Failing to address racism: A commentary on “From Florence to Fossil Fuels: Nursing Has Always Been About Environmental Health”

“From Florence to Fossil Fuels: Nursing Has Always Been About Environmental Health” (McCauley, 2021), provides readers with a historical perspective of nursing's role in environmental health, stresses the danger of climate change, sheds light on heath disparities associate with poor environmental conditions, and puts forth a call to action for more nursing education and research in this area of health. We do not disagree that climate change is a threat to health, environmental health disparities exist, or that more education and research is needed in environmental health. We submit that the biggest threat to environmental health and the underlying cause for environmental health disparities is racism, a concept absent in McCauley's (2021) perspective. Just as nursing environmental science is organized into four main categories, racism is also (individual/internalized, interpersonal, institutional, and structural). There is clear evidence that racism is a primary antecedent for poor health outcomes among Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) yet healthcare providers, policy makers and nurse scientists continue to address this fact in a cursory way ( ) and in doing so. Using a social justice lens, we will examine how institutional and structural racism impact physical, chemical, biological, and cultural hazards as defined by McCauley (2021).