Low-income communities of color are limited by fewer environmental benefits (e.g., clean air, water, and land) and more environmental threats (e.g., hazardous chemicals and environmental illness). Such limits triggered the environmental justice movement. Environmental justice activists often find the limits so strong that they focus on a single issue. Environmental health professionals often do not sense these limits and sometimes blame the limits on the victims. Understanding how such limits are created, maintained, and interact to create environmental illness in low-income communities of color helps environmental justice activists and environmental health professionals develop better solutions.

Better health is a benefit often tied to more income, more education, and better jobs, as well as living in communities where more people have higher incomes and more education. However, race, class, and gender discrimination in the U.S. makes better health difficult to attain for people in poor minority communities. Limits on housing choice, education, income and political power create environments for low-income communities of color that trigger disease. The end result is that people in low-income communities of color have less healthy surroundings, less education, and less income to support their personal health, and to fight for better healthcare, than people in other communities. People residing in low-income communities of color also die sooner.

The environmental health consequences of such limitations are substantial. Exposure to toxins are greater in low-income communities of color because they are often located in or near polluting industrial areas and consist of cheap older housing where lead paint and pests are a threat. Employment in low-income communities of color is often limited to jobs with low pay, no health benefits, and, sometimes, severe workplace dangers. Low-income communities of color receive less treatment for environmental disease because healthcare resources are limited and environmental health expertise is rare. Finally, when environmental health threats are not eliminated, the harm jumps from generation to generation.