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Since 1995, many communities across the United States have begun or joined “Bucket Brigades,” programs that instruct communities near industrial polluters how to build and use simple air monitoring devices, or “buckets.”  In the absence of strong environmental laws, standards, or environmental enforcement bodies, buckets give communities the means to independently monitor the air quality of their neighborhoods and provide them with the evidence to affect environmental and industrial policy change.

The first Bucket Brigades in the United States were started in Contra Costa County in northern California after major accidents at the four oil refineries in the area heightened community concerns about air pollution releases from these facilities.  With the assistance of a local lawyer and Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), the five towns surrounding these refineries began to construct buckets and sample air quality whenever releases from the refineries could be seen or smelled.  By pressuring County Supervisors to make the local health department provide funding to continue the program, the Bucket Brigades became an approved county program and were allocated $50,000 in federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funds and $10,000 for staff time and services.  CBE also convinced the EPA to endorse the program and provide $90,000 to ensure the scientific credibility of the buckets and pay for the air quality tests.

The “bucket” itself is a relatively simple and inexpensive air sampling device composed of a Tedlar sampling bag housed inside a five gallon plastic bucket and a vacuum or tire pump used to suck air into the sampling bag.  The “Bucket Brigade” includes volunteer members in three jobs: Sniffers, Samplers, and Community Bucket Coordinators (CBCs). “Sniffers” are responsible for alerting the bucket brigade samplers when they notice a pollution incident. “Samplers” keep the air sampling devices in their homes and take a sample when they suspect a pollution incident. After taking a sample, the sampler will record where, when, and why the sample was taken and call a CBC to retrieve the sampling bag and arrange for delivery to the analytical laboratory. When the analytical results are received from the laboratory, the results are recorded in a database and provided to the community through local media, community meetings and other methods.  Community members are expected to use the data collected at their own discretion, to request further investigations on pollution from community groups, government agencies, and health facilities.

Community education is also a large part of the Bucket Brigades’ work.  Beyond training all project members in how to construct buckets, take air samples, and fill out the paperwork for the analytical laboratory, the brigade also provides residents with information about the potential health effects of pollution levels.  This is done through the creation and distribution of fact sheets about specific chemicals, background pollution levels, known health effects, regulatory pollution levels, trends of specific compounds over time, quality assurance information, and the results of the latest group of samples.

Low income, minority communities make up the majority of those who have begun Bucket Brigades in the United States.  At first, industry representatives rejected the air quality results collected by these groups. However, persistent testing and media attention has created industrial and environmental policy change in many communities.  In Contra Costa County, California, an “environmental justice policy” was adopted, reinforcing industrial pollution regulations, expanding occupational medical facilities, and including residents in decisions regarding nearby industries.  In Louisiana, Bucket Brigade air samples were used to prove that the Diamond neighborhood, which was slowly being engulfed by the Shell Chemical plant, was no longer a safe place to live, eventually resulting in the company agreeing to relocate the entire neighborhood. Overall, the Bucket Brigades have found that businesses and government agencies are more likely to respond to community concerns when they know people are organized and aware about exactly what pollutants their communities are facing.

Some technical knowledge, funding, and access to a laboratory that can perform the air quality testing is necessary for Bucket Brigades to be successful.  Instruction on how to build buckets, take samples, get them analyzed, and train community members is now available in a manual created and sold by CBE, however, the laboratory that tests samples must be nearby and willing to work within your budget.  Some air contaminants cannot be detected in samples that are not tested within 24 hours of being collected, and sampling bags must be cleaned at a laboratory before being used in the buckets.

This paper was completed on March 26, 2003.