Social capital, rationality, and inequality : the distribution of environmental health risks in the Southeastern United States

This doctoral dissertation examines the distribution of environmentally risky technologies in the Southeastern United States. The empirical target is commercial treatment, storage, and disposal (TSD) installations of hazardous waste. Two questions motivate the investigation: where are hazardous waste installations located, and why? These installations handle substances that increase rates of mortality and serious irreversible illness, and pose a significant hazard to human health and the environment. Scholars maintain the hazardous waste stream in the United States has a grisly logic - it is distributed on the population unevenly, with poor communities of color burdened disproportionately. The dissertation tests four hypotheses distilled from four theories of human organization of space for risky technologies. The first hypothesis, economic rationality, examines the distribution of TSD installations from the standpoint of commercial operators. TSD installation operators insist they select commercially suitable locations not areas with historically disadvantaged populations. The second hypothesis, scientific rationality, examines the distribution problem from the standpoint of EPA geologists, hydrologists and engineers, that insist siting decisions are based on clearly articulated scientific criteria. The third hypothesis, community social capital, analyzes the geographic unevenness of environmental health risks as a function of the variable capacity of communities to resist the placement of a facility in their neighborhood by levels of trust, cohesion, and reciprocity that obtain. The fourth hypothesis, race and class inequality, examines the claim that inequitable siting of hazardous waste installations is an outcropping of direct and indirect institutional discrimination. The dataset is a match of records on fully operational treatment, storage and disposal facilities and large quantity generators of hazardous waste from the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Social and Demographic Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, population and housing data at the census tract level from the US Census Bureau, non-profit organization data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics and the People of Color Environmental Groups Directory, and seismic hazard and hydrologic data from the US Geological Survey. Bivariate and multivariate statistical results suggest that siting outcomes are predictable by the distribution of social capital assets, the racial composition of a community, the seismological unsuitability a land use, and TSD installation proximity to adequately skilled labor and hazardous materials for processing. The concentration of large quantity generator activity and the percentage of African-Americans in a neighborhood prevail as the most consistent and powerful predictors of TSD installation siting at regional and sub-regional levels, and across different spatial measures of environmental health risk. Uneven distribution of environmental burdens by race violates the promise of President Clinton\u27s Executive Order 12898, mandating fair treatment of all people in the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. The dissertation ends with a risk allocation scheme to solve the systemic Prisoners\u27 Dilemma of concentrated environmental burden and diffuse environmental benefit

The Effect of Leaded Aviation Gasonline on Blood Lead in Children

Lead is a neurotoxin with developmentally harmful effects in children. In the United States, over half of the current flow of lead into the atmosphere is attributable to lead-formulated aviation gasoline (avgas), used in a large fraction of piston-engine aircraft. Deposition of lead from avgas may pose a health risk to children proximate to airport facilities that service lead-emitting aircraft. Extrapolating from epidemiological evidence on the health and human capital costs of lead poisoning, various public interest firms have petitioned the EPA to find endangerment from and regulate lead emitted by piston-engine aircraft. In the absence of sufficient empirical evidence linking avgas to blood lead levels (BLLs) in children, the EPA has ruled against petitions to find endangerment. To address an EPA request for more evidence, we constructed a novel dataset that links time and spatially referenced blood lead data from 1,043,391 children to 448 nearby airports in Michigan, as well as a subset of airports with detailed data on the volume of piston-engine aircraft traffic. Across a series of tests, and adjusting for other known sources of lead exposure, we find that child BLLs: 1) increase dose-responsively in proximity to airports, 2) decline measurably in children residing in neighborhoods proximate to airports in the months after 9-11, and 3) increase dose-responsively in the flow of piston-engine aircraft traffic. To quantify the policy relevance of our results, we provide a conservative estimate of the social damages attributable to avgas consumption

Utilization of Science-Based Information on Climate Change in Decision Making and the Public Policy Process - Phase 2

This report was prepared by the ORIGINAL: Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy in The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University under award NA04OAR4600172 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the Department of Commerce.project reportsurveyNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce (NA04OAR4600172

Climate Change, Drought, and Policymaking in the U.S. Southern Region

This report was prepared by the ORIGINAL: Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy in The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University under award NA05OAR4311121 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the Department of Commerce.surveyNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce (NA05OAR4311121

Environmental Justice and the Role of Criminology: An Analytical Review of 33 Years of Environmental Justice Research

An increasing number of scholars and activists have begun to tackle a variety of issues relevant to environmental justice studies. This study attempts to address the role of criminologists in this domain. The authors examine 425 environmental justice articles in 204 academic journals, representing 18 programs/departments between 1970 and 2003. First, they measure the environmental justice contributions in the literature by academic department or activist affiliation. Second, they identify the major themes in the literature as they have developed and reveal the current and future directions of environmental justice studies. Such themes include the spatial distribution of hazards, social movements, law and public policy, and environmental discrimination. Finally, the authors seek to call attention to the evident linkages between accepted areas of criminological scholarship and environmental justice. From this latter objective, the authors seek to demonstrate how criminology and criminal justice can advance this critical dialogue and social movement

Youth Mortality by Forces of Nature

Abstrac