispanic communities?
Cabrera:I was motivated in large part by the stories of young boys from Santa Ana neighborhoods who end up in juvenile justice and educational systems that rarely ask whether pollution might be playing a role in their ability to learn, be healthy, and succeed in life.
When I started walking Santa Ana's neighborhoods to test for lead, I saw how connected the residents, many of them Mexican immigrants, are to the soil: Families were growing mint, tomatoes, papaya trees, but most of all corn.
My parents, who are from Mexico, also grew corn in our backyard, planting a little bit of their homeland while striving for the American dream. Their hope, like so many other parents, was to give their daughters a better shot at life. So, it made it all the more disturbing to discover high levels of lead in Santa Ana's soil and to realize that children across the city were being exposed to this poison.
This was much more than just a story about soil contamination. As I listened to the stories of the residents, I saw how families in barrios like Logan cared deeply about providing their children with a healthy place to live.
At a time when Americans are more acutely aware of the impacts of structural and systemic inequities, I saw the importance of showing how historic patterns of permitting, land-use decisions, zoning, and regulatory policies continue to determine who in America gets to breathe healthy air and live in a safe environment.
I taped a quote from John Steinbeck on my desk that says, "On what point can I stand to see the world - or more important, to make the world see itself." It's there as a reminder to ask every time I take on a story, "From what angle can I best tell this story and illuminate problems that often intersect, such as environmental health, education, and juvenile justice?"
What advice would you have for other science journalists and science communicators looking to integrate Hispanic perspectives and heritage into their communication?
Cabrera: Mistrust can run deep in communities that have been undercovered or misrepresented by the media, so it's important to establish trust by being clear about your intentions, involving community members throughout the reporting process, and sharing relevant findings.
I did this during the soil testing process by sharing the test results with each resident immediately. I returned repeatedly to neighborhoods to report on and interview residents. Understanding the culture, speaking the language, and respecting the norms of the neighborhood are key. For example, parking at a distance, so as to not take up a coveted parking spot on a densely populated street, had the added benefit of allowing me to experience the neighborhood through its sights, sounds, and scents.
I aim to tell an authentic story, and that means investing time in these neighborhoods. I attended street fairs on Saturdays and annual neighborhood reunions, and showed up at dinner time to document the after-hours fumes of a local paint shop when residents called me to report these issues. The investment of time to understand what's happening in a community will deepen trust and allow you to tell a richer story.
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