Hello, my name is Kylen Tromblay and I’m an Oregon State University intern at Beyond Toxics this summer. I just finished the first year of my Master of Public Health program specializing in Environmental and Occupational Health. I am passionate about creating a world where everyone can live, work, and play in a clean and safe environment. Having spent the past four summers working with children at a day camp in my hometown of Newberg, Oregon, I get to see the world through their eyes. Seeing how excited the kids are about their own future pushes me to work towards leaving them a healthy Earth.
Taking Responsibility for Justice
Eugene, nationally recognized as a bike city, a community near nature and a place where we value sustainability, would not normally attract attention around environmental human rights and justice issues. Which is why for one day, Beyond Toxics and Centro LatinoAmericano invited city and agency officials, students and community leaders on an environmental justice bus tour to West Eugene where we got the opportunity to see how families live through the lens of “environmental justice”.
Exposures to Air Pollution in Medford, Oregon
Executive Director Lisa Arkin and I made the three hour drive to Medford, Oregon to give an Asthma Care Workshop. A long trip for us, but well worth it. Last summer, UNETE, a farmworkers’ advocacy organization, invited us to collaborate with them in doing a workshop (see our pictures from the workshop) for the people they serve.
“Living Downstream” in Deadwood, OR
In late August our organization hosted an event in Deadwood, OR at their community center where we showed the film “Living Dowstream”, a documentary based on the book written by Sandra Steingraber, a biologist and author, whom you may recall came to Eugene earlier this year to speak about environmental health, pesticides, and human rights.