An Environmental Justice Analysis of Air Pollution Emissions in the United States from 1970 to 2010

Abstract

<h4>1. Introduction</h4><p>Over the last decades, air pollution emissions have decreased substantially; however, inequities in air pollution persist. We evaluate county-level racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in emissions changes from six air pollution source sectors (industry [SO2], energy [SO2, NOx], agriculture [NH3], commercial [NOx], residential [particulate organic carbon], and on-road transportation [NOx]) in the contiguous United States during the 40 years following the Clean Air Act (CAA) enactment (1970-2010). We calculate relative emission changes and examine the differential changes given county demographics using hierarchical nested models. The results show racial/ethnic disparities, particularly in the industry and energy generation source sectors. We also find that median family income is a driver of variation in relative emissions changes in all sectors—counties with median family income >$75K vs. less generally experience larger relative declines in industry, energy, transportation, residential, and commercial-related emissions. Emissions from most air pollution source sectors have, on a national level, decreased following the United States CAA. In this work, we show that the relative reductions in emissions varied across racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups. This repository houses the code and data used in the analysis presented in the peer-reviewed article: An Environmental Justice Analysis of Air Pollution Emissions in the United States from 1970 to 2010.</p><p>Notice that this repository is linked with a journal article: </p><p><strong>Yanelli Nunez, Jaime Benavides, Jenni A. Shearston, Elena M. Krieger, Misbath Daouda, Lucas R.F. Henneman, Erin E. McDuffie, Jeff Goldsmith, Joan A. Casey, and Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou: An Environmental Justice Analysis of Air Pollution Emissions in the United States from 1970 to 2010 [Under review]</strong></p><p> </p><h4>2. Code & Datasets</h4><p>We present the source code and the results here. The code is developed in R programming (R Core Team (2022)). Please, read carefully the <strong>README.md</strong> document enclosed within the zip file:</p><ul><li>The zip file <a href="https://zenodo.org/api/records/10059811/draft/files/yanellinunez/USA_emissions_code-v1.0.0.zip/content">yanellinunez/USA_emissions_code-v1.0.0.zip</a> contains four folders: <i>code</i>, <i>data</i>, <i>figures</i>, and <i>output. </i> It also includes a README.md file detailing the contents of each folder and subfolder.</li><li>All journal article source code, generated data, and results have been openly published in this repository</li></ul&gt