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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
James Galloway and Charles V. Shorten, PhD, PE. Environmental Health Program, West Chester University of Pennsylvania, Department of Health, West Chester, PA 19383, 610-436-2360, jg248450@att.net
The race/class hypothesis in environmental justice refers to inequitable or disproportional distribution of detrimental environmental effects from a given practice or policy toward poor and minority communities. This study uses data from the EPA 1995 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), demographic information from the United States Census 1990 STF3A summary files for Chester and Delaware Counties, and the U.S. Census Bureau software program Landview III to test this hypothesis. A new variable was created to quantify a "Release Burden" value for each individual included in the portion of the population residing within a 1 kilometer radius of a TRI site. The following key socioeconomic variables were chosen to express the racial and economic condition of the census tract: percent Black, percent Hispanic, educational attainment, median household income, percent per capita below the poverty level and percent per capita income. Multivariate regression analysis was used to test the hypothesis for each county independently (90% confidence level). The results for Delaware county show no significant relationship (p=0.173 to 0.234) for the two racial variables tested. Poverty level (p=0.046) and per capita income (p=0.071) were shown to be significant, a finding that suggests that economically disadvanted populations may be subject to greater exposures to TRI releases. For Chester County only educational attainment (>=B.S.) was shown to be significant (p=0.053). The two counties examined here are quite different in terms of ethnic diversity, magnitude and distribution of TRI releases and facilities, and other key factors. While this study shows that differences in environmental equity about TRI facilities may exist for these Pennsylvania counties they do not necessarily follow predictable patterns.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Environmental Justice, Social Inequalities
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.