Citizen participation and empowerment: the case of local environmental hazards.

Local environmental hazards place millions of citizens at risk of physical, emotional, and financial harm. While the discovery of such hazards can be fundamentally disempowering for individuals and communities, few scholars have examined the dynamics of empowerment in this context. We explore the relationships among forms of empowerment, citizen participation, and local environmental hazards, and offer a model of the processes of empowerment and disempowerment appropriate to a broad range of citizen issues. On the basis of this analysis we recommend a partnership approach to community decision making that is designed both to reduce the likelihood that local environmental hazards will develop and to minimize the disempowering impact of any threats that do occur.

Tick bite victims and their environment: the risk of Lyme disease.

The authors surveyed 308 New Jersey tick bite victims. Education concerning landscape ecology, wildlife control, tick and wildlife habitat reduction, tick control using acaricides, and how to keep pets tick-free is especially needed to reduce human exposure to tick bites and Lyme disease.