摘要：Author Cyrille Harpet EHESP (École des hautes études en santé publique) Département santé environnement travail (DSET) Avenue du Pr Léon-Bernard CS 74312 35043 Rennes cedex France Key words: environmental exposure, health risks, inequalities, social justice DOI : 10.1684/ers.2011.0447 Page(s) : 230-4 Published in: 2011 Inequalities produce significant and countable disparities between human groups, in economic, social and health outcomes. Environmental inequalities are also observed and studied in relation to levels of exposure or vulnerability of the individuals and groups concerned. But when differences show up in the field of inequalities, we are leaving simple reporting and making a value judgment. And when we move from environmental inequalities to forms of environmental injustice, we move to social, political and even ideological claims. From the idea of justice, might the environment become the object of a new and legitimate social demand? How has this social demand appeared? Is it only a new ecological expression or demand? Where across the history of social, economic, even racial inequalities is its source? Environmental questions are no longer solely in the purview of middle class ecology movements. They involve vital questions for populations concerned about their access to resources, responses to their fundamental needs, preservation of their heritage, their common heritage, and even recognition of rights and dignity. The current American movement for “environmental justice” presents forms of social and health inequalities in a new light, under which they take on the appearance of injustice. The local crises (pollution, contamination and disasters) that have dotted the 20th century have led to new demands by groups of victims. The cases of environmental injustices are reaching a new geographic scale with globalisation, new temporal heights (risks of chronic morbidity and even mortality) and, even more, ethical limits in terms of social justice (ecological debt).
关键词：environmental exposure; health risks; inequalities; social justice
