Five years after a disastrous confrontation between EPA officials and residents of the Hyde Park area near Augusta, Georgia in 1993, Melissa Checker spends 14 months in the field to investigate the root of the issues. Hyde Park is a predominantly black, low-income community and had long suspected their local land to be contaminated by industrial chemicals that may have leaked from nearby factories due to the higher incidence of certain illnesses within the community. However, after conducting its study, the EPA did not come up with conclusive data that correlated the high incidence of these illnesses with chemical contamination, which provoked the ire of the residents. Checker investigates the reasons behind the Hyde Park residents’ reaction as well as the problems with the EPA study. The latter is particularly interesting because it exemplifies some of the short-comings of a purely scientific study and why it is important to understand the history, culture, and needs of a local community when it comes to investigations of environmental issues. The Hyde Park residents, having been subjected to unequal treatment due to race for many decades, are already suspicious of government authority figures, and the EPA results just appears to them as another instance of the government ignoring their plight. The EPA study on the surface appears sound, but due to a lack of local area and cultural knowledge, a number of parameters were wrongly calibrated and bad samples were collected. One example that Checker used is that the results for contamination of fish were calculated using the average of 18 grams/day consumed by a 70 kg adult, but the residents of Hyde Park consumed a higher amount of fish, roughly 20-24 grams/day and did not account for the elderly or children, who are more susceptible to illness. Due to a lack of local area knowledge, many samples were collected from areas where new topsoil had been recently placed, further skewing the data in the study. The residents responded with a resounding “but I know it’s true” in response to the EPA studies. Furthermore, some methods for studies involving health risks may be dubious, as often results are from testing of high doses of isolated chemicals in animals which is then extrapolated and applied to low dosages in humans, who are most likely consuming multiple toxic chemicals at once. Checker proposes that future studies should involve scientists working side by side with local residents, as local residents have the necessary knowledge of their area and also the motivation to help their community. I think that this is a good idea, as real environmental action often involve the agreement of both local inhabitants and government authorities.