The Distribution of Pollution: Community Characteristics and Exposure to Air Toxics

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between community-level exposure to air toxics and socioeconomic, political, and demographic characteristics of the population. An index of exposure that is sensitive to toxicity differences and to distance from the emission source is constructed. This index is used to compare exposure levels across communities and to analyze determinants of disparities. Cross-sectional regressions on all continental U.S. zip codes reveal greater exposure in black communities even after controlling for a variety of variables. Voter turnout also affects exposure, and local socioeconomic conditions are found to influence changes in local exposure levels.

[1]  John L. Warren,et al.  Assessment of Changes in Reported TRI Releases and Transfers Between 1989 and 1990 , 1994 .

[2]  J. Hamilton.  Politics and Social Costs: Estimating the Impact of Collective Action on Hazardous Waste Facilities , 1993 .

[3]  Vicki Been,et al.  Locally Undesirable Land Uses in Minority Neighborhoods: Disproportionate Siting or Market Dynamics? , 1994 .

[4]  E. Wolff,et al.  The Distributional Effects of Uniform Air Pollution Policy in the United States , 1979 .

[5]  D. Rubinfeld,et al.  The distribution of benefits from improvements in urban air quality , 1978 .

[6]  Chris Hendrickson,et al.  Toxic Emissions Indices for Green Design and Inventory , 1995 .

[7]  Robert D. Bullard,et al.  Dumping In Dixie: Race, Class, And Environmental Quality, Third Edition , 1994 .

[8]  P. Asch,et al.  Some evidence on the distribution of air quality. [Correlations with income] , 1978 .

[9]  W S Pease,et al.  The role of cancer risk in the regulation of industrial pollution. , 1992, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[10]  J. Hamilton.  Pollution as News: Media and Stock Market Reactions to the Toxics Release Inventory Data , 1995 .

[11]  W S Pease,et al.  From health-based to technology-based standards for hazardous air pollutants. , 1991, American journal of public health.

[12]  S. A. Roach,et al.  But they are not thresholds: a critical analysis of the documentation of Threshold Limit Values. , 1990, American journal of industrial medicine.

[13]  Paul Mohai,et al.  Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards , 1992 .

[14]  J. Zupan.  The Distribution of Air Quality in the New York Region , 1973 .

[15]  B. Castleman,et al.  Corporate influence on threshold limit values. , 1988, American journal of industrial medicine.