Small Moments of Change

The Georgia nonprofit Girl + Environment is tackling environmental and racial justice one step at a time.

Words By Kamille D. Whittaker | Photos By Lynsey Weatherspoon

February 05, 2025

Sandra Freeman knew something was wrong when the traffic around I-20 near Turner Hill in the Conyers area of Georgia was worse than usual for a weekend afternoon. 

Around 5 a.m. on that warm September Sunday, the sprinkler system at the BioLab swimming-pool chemical plant had malfunctioned, causing an unwieldy chemical fire that billowed smoke and spewed chlorine fumes for hours. 

More than 17,000 residents within a two-mile radius of the Old Covington Highway facility were eventually ordered to evacuate their homes. An estimated 90,000 others nearby were told by the Georgia Emergency Management Agency and Rockdale County officials to close windows, shut off air conditioning, and shelter in place. 

Freeman was on her way to a friend’s birthday party — heading north, unwittingly, toward the flames — when the mobile alerts began pinging her phone. By then, officials had extinguished the stubborn fire.

“I was very scared,” Freeman keeps repeating, as she describes the angry haze she could see ahead of her that day.

“Our eyes were burning, breathing was difficult, and there was a funny smell in the air that almost smelled like …” she pauses to search for the right word. 

“Rust.”

Freeman, 62, originally came to the U.S. mainland from St. Thomas but has lived in the Bronx and just outside Tampa. In 2024, she moved to Conyers, 25 miles east of Atlanta, to join her son, who lives off of State Route 212 — a northwest-to-southeast thoroughfare that starts in DeKalb County, follows the South River through Rockdale County and into Baldwin County in central Georgia. Their house is just outside the southernmost hem of the evacuation area for the BioLab explosion.

Freeman still doesn’t know the precise nature of the chemicals released or if there could be long-term health effects — especially for her son-in-law, who has sickle cell anemia, and her adult son, who has asthma. (A call to the Rockdale County Emergency Management Agency redirects callers to Poison Control if they are still experiencing symptoms.)

And Freeman only recently became aware this was the fourth time in two decades that BioLab — located just 7.5 miles from her family residence — had an accident that created problematic conditions for the majority Black city. 

In 2004, a BioLab warehouse containing pool chemicals caught fire, causing residents to take shelter at J.H. House Elementary and Heritage High School. The water officials used to flood the area drained 12.5 million pounds of chlorine into nearby Veterans of Foreign Wars Lake, resulting in massive marine casualties, federal records show.

Twelve years later,  a fire involving a few 5 gallon buckets of chlorine powder ignited a chemical reaction and a precautionary evacuation. 

And in September 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a noxious chlorine vapor was released and shut down Interstate 20 for over six hours.

The collision of industry with environmental justice and public health and how it overlays like a wet blanket on the quality of life for Black, Brown and Indigenous communities, is something Diamond Spratling, an Atlanta-based climate and social justice leader knows intimately from growing up in industrial Detroit and now living as a resident of Southwest Atlanta.

“I was also impacted by the [BioLab] explosion and distinctly remember not being able to go outside, but still sitting inside my home with my eyes burning severely,” says Spratling. “I think this incident underscores the need for accountability needed in this space. There is no reason why this should have happened for a fourth time in over two decades and why there is even a facility of this kind within close proximity of a residential community.” 

The chemical fire is a powerful illustration of why Spratling has made exposing such injustice her life’s work. In 2019, she founded the nonprofit Girl + Environment and launched a slate of programs, ranging from targeted initiatives that address the health risks posed by Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals found in hair and beauty products predominantly used by Black women, to workforce development in environmental justice spaces, to healing circles that address mental health challenges experienced by Black and Brown women who have been disproportionately affected by climate disasters like flooding, heatwaves, and power outages. 

Spratling deliberately chose to focus on girls, women and non-binary people of color. “[This demographic] is significantly underrepresented in the climate and environmental sectors even though we are among the most impacted,” she says. “When women of color don't have access to clean water and sanitation during their menstrual cycle, this is a burden. When we are exposed to air pollution during pregnancy, this is also a burden. When the beauty and self-care products that are marketed to us are toxic, this is a burden. How is it that the group of individuals most impacted by the issue is least represented?” 

Ultimately, Spratling’s mission for GPE is to inspire women of color like Freeman — who recently connected with Spratling and is beginning to find her voice as a new Georgia resident — to be fearless in championing environmental justice and dismantling health, racial and environmental inequities in their communities throughout Georgia.

• • •

During childhood summers in Detroit, Spratling remembers playing outside under clear blue skies and trying to capture fireflies and roly-poly bugs—which, she notes, have ostensibly gone missing now. Right outside her house, all the neighborhood kids would gather and frolic with sprinklers and water slides in the hot sun.

On cold days inside, she’d ruminate about rescuing polar bears stranded on melting ice caps in the Arctic — something that she’d learned about from a commercial.

“I remember feeling so bad for the polar bears and wondering: ‘Who's helping the animals, who's taking care of the planet, who's sticking up for the plants and all the different parts of our earth that essentially can't communicate with us and can't tell us that they're hurting?’” says Spratling. “I think that really stuck with me, and I knew I wanted to do something about it.”

She fell in love with her science classes and started taking specialized high school courses like AP environmental science and zoology. She studied environmental policy and analysis at Bowling Green State University and participated in any environmental programming she could. 

But what set her on the environmental justice path — which she has followed for the past decade — was a college internship during her sophomore year with the West Michigan Environmental Action Council. Spratling was tasked with looking at the intersections between air pollution, energy policy, and health. Up until then, her interests had leaned toward conservation. This was the first time she appreciated the connection between the environment and public health, along with its educational, economic, and other implications.

“I remember learning about the relationship between air pollution and asthma and how outdoor air pollution can trigger asthma attacks for many kids, especially if they’re under the age of 5,” Spratling recalls. “I think it really triggered me, because Detroit was one of those places where either you had asthma or you knew five other kids in your class that had asthma, and so it was normalized. Everyone had it.”

But why?

“It isn't a coincidence that you live 5 miles away from a coal-fired power plant or from an incinerator,” says Spratling.

In November 2024, Chrysler — now Stellantis — resolved a years-long and costly civil rights dispute among the automotive company, Detroit residents, and the city, state and federal governments, over air pollution and multi-million-dollar air quality violations. 

“My dad and his siblings grew up working at the Chrysler automotive factory back in Detroit, and many of them now have heart issues or have passed away from heart disease because they were working in that factory for over 25 years,” says Spratling.

“We always say that it's genetics, so that's why we all have similar health conditions generationally; but we don't think about the fact that our environments were also the same,” Spratling says. “Maybe your mom had it because you also grew up in the same environment, the same as your mom's mom.”

One of the culprits beyond genetic predisposition, according to Christina H. Fuller, an environmental health and engineering researcher and associate professor at the University of Georgia’s College of Engineering, is inflammation. Exposure to air pollution triggers an immune response as a means of defense. Continuous exposure to pollution means the body can remain in a state of simmering inflammation for months or even years, damaging and weakening the entire cardiovascular system.

There’s also a second mechanism at play, according to Fuller. “The autonomic nervous system is the system that controls those things that we don't think about that happen automatically in our body—our breathing, our heart beating,” she says. “Air pollution acts on those systems which can result in poor outcomes for the heart.”

Particulate matter — small solid particles or droplets that make up smog — has been linked to diseases in the brain, lungs, and circulatory system. Yet, as part of the resolution, Chrysler was allowed to increase particulate matter emissions allowances from already high levels.

Nevertheless, Spratling recognizes that the automotive industry provided generations of jobs which bolstered the economy in Detroit. “Everyone’s father and grandfather worked in the automotive industry at the plant, so regardless of the health implications or issues that they experienced, they had to put food on their table for their families,” says Spratling. “I hated that they had to sacrifice between their own health and providing for their families, but it brings me a bit of comfort knowing that I am able to be in this space and do this work to try to mitigate those issues for future generations.”

• • •

While teaching at Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University) at the turn of the 20th century, sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois began observing racial inequities in health outcomes. His findings were published in 1899 in The Philadelphia Negro and demonstrated for the first time any observed racial disparities were not due to innate biological differences but rather differences in “social advancements” and the “vastly different conditions” experienced by whites and Blacks. Nearly a century later, in 1985, the Heckler Report, a landmark study of minority health sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, echoed Du Bois’s findings, again revealing striking inequalities across a wide range of health outcomes that cemented systemic racism as a public health crisis.

The stipulated intersections have made it easier for communities to understand just what Spratling does: She is not just advocating for trees, or saving the planet, Spratling says, rather, hers is very much a human-centered endeavor. Lately, she has taken to calling herself a human rights and racial justice activist. “You just can’t have racial or social justice without environmental justice.”

And all of it is slow work.

Soon after Spratling completed her Master of Public Health degree in Global Health from Emory University and her work as a policy researcher for the CDC in 2020, she began working as a Health Equity & GIS Lead for Bloomberg Associates, which is former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s consultancy firm that provides pro bono services to different leadership cities like Atlanta. 

She was tapped to build the City of Atlanta Department of Parks and Recreation’s first equity data tool which does a spatial analysis of the city, comparing life expectancy and different health outcomes, and relating them back to access to parks, recreation and the environment. 

“The City wanted to make data-informed decisions, and they wanted to make sure that the funding was going to the parts of the city that needed it the most,”  Spratling explains. 

Spratling convened focus groups to discuss what people thought of the city’s park systems. “We also did surveys, and a parks condition analysis or audit of the nearly 350 parks in Atlanta. We wanted to understand, how many benches? Is it accessible? Is there a water park? All these different things to analyze each of the parks and give them a score that would help inform funding decisions.” Secondary data consisted of socio-economic information like household income, food security, age, crime, access to vehicles, and bicycle access.

However, Spratling stresses it’s important not to get too caught up in theoretical research. “One thing I think that we should keep in mind when we do community engagement work in general, is to address the urgent needs that people have right then,” she says. “It's very difficult for people to talk about how they see their community in the future when people are like, ‘OK, but we just want running water right now, or we just want this water fountain to be fixed next week.’” 

Using the data, the city created an app where residents could report such feedback and immediate needs in real time. Spratling says, “I think that really helped people understand that, yes, we have this long term, 10-year master plan, but we are also committed to addressing urgent needs that are happening right then and there.” 

Sprawling’s children’s book Sage Sails The World: A Little Girl’s Journey Across the Arctic provides both an inspiring and important environmental message.

Spratling’s own master plan includes what Madeleine McLain, communications manager for E Pluribus Unum calls, “creating small moments of change.” 

Spratling applied to be part of the fourth cohort of fellows in a program run by the nonprofit launched in 2018 by former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu to tackle the daunting problem of racial inequity in America. “For this cohort, which was our fourth cohort, that Diamond was a part of, we decided to kind of shift and find leaders who might be in the public or civic space who are interested or working around issues of climate and environmental justice,” McLain says. 

“As an organization focused on building equity across the South, we understand that the climate crisis is one of the biggest threats to our everyday lives and to us as Southerners,” McLain says. “We wanted to hone in on this focus and help support civic and public leaders, private leaders, anyone in the climate justice space — or folks who want to further their work in the environmental or climate space — and support them.” 

Spratling used the $10,000 she received as an EPU Fellow as seed money to amplify Girl + Environment’s “Protecting Our Energy” Project.

This initiative trains “fellows” to educate their communities about Georgia Power’s rate increase requests, which began when the utility asked the Public Service Commission to approve energy rate hikes of 12 percent in 2022. “We helped our Energy Justice Fellows submit public comments and gave them funding and technical assistance to host their own energy education events in their own communities,” Spratling says. 

GPE Fellows Adedamola Adebamiro and Kimberly Inegbe, for example, gathered friends — several of whom wondered why their light bills were steadily rising — to talk about energy justice at Just Add Honey Tea Company on the Atlanta BeltLine. 

Another fellow, Nadia Smith, educated her Muslim community through interactive games that asked questions like, “After six rate hikes [due to] Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle project, how much will households pay annually for utilities in 2025? What can you do as a consumer? Why should you care?” 

While the 12 percent rate increase was not approved initially, the PSC eventually approved a series of increases, which began with 2.6 percent in January of 2023. 

“This was initially considered a win, but Georgia Power then reportedly went back to the PSC to request additional funds from ratepayers to account for fuel costs and to pay for nuclear plant Vogtle, which is already [at least] $16 billion over budget. In 2024 and 2025, an additional rate increase of 4.5 percent is also expected,” Spratling explains.

“The work that she's doing with Girl + Environment is so thoughtful, and I think she really is someone who sets an example of creating a well-rounded ecosystem of change,” says McLain. “At E Pluribus Unum, we are constantly trying to amplify these moments of change that seem small, but at the end of the day, these incremental moments of change are the ones that get us to where we want to be in the end. I think she recognizes that something as small as public comment is not small at all. Those things push our leaders and those in power to get us to where we want to be.”

Spratling is already planning her next moves, which include pushing further into the clean energy space. “Georgia is leading in the number of clean energy projects started since the Inflation Reduction Act. So it shows that the state is really invested in clean energy,” says Spratling, noting the job opportunities in the solar, clean energy, and renewable energy sectors. “That could mean becoming an entrepreneur and starting a business that helps to kind of get those projects off the ground, or getting into trades, which is something that I think has been neglected in the past couple of years but has been showing a lot of attention.”  

And she’s eager to address “climate anxiety,” which is at an all-time high, especially among millennials and Gen Z. “People are having a lot of anxiety about climate change, about how it's impacting their health, their well-being, their everyday lives,” Spratling says. “People are very anxious and stressed about how it may impact their future, whether it means that they will be out of a job, or whether it means that their house will get torn down or they can't afford to make upgrades like solar energy and everything else.”

Spratling adds, “We just had three back-to-back hurricanes or tropical storms make landfall in the South in the fall, and many people are having to rebuild their lives. Mental health strain is an environmental justice issue.”

• • •

In the days after the BioLab explosion, the haze cleared and sky turned a cerulean blue, save for a few quiet clouds.

The tree canopies on the side roads around Interstate 20 were still crisp and green. 

It’s like nothing ever happened.

Freeman says she’d been losing sleep, because mobile update alerts from the Emergency Management System were still sounding haphazardly throughout the night. But there were no more burning eyes, or labored breathing; and the shelter in place order had been lifted.

She was planning to get back outside to her garden before the first frost sets in.

Despite the fire, she prefers the air here rather than in Florida or New York. “It’s fresher and cleaner here in Georgia,” she asserts.

Still, Freeman knows there is much to learn about her new home and its context. And now, armed with knowledge of Spratling’s advocacy work on the social justice frontlines along with people just like her — Freeman is no longer afraid.

Kamille D. Whittaker is an Atlanta-based journalist, non-profit newsroom leader, and a professor of journalism and digital media at Clark Atlanta University, where she is the Faculty Adviser for The Panther Newspaper and the Communication Arts Journal. Currently, she is conducting research for Perhaps, To Bloom, a narrative and Africana Digital Humanities project studying the swelling contemporary Caribbean presence in Atlanta and the South. Whittaker was appointed as a Faculty Fellow for the HistoryMakers Innovations in Pedagogy and Teaching Fellowship for the 2024-2025 academic year. Previously, she served as managing editor of Atlanta magazine.

Lynsey Weatherspoon is a portrait and editorial photographer based in both Atlanta and Birmingham. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time, and other publications. The fingerprint of heritage can be found on assignments and personal projects featuring Black Lives Matter, Gullah Geechee culture, unsung players in the Negro Baseball Leagues, and the last of a dying breed — a cobbler. Her work has been exhibited at The African American Museum in Philadelphia and Photoville NYC. She is an awardee of The Lit List, 2018. Her affiliations include Diversify Photo, Authority Collective, and Women Photograph.