Cancer risks from exposure to vehicular air pollution: a household level analysis of intra-ethnic heterogeneity in Miami,Florida

Quantitative environmental justice (EJ) research has relied on aggregated data from census units to determine disproportionate hazard exposure. Additionally, variables typically used to analyze ethnic inequities in exposure (e.g., percent Hispanic) are too broad and assume a degree of homogeneity that may not exist, given the diversity of ethnic minority populations. We address these limitations through a study that utilizes primary household level survey data and cancer risk estimates from the National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) to analyze intra-ethnic inequities in exposure to vehicular air pollutants in the Miami metropolitan area, Florida. Our analysis disaggregates the Hispanic category based on five characteristics (language proficiency, U.S. citizenship, nativity, unemployment status, and national origin) and finds that risk burdens are significantly higher for Hispanic respondents who are foreign-born, unemployed, and of Cuban origin. Findings highlight the advantages of downscaling EJ analyses to the household level and considering intra-ethnic heterogeneity in EJ research and policy.     

New technologies, old divides: linking internet access to social and locational characteristics of US farms

Access to new information and communication technologies is widely viewed as a prerequisite for participation in the global economy, so that inequalities in such access have become a significant policy concern. Rural areas are especially underserved in terms of internet providers, and this is true in both developed and less developed economies. This article focuses on access to the internet within farming operations in the US as an important aspect of understanding the digital divide within rural areas. Using county level data from the 2007 US Census of Agriculture and multivariate regression analysis, our study examines the statistical relationship between farm internet access and a set of explanatory factors which include demographic characteristics of operators, economic characteristics of farms, and geographic location (region and metropolitan status) of the farm. Further, it seeks to understand whether access to the internet can be socially and locationally differentiated from access to high speed internet. Our findings indicate that existing social divides are replicated in terms of the digital divide, so that social inequalities are potentially a more pressing problem than infrastructural gaps in terms of rural access to the internet in the US.     

Exposure to Hurricane Harvey flooding for subsidized housing residents of Harris County,Texas

Natural Hazards - This article contributes to research on social vulnerability to natural hazards by analyzing the relationship between spatial patterns of flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey and...     

Using GIS to Assess the Environmental Justice Consequences of Transportation System Changes

Although environmental justice research has typically focused on locations of industrial toxic releases or waste sites, recent developments in GIS and environmental modeling provide a foundation for developing measures designed to evaluate the consequences of transportation system changes. In this paper, we develop and demonstrate a workable GIS-based approach that can be used to assess the impacts of a transportation system change on minorites and low-income residents. We focus specifically on two adverse affects: vehicle-generated air pollution and noise. The buffer analysis capabilities of GIS provide a preliminary assessment of environmental justice. We integrate existing environmental pollution models with GIS software to identify the specific locations where noise and air pollution standards could be violated because of the proposed system change. A comparison of the geographic boundaries of these areas with the racial and economic characteristics of the underlying population obtained from block level census data provides a basis for evaluating disproportionate impacts. An existing urban arterial in Waterloo, Iowa, is used to illustrate the methods developed in this research.     

Land,Labor, and Rural Development: Analyzing Participation in India's Village Dairy Cooperatives

Livestock-based livelihoods are currently being promoted by international development agencies as part of global efforts to combat poverty. India's dairy development program, organized around village cooperatives, has become an important model for such efforts. This article aims to identify household characteristics that influence membership in India's rural dairy cooperatives by comparing two villages representing different degrees of success. Utilizing logistic regression methods, data collected through a comprehensive survey of all households in the two villages are analyzed to examine (1) how variables describing animal ownership, agricultural attributes, and household labor availability contribute to explaining membership in the dairy cooperative; and (2) whether factors influencing membership differ across the two villages. Our results indicate that although agricultural property ownership influences cooperative membership in both villages, the kind of dairy animal used and labor utilized for dairying work also have a significant and context-specific effect on household participation.     

Environmental Health Injustice: Exposure to Air Toxics and Children's Respiratory Hospital Admissions in El Paso,Texas

Although much environmental justice research tacitly assumes that unequal environmental exposures produce geographic disparities in adverse health outcomes, very few empirical environmental justice studies have tested that assumption. This article does so by using estimates of exposure to air toxics disaggregated by emission source (point and mobile) to predict children's hospitalization rates for both asthma and respiratory infections in El Paso, Texas. Air toxics emissions from most source categories were found to be significant predictors of children's respiratory infection hospitalization rates, but not asthma hospitalization rates, at the census tract level. Findings suggest that sociospatial disparities in respiratory infection rates might be linked to environmental inequalities.     

Measuring the Digital Divide in the United States: Race,Income, and Personal Computer Ownership

This article demonstrates how the Lorenz Curve and the Gini coefficient can be used to measure inequalities in home personal computer (PC) ownership in the United States at the national, regional, and state levels. Our empirical investigation, based on supplemental data from the Current Population Survey of the U.S. Census, indicates that income inequalities are substantially smaller within white households owning a PC than African American households, at all geographic scales. While income inequalities among PC owners (households) have decreased between 1994 and 2001 in all regions and states, the magnitude of this inequality has declined more rapidly among whites compared to African Americans.     

Urban Heat and Climate Justice: A Landscape of Thermal Inequity in Pinellas County,Florida

The combined effects of two global trends, urbanization and climate change, have generated considerable concern regarding their adverse and disproportionate impacts on the health of urban populations. This study contributes to climate‐justice research by determining whether elevated levels of urban heat, indicated by land surface temperature (LST), are distributed inequitably with respect to race/ethnicity, age, and socioeconomic status in Pinellas County, Florida. Our study utilizes 2010 MODIS and Landsat medium‐resolution, remotely sensed thermal data, census socio‐demographic information, and both conventional and spatial statistical methods. Results indicate that LST is significantly greater in census tracts characterized by higher percentages of certain racial/ethnic minorities and higher poverty rates, even after controlling for contextual factors and the effects of spatial autocorrelation. This reveals the presence of a landscape of thermal inequity: uneven distribution of heat within the built urban environment and a community structure with varying vulnerability.     

Assessing the Impact of Airborne Toxic Releases on Populations with Special Needs

In this article, we 1) develop and demonstrate an approach for assessing the population at risk to airborne releases of extremely hazardous substances, 2) examine the relationship between potential sources of chemical hazards and the special needs population in a medium‐sized metropolitan area (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), and 3) determine whether the distribution of environmental risks disproportionately impacts the special needs population. Our approach provides a comprehensive view of the risk burden imposed on the population by examining the effects of multiple sources of toxic releases. Disproportionate impacts are evaluated by comparing the existing distribution of the special needs population at risk to 1,000 randomly simulated distribution patterns. The results indicate that a significantly high proportion of the special needs population resides in areas susceptible to worst‐case toxic releases.