From activist to EPA: Tejada ready to “speak truth” about environmental justice

Environmental Health News reports that the US EPA is turning to a Houston activist Matthew Tejada, for the past five years the director of Air Alliance Houston, to lead its Office of Environmental Justice. Tejada will bring to the job what he’s learned battling severe pollution problems in Houston’s low-income communities where air pollutants spewed by oil refineries, chemical plants and the shipping industry are linked to cancer and asthma. “Not only do I feel like I have the guts to speak truth, as many environmental justice leaders demand,” Tejada told the EHN, “but I feel like I can do it in a way where people will listen.”