Nancy Loeb

Nancy Loeb

Nancy Loeb is an environmental activist. She is on the board of the Environmental Law and Policy Center.

'holding harmful companies accountable'

Excerpt from a 2020 article at Medill Reports Chicago titled "Meet the climate activists across Chicago holding harmful companies accountable":

Nancy Loeb, clinical professor with the Pritzker Law School and director of the Environmental Advocacy Group at Northwestern University, has been working with grassroots climate organizations and monitoring vulnerable regions like the South Side for years. In defending these critical communities, she notes the paradox of their work.

“We don’t know what we don’t know,” she said. Loeb explained that community leaders’ push for better breathing conditions forced facilities like KCBX Terminals in the South Side, owned by Koch Industries, to put up air quality monitors about three years ago.

Only through this facilities requirement did they learn about the presence of manganese in the air. Manganese is a neurotoxin linked to Parkinson’s-type syndromes and may also affect brain development.

“As far as I know, there hasn’t been the kind of widespread testing or monitoring to know everything that’s there,” Loeb said. “So we don’t know what people are breathing.”

Business and Professional People for the Public Interest

In 2008, Nancy Loeb and Jeffrey Colman were listed as sponsors/financial contributors to the Chicago-based Business and Professional People for the Public Interest.