FIGURE 2.

Overview of the link between systemic exclusion, environmental injustice, and AhR-driven tumor biology. Discriminatory housing and lending policies (ex: redlining) drove neighborhood racial/ethnic and socioeconomic segregation which persists today due to ongoing systemic discrimination and gentrification. Resources were and are disproportionately allocated to wealthier neighborhoods, contributing to neighborhood disinvestment. The proximal neighborhood has more traffic, pollution-generating factories and dump sites. It has less green space for stress relief and exercise, worsening the riskscape that individuals in the proximal neighborhood must navigate. Individuals living in the proximal neighborhood are chronically exposed to environmental toxins, tipping the scales of environmental justice against them. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs), and Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are generated by combustion processes as components of ambient particulate matter (PM) derived from urban areas and industrial activities. PAHs, PCDDs and PCBs robustly activate the AhR signaling pathway, promoting cancer stemness and interrelated functional outcomes, including plasticity, chemoresistance, EMT and immune evasion, which synergize to drive breast cancer metastasis and disparate outcomes for individuals in proximal neighborhoods.