FALLS CHURCH, VA -- Investigative journalist Georgia Gee will present the 2026 Upton Sinclair Memorial Lecture during AIHA Connect, the annual conference and expo for occupational and environmental health and safety (OEHS) professionals.

Gee’s lecture, “The ‘Trash’ School,” will address how environmental racism and public health neglect subjected residents of a predominantly Black community in Gainesville, Florida, to decades of toxic chemical exposures. The talk is scheduled for 3:15 p.m. Central time on Monday, June 1, at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

Gee’s June 2024 article in The Intercept, also titled “The ‘Trash’ School,” reveals that Gainesville city officials sited a landfill 150 feet away from Joseph Williams Elementary School in the late 1950s. Although the dump was relocated in the ’60s, the garbage and contamination remain. Petroleum from buried storage tanks has permeated the soil and groundwater. In 2020, concentrations of the carcinogen benzo(a)pyrene at the site were up to 218 times higher than the level considered safe for residential areas. Williams Elementary’s ZIP code ranks among the worst 25 percent of Florida ZIP codes for pediatric asthma hospitalization rates. Yet county and state officials have not agreed to completely clean up the site or study the effects of the contamination on students’ health. 

Moreover, Williams Elementary isn’t the only “trash” school in the U.S. Gee and The Intercept have identified dozens of schools across 35 states, often in lower-income communities of color, that sit on or adjacent to former or currently open landfills.

In the 2026 Upton Sinclair lecture, Gee will discuss how she uncovered this story despite many Gainesville officials and residents being unaware of the former dump’s existence. “This lecture will provide insight on the journalistic process behind investigating environmental injustice and neglect,” she wrote in an email to AIHA staff. “It will cover how to report health impacts and how to use public records to chronicle toxic sites, or in this case, ‘trash schools.’”

Gee has also appeared on Episode 28 of AIHA’s podcast, “The Healthier Workplaces Show,” to discuss her upcoming lecture.