Victoria St. Martin

Recent Work

St. Martin’s work has been republished in Wired, Mother Jones, Capital B and The 19th News.

Capital B News •

Jamaican Americans Mobilize After the Island's Worst Hurricane in a Century

Out of many, one people. 

Kimisha Simpson says she’s confident that Jamaica’s national motto will rally the diaspora and others to help rebuild the island that was battered by Hurricane Melissa earlier this week. 

“We like to say, ‘We’re the heartbeat of the Caribbean,’” Simpson said. “Jamaica is an island that has given so much to the world — entertainment, the arts, the culture, the food, the tourism, the hospitality. And so knowing the devastation is unlike anything they’ve ever seen in ce...
Inside Climate News •

Hurricane-Related Deaths Keep Happening Long After a Storm Ends - Inside Climate News

The raging winds and relentless rains of Hurricane Harvey—which pinwheeled through Houston in 2017, obliterating homes, shattering livelihoods and killing 36 people in the area—had long subsided when Chrishelle Palay and her family experienced yet another loss.


Nearly three months after Harvey hit, Palay’s aunt, 81-year-old Joyce Johnson, died after a long battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And although Palay and her family members could never prove it definitively, they stron...
Capital B News •

The Post-Dobbs Reality for Black Maternal and Infant Health

To reproductive justice activist Renee Bracey Sherman, theirs are the forgotten names.

Women like Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old medical assistant from Georgia, who suffered a rare complication from a medication abortion in August 2022 and died after waiting 20 hours for an emergency surgery to remove fetal tissue from her body. Thurman’s physicians worried that had they acted earlier, they might be prosecuted under the state’s restrictive anti-abortion law. 
Three months later, another Georgia w...
Inside Climate News •

How a Children’s Playground Is Helping With Flood Mitigation in a Small, Historic New Jersey City - Inside Climate News

This story is part of a collaborative reporting project led by the Institute for Nonprofit News and including Borderless Magazine, Cicero Independiente and Inside Climate News. It was supported by the Field Foundation and INN.


HOBOKEN, N.J.—For a city that’s almost small enough to fit inside Manhattan’s Central Park just a few miles away, Hoboken, New Jersey, has seen a lot of history play out within its narrow borders.


It was the site of the first organized baseball game in 1846, home of...
Inside Climate News •

In Louisiana, Environmental Justice Advocates Ponder Next Steps After a Federal Judge Effectively Bars EPA Civil Rights Probes - Inside Climate News

When she was told that a federal judge’s ruling will effectively prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from pursuing civil rights claims against chemical manufacturers in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” local activist Tisha Taylor immediately thought of the Fifth Ward Elementary School.


The 300-student school in Reserve, Louisiana, sits about the length of a football field away from the only industrial plant in the nation that emits chloroprene. Chloroprene, a suspected carcinogen, is a sub...
Inside Climate News •

After a Study Found Lead in Tampons, Environmentalists Wonder if Global Metal Pollution Is Worse Than They Previously Thought - Inside Climate News

The congratulatory calls and emails were pouring in, and Kathrin Schilling was trying her best to keep up with them all. A new study for which Schilling was the senior author disclosed the presence of such harmful metals as lead and arsenic in tampons.


Schilling’s work achieved the kind of mainstream attention of which researchers dream, gaining coverage in national news outlets and driving a broader public conversation about toxic chemicals in women’s hygiene products.


And while her study...
Inside Climate News •

To Help Stop Malaria’s Spread, CDC Researchers Create a Test to Find a Mosquito That Is Flourishing Thanks to Climate Change - Inside Climate News

For years, climate scientists have cautioned that the warming world could create conditions where animals, insects and other creatures would establish themselves in places they had not been found before—and bring diseases harmful to humans with them.


That scenario is now playing out in Africa, where a mosquito native to Asia has found a new home on the planet’s second-largest continent—and, as a prime carrier of the parasite that causes malaria, poses an increased public health threat to near...
Grist •

In a rare court action, an Oregon county seeks to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for extreme temperatures

Northwest Oregon had never seen anything like it. Over the course of three days in June 2021, Multnomah County — the Emerald State’s most populous county, which rests in the swayback along Oregon’s northern border — recorded highs of 108, 112, and 116 degrees Fahrenheit.


Temperatures were so hot that the metal on cable cars melted and the asphalt on roadways buckled. Nearly half the homes in the county lacked cooling systems because of Oregon’s typically gentle summers, where average highs to...
Mother Jones •

Oregon suit blaming oil firms for 2021 "heat dome" disaster may have a shot

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Northwest Oregon had never seen anything like it. Over the course of three days in June 2021, Multnomah County—the Emerald State’s most populous county, which rests in the swayback along Oregon’s northern border—recorded highs of 108, 112, and 116 degrees Fahrenheit.

Temperatures were so hot that the metal on cable cars melted and the asphalt on roadways buckled. Nearly...
Inside Climate News •

‘Not Caused by an Act of God’: In a Rare Court Action, an Oregon County Seeks to Hold Fossil Fuel Companies Accountable for Extreme Temperatures - Inside Climate News

Northwest Oregon had never seen anything like it. Over the course of three days in June 2021, Multnomah County—the Emerald State’s most populous county, which rests in the swayback along Oregon’s northern border—recorded highs of 108, 112 and 116 degrees Fahrenheit.


Temperatures were so hot that the metal on cable cars melted and the asphalt on roadways buckled. Nearly half the homes in the county lacked cooling systems because of Oregon’s typically gentle summers, where average highs top out...
Inside Climate News •

For Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley,’ Study Shows An Even Graver Risk From Toxic Gases

For months now, Sharon Lavigne, a former special education teacher turned environmentalist, has told just about everyone she meets of the dangers posed if a planned plastics plant is built near her home just outside New Orleans in Louisiana’s notorious “Cancer Alley.”

The founder of a local environmental group, Lavigne, 72, is worried about a proposed facility for the Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics Corp. that is expected to emit 7.7 tons of the cancer-causing ethylene oxide per year, along with
Inside Climate News •

With Heat Waves, an Increased Risk for Heart Problems, New Research Shows

As a cardiologist in the largest city in the nation’s fastest-warming region, Ethan Katznelson has daily, first-hand knowledge of how high temperatures can put stress on the human heart.

Katznelson, who practices at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, regularly sees the cardiovascular stress suffered by patients who live in homes without air conditioning, or climb steep stairs in multi-story apartment buildings with no elevators, or rely on public assistance to help cope with th
Inside Climate News •

Amid Record-Breaking Heat Wave, Researchers Step Up Warnings About Risks Extreme Temperatures Pose to Children

As a mother of two and a physician who specializes in working with newborns, Mattie Wolf understands that it can be tempting for parents to look upon their children and regard them as a “mini-me.”

But when it comes to high summer temperatures, Wolf cautions, that may be one of the worst things that a parent can do.

“Children are not little adults,” said Wolf, a neonatologist at Emory University’s School of Medicine and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. “Children and infants, especially the way
Inside Climate News •

For Pregnant People, Heat Waves Bring An Increased Risk of Preterm and Early Term Babies, Study Finds

PHILADELPHIA—Jaquanna Lomax finished her training classes as a doula just last month, but as summer approaches and she awaits her first professional delivery, she’s already started thinking about one potential challenge for new moms that wasn’t covered much during her schooling—the heat.

Lomax, a 36-year-old mother of two herself who’s based in Philadelphia, has spent years coping with searing summers in the Northeast, which, because of climate change, has long been the nation’s fastest warming
WIRED •

Who Wants to Have Children in a Warming World?

“Every single thing I was reading just didn’t include us in the discussion at all,” Sasser said. “I found myself in conversations with people who were not people of color and they were saying, ‘Well, I think people of color are just more resilient and don’t feel climate anxiety. And this doesn’t factor into their reproductive lives.’ That’s just simply not true. But how would we know that without the research to tell us? But now I’ve started down that road, and I really, really hope that other r...
Inside Climate News •

Q&A: Should We Be Having Babies In a Warming World?

Jade S. Sasser has been studying reproductive choices in the context of climate change for a quarter century. Her 2018 book, “Infertile Ground,” explored how population growth in the Global South has been misguidedly framed as a crisis—a perspective that Sasser argues had its roots in long-standing racial stereotypes about sexuality and promiscuity.

But during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sasser, an environmental scientist who teaches at the University of California, Riverside, started asking differe
Inside Climate News •

As California Considers Warning Labels for Gas Stoves, Researchers Learn More About Their Negative Health Impacts

Ruth Ann Norton used to look forward to seeing the blue flame that danced on the burners of her gas stove. At one time, she says, she would have sworn that preparing meals with the appliance actually made her a better cook.

But then she started learning about the toxic gasses, including carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and other harmful pollutants that are emitted by stoves into the air, even when they’re turned off.

“I’m a person who grew up cooking, and love that blue flame,” said Norton, who l
Inside Climate News •

In Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley,’ Excitement Over New Emissions Rules Is Tempered By a Legal Challenge to Federal Environmental Justice Efforts

RESERVE, La.—For Robert Taylor, it should have been a moment of celebration. For 60 years, he has watched with apprehension as the curved and winding pipes of the nation’s only chloroprene rubber plant discharged plumes of exhaust over this stretch of the Louisiana bayou long known as “Cancer Alley.”

The nickname is regrettably apt: Environmental officials say Taylor and his neighbors collectively face the greatest cancer risk from air pollution in the country—roughly 50 times the national aver
WIRED •

1 in 3 Americans Live in Areas With Dangerous Air Pollution

“We’ve seen the Environmental Protection Agency finalize a number of new standards to clean up the air pollution and address climate change, with more on the way,” said Bender.“We’ve seen the tighter particulate matter standard. We’ve seen strong measures to reduce emissions from future cars and future trucks. We’ve seen measures to reduce methane and volatile organic compounds from the oil and gas industry,” she said. “And we’re calling on the administration to get across the finish line to mor...
Inside Climate News •

More Than a Third of All Americans Live in Communities with ‘Hazardous’ Air, Lung Association Finds

Within five miles of Kim Gaddy’s home in the South Ward of Newark, N.J., lies the nation’s third-busiest shipping port, thirteenth-busiest airport and roughly a half dozen major roadways. All told, transportation experts say, the area where Gaddy and her neighbors live sees an average of roughly 20,000 truck trips each day.

Researchers cite the exhaust produced by all of that road travel as a major reason why asthma rates among Newark residents is about twice the national average.

“You hear of
Inside Climate News •

Flaring and Venting at Industrial Plants Causes Roughly Two Premature Deaths Each Day, a New Study Finds

PHILADELPHIA—Meeka Outlaw spent most of her childhood growing up in a South Philadelphia rowhouse that was essentially sandwiched between an oil refinery and an electrical power plant.

Less than a mile north of her home on Latona Street, there’s the Vicinity Electrical Cogeneration Plant, whose towering stacks are a familiar part of the neighborhood’s skyline. About two miles to the south was the now-shuttered PES Refinery, which began processing oil during the Civil War and didn’t stop until i
Inside Climate News •

Florida Legislators Ban Local Heat Protections for Millions of Outdoor Workers

ORLANDO, Fla.—Even if the often unbearable Florida temperatures started creeping up toward triple digits, Maria Leticia Pineda could usually be found clad in at least three layers of clothing to protect her skin from sunburns while she worked in an outdoor plant nursery.

Pineda spent 20 years working 11-hour days as she helped grow fruits like strawberries, blueberries and pineapples, as well as vegetables, ferns and other plants. But by 2018, between headaches that she believes were exacerbate
Inside Climate News •

In the ‘Armpit of the Universe,’ a Window Into the Persistent Inequities of Environmental Policy

Germaine Gooden-Patterson has lived in Clairton, Pennsylvania, for more than 15 years, but it wasn’t until she began a job as a community health worker in 2019 that she understood how much air pollution was affecting her neighbors’ lives—and her own.

Gooden-Patterson’s work for the Pittsburgh-based nonprofit Women for a Healthy Environment required her to visit homes in Clairton and the nearby towns of Duquesne and McKeesport, conducting surveys and interviews about air quality. As she spoke wi
Inside Climate News •

To Live and Die in Philadelphia: Sonya Sanders Grew Up Next Door to a Giant Refinery. She’s Still Suffering From Environmental Trauma

PHILADELPHIA—Sonya Sanders knows better than most the physical toll of living next door to an ecological hazard.

For a century and a half, the towering stacks at the former PES Refinery in her old South Philadelphia neighborhood spat flames, belched smoke and poisoned the air over her working-class community that now has outsized rates of cancer, asthma and other rare diseases.

Among those lost: Sander’s husband, Ray Williams, whose rare bone cancer, she believes, was caused by the polluted re
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