Who's Minding the Kids? Pollucion,Public Schools,and Environmental Justice in Los Angeles

Objective . Although previous environmental justice research has focused on analysis of the disproportionate burden of environmental hazards on minority residents, few studies have examined demographic inequities in health risks among children. This article evaluates the demographic distribution of potentially hazardous facilities and health risks associated with ambient air toxics exposures among public schoolchildren in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Methods . We combine Geographic Information System analysis with multivariate statistics to compare enrollment and demographic information for students who attend district schools with the spatial pattern of land use, locations of toxic emissions and facilities, and calculated indices of estimated lifetime cancer risk and respiratory hazards associated with exposures to toxic air emissions. Results . District schools are more likely to be located in census tracts containing potentially hazardous facilities; however, these tracts actually have slightly lower cancer and respiratory health risks associated with air toxics when compared to other tracts in the district. Demographic comparisons among school sites indicate that minority students, especially Latinos, are more likely to attend schools near hazardous facilities and face higher health risks associated with outdoor air toxics exposure. Conclusions . These patterns of hazard exposure and health risk should be considered both in the process of siting new schools to house the rapidly growing regional student population and in remediation efforts at existing schools.     

Units of Analysis and the Environmental Justice Hypothesis: The Case of Industrial Hog Farms

Objective . In environmental justice research, different-sized units of analysis have generated mixed results, begging the question of what constitutes the most appropriate unit of analysis. Grappling with this question raises both conceptual and methodological issues. In this article, it is argued that, conceptually, community should be the most important unit of analysis and that, methodologically, units should be selected through an appropriate sampling procedure. These issues are addressed through an investigation of the locations of industrial hog farms in Mississippi. Methods . A geographic information system procedure was used to identify community areas and to select the sample of units. The identified community areas were compared to counties, ZIP code areas, census tracts, and census block groups through a bivariate and multivariate logistic regression. Results . Race was the only variable that was consistently not found to be significant across all units. For the remaining variables—income, education, and industry—results were mixed across units. Conclusions . This research confirms that units of different size generate different results. We argue that the decision about the most appropriate unit of analysis should be conceptually rather than statistically determined and that community is the most important unit of analysis because it holds both legal and social authority to raise concern about environmentally controversial facilities.     

Social Vulnerability to Toxic Risk

SUMMARY

A model of social vulnerability to toxic risk from fugitive chemical releases is tested in 8 southeastern U.S. states. Using structural equation modeling techniques, population density emerged as the critical factor driving exposure to toxic risk. Results indicate that: social vulnerability varies across types and sources of toxic risk; social factors, such as race, that increase risk in some circumstances may buffer risk in others; and that toxic risk has both social justice and social welfare components. Practice and research implications include the importance of community planning and economic models that enhance environmental quality and health along with economic security.     

Criteria Air Pollution and Marginalized Populations: Environmental Inequity in Metropolitan Phoenix,Arizona*

Objectives. Our objective is to examine spatial relationships between modeled criteria air pollutants (i.e., nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, and ozone) and sociodemographics in metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. Modeled air pollution offers environmental justice researchers a new and robust data source for representing chronic environmental hazards. Methods. We used multiple regression equations to predict criteria pollution levels using sociodemographic variables at the Census block group level. Results. We find that Census block groups with lower neighborhood socioeconomic status, higher proportions of Latino immigrants, and higher proportions of renters are exposed to higher levels of criteria air pollutants. Proportion African American, however, is not a significant predictor of criteria air pollution in the Phoenix metro area. Conclusions. These findings demonstrate clear social‐class and ethnic‐based environmental injustices in the distribution of air pollution. We attribute these patterns to the role of white privilege in the historical and contemporary development of industrial and transportation corridors in Phoenix in relation to racially segregated neighborhoods. Although all people are implicated in the production of criteria pollutants, lower‐income and ethnic‐minority residents are disproportionately exposed in metropolitan Phoenix.     

Environmentalism and Public Policy: Environmental Justice: Grassroots Activism and Its Impact on Public Policy Decision Making

A growing body of evidence reveals that people of color and low-income persons have borne greater environmental and health risks than the society at large in their neighborhoods, workplace, and playgrounds. Over the last decade or so, grassroots activists have attempted to change the way government implements environmental, health, and civil rights laws. Grassroots groups have organized, educated, and empowered themselves to improve the way government regulations and environmental policies are administered. A new movement emerged in opposition to environmental racism and environmenttal injustice. Over the last decades or so, grassroots activists have had some success in changing the way the federal government treats communities of color and their inhabitants. Grassroots groups have also organized, educated, and empowered themselves to improve the way health and environmental policies are administered. Environmentalism is now equated with social justice and civil rights.     

Who Lives on the Wrong Side of the Environmental Tracks? Evidence from the EPA's Risk‐Screening Environmental Indicators Model*

Objective. We analyze the social and economic correlates of air pollution exposure in U.S. cities. Methods. We combine 1990 Census block group data for urbanized areas with 1998 data on toxicity‐adjusted exposure to air pollution. Using a unique data set created as a byproduct of the EPA's Risk‐Screening Environmental Indicators Model, we improve on previous studies of environmental inequality in three ways. First, where previous studies focus on the proximity to point sources and the total mass of pollutants released, our measure of toxic exposure reflects atmospheric dispersion and chemical toxicity. Second, we analyze the data at a fine level of geographic resolution. Third, we control for substantial regional variations in pollution, allowing us to identify exposure differences both within cities and between cities. Results. We find that African Americans tend to live both in more polluted cities in the United States and in more polluted neighborhoods within cities. Hispanics live in less polluted cities on average, but they live in more polluted areas within cities. We find an extremely consistent income‐pollution gradient, with lower‐income people significantly more exposed to pollution. Conclusions. Communities with higher concentrations of lower‐income people and people of color experience disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards. Our findings highlight the importance of controlling for interregional variation in pollution levels in studies of the demographic correlates of pollution.     

中国新生代农民工的社会风险及其规避——以“泰坦尼克定律”为视角

"新生代农民工"是中国社会一个特殊的群体,他们既是中国经济发展不可或缺的支持力量,也是中国城市化进程中必须面对的问题。随着中国社会转型加速,新生代农民工面临的社会风险日益明显。而且这种风险的分布符合"泰坦尼克定律"①关于社会风险依据社会等级进行分配的原则,即社会等级越高,受到社会风险的伤害越小;社会等级越低,受到社会风险的伤害越大。由新生代农民工为代表的劳动者构成了社会等级的底层,他们缺乏有效的利益保障机制和博弈手段,也鲜有合适的渠道表达自己的利益诉求,所以社会风险必然较大。对此笔者进行了问卷调查,并在调查的基础上,以"泰坦尼克定律"为视角,对新生代农民工所面临的社会风险进行了分析,同时对现行的社会政策进行了研讨,提出了九点看法和六点风险规避策略与社会政策倡导建议。     

Understandings of environmental injustice and sustainability in marginalized communities: A qualitative inquiry in Nevada

As eco‐social work practice and scholarship continues to grow, multiple frameworks are emerging to help guide the work. In this study, we interviewed 59 people affected by environmental injustice. Participants identified components within both environmental injustice and sustainability, as well as gaps that these models individually do not support. Therefore, we suggest that merging environmental justice with sustainability through centering justice (a component within environmental justice), and also finding solutions through technological advances (a component within sustainability), may best support these communities. In addition, the participants discussed the need for support, which social workers can provide.     

Few and Far Between? An Environmental Equity Analysis of the Geographic Distribution of Hazardous Waste Generation

Objective. This article examines whether the generation of hazardous waste is concentrated in communities that are disproportionately minority or low income. Whereas much environmental equity research has focused on commercial facilities managing hazardous waste, facilities that generate and manage their own wastes—which account for over 98 percent of hazardous waste volume—have been ignored. Methods. The demographic characteristics were determined of people in geographic concentric rings around hazardous waste generators accounting for most of the country's 1997 hazardous waste volume. Results. My analyses indicate no tendency for disproportionately minority communities to be near these facilities. In fact, relatively few people are near where most hazardous waste is generated. Although a few of these facilities have large numbers of minority people around them, most are in areas with higher than average white populations. There was, however, a tendency for low-income communities to be near these facilities. Conclusions. To the extent that there are potential risks from the presence of hazardous waste at facilities, most of this risk is in relatively unpopulated areas. The presence of hazardous waste is not concentrated in areas that are disproportionately minority or low income.     

Residence in the Social Ecology of Stress and Restoration

We relate residence to health within a social ecological model of stress and restoration. As an isolated setting and in relation to other everyday settings, we discuss the residence in terms of demands, coping resources and responses, and opportunities for restoration. Our model indicates how processes operating above the household level can affect health by modifying the quantity, quality, and distribution of demands, resources, and restoration opportunities within and across the settings of everyday life, including the residence. We illustrate some of these social ecological dynamics with the case of home-based telework. Concluding, we discuss the utility of the model for environmental interventions intended to alleviate health-threatening chronic stress .     

Dealing in Toxins on the Wrong Side of the Tracks: Lessons from a Hazardous Waste Controversy in Phoenix*

Objective. The controversial expansion of a hazardous waste facility in a poor, minority neighborhood in Phoenix illustrates the unanticipated consequences of siting hazardous facilities in vulnerable communities, and the need to recognize neighborhood health/safety issues such as drug‐related crime as environmental justice struggles. Methods. Qualitative methods include participant observation, document analysis, Census data, GIS mapping, and interviews. Results. South Central Phoenix's history reveals a disproportionate share of poverty, pollution, and drug crimes. Most commercial hazardous waste facilities in Phoenix were sited in minority areas. Residents contended that the siting, permitting process, and expansion of the facility and the drug crimes that later occurred there were all due to environmental racism. Conclusions. The expansion of the facility exacerbated environmental injustice in Phoenix through distributional and participative injustice, and was criminogenic. The dual impact on the community of hazardous waste and drug crime argues for a more holistic understanding of environmental justice.     

Does self-policing reduce chemical emissions?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Self-Policing Policy (more commonly referred to as the Audit Policy) waives or reduces penalties when companies voluntarily discover, disclose, and correct environmental violations. One goal of the Audit Policy is to encourage companies to conduct environmental audits in order to identify poor environmental performance. Thus, the regulatory flexibility associated with the Audit Policy should reduce subsequent chemical emissions. While several studies examine predictors of the Audit Policy, no studies examine if facilities that use the Policy decrease their chemical emissions as a result. The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of the Audit Policy on changes in Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) emissions among a sample of 178 facilities operating in the chemical and allied product industry. The results of that analysis suggest that facilities that use the policy have similar subsequent emissions trends as facilities that do not use the policy. Moreover, the results also suggest that formal enforcement actions are the best predictor of TRI reductions. These findings persist despite other regulator and company controls. In terms of environmental policy, the results suggest that self-policing may not improve or deteriorate environmental performance in the chemical and allied products industry.     

Mental Health and Social Justice: Gender, Race and Psychological Consequences of Unfairness

Correspondence to: Professor Michael Sheppard, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK. Summary It is not immediately obvious how social justice might relateto mental health. Mental health or ill health is, by some, thoughtto be inherent within the individual, whereas social justice,as its name indicates, resides within the realm of the social.However, where we understand social justice as, on the one hand,an issue involving equality and fairness, and on the other ashaving both material and symbolic dimensions it becomes clearthat there is an important link. In particular groups whichsuffer disadvantage and discrimination may be expected to sufferhigher rates of mental ill health. However, the key to understandingthis is by identifying the mechanisms by which this can happen.In order to do this it is necessary that we do not look at mentalhealth (or illness) in an undifferentiated way, since thereare different processes involved for different forms of mentalill health. We shall, therefore, look at this by focusing onthe issue of social justice through two significant relationships:gender and depression, and race and schizophrenia. We shallexamine the mechanisms which link these together, and show howthey are significant psychological consequences of social injusticearising in both material and symbolic form.     

The Diversification Theorem Restated: Risk-pooling Without Assignment of Probabilities

Bayesian decision theory assumes that agents making choices assign subjective probabilities to outcomes, even in cases where information on probabilities is obviously absent. Here we show that agents that presume that they are equal risks can share risks mutually beneficially, even if the probabilities of losses are unpredictable or genuinely uncertain. We show also that different risk aversions among pool members do not exclude mutually beneficial loss sharing at uncertainty. Sharing when individuals’ losses differ in probabilities or in amount may still make individuals better off. Our findings are related to the theory of the insurance firm, to the management of development risks, and to the theory of justice.JEL Classification: D8, G22, L10, L30     

Environmental justice at the heart of social work practice: Greening the profession

Social workers face many contemporary challenges. Alongside the difficulties of upholding human rights, social justice and active citizenship, are those of affirming environmental justice and care for planet earth in and through social work practice and addressing climate change and other disasters. I call for social workers to take action that addresses these issues as a strong, united profession that works alongside dispossessed and marginalised people who do not get their share of global resources, despite their limited ecological footprint. I suggest a new paradigm for practice rooted in environmental justice that enhances the well‐being of people, the flora, fauna and the ecosystem that sustains and supports us all – green social work, for practitioners supporting life in one interdependent world.     

Judgmental Discounting and Environmental Risk Perception: Dimensional Similarities, Domain Differences, and Implications for Sustainability

Environmental risks constitute a special category of risks because they often involve consequences that are highly uncertain, strongly delayed, occurring at distant places, and—therefore—mostly borne by others. Economic, decision–theoretic, and psychological research about the way people deal with such consequences is reviewed. Two major findings are presented: first, there is evidence that discounting mechanisms are stable across different preference dimensions (uncertainty, temporal, spatial, and social distance). Second, discount rates tend to vary across different problem domains (e.g., environmental vs. health vs. financial risks). In particular, it appears that temporal discounting is less pronounced for environmental risks than in other domains. Several factors are identified that affect the nature of the risk evaluation process, and it is argued that environmental risks differ from other risks on such factors. These environmental-risk characteristics may have important implications for policy strategies to promote environmental sustainability. Contrary to other domains, appealing to the public's long-term preferences may be successful. Also in policy making, insights from standard economic decision theory to environmental decision making should be applied with caution.     

Examining Environmental Justice in Facility‐Level Regulatory Enforcement*

Objective. This article examines claims made by environmental justice advocates that government inequitably enforces environmental laws. Methods. We test for race‐ and class‐based disparities in the regulatory enforcement of the U.S. Clean Water Act from 2000–2005. We estimate pooled logistic regression models, and the analysis is conducted at the facility‐level using an areal apportionment methodology to measure the composition of populations living near facilities. Results. We find evidence of modest race‐ and class‐based disparities in both government inspections and punitive actions taken in response to noncompliant behavior, although the pattern of these disparities depends on model specification. Conclusions. Our findings provide some evidence of disparities in government enforcement of the federal Clean Water Act, lending support to the general claims made by environmental justice advocates.     

Reforms And Performance of the Medical Systems in the Transition States of the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

The States of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe inherited acute health problems and introduced numerous reforms in their health sectors in the 1990s. In the initial years of transition most countries experienced increases in morbidity and mortality that were caused by deterioration in health conditions (demographic, consumption, social, environmental) and deficiencies in medical systems. The latter were the result of malfunctioning economies, continued low priority status of health, and ineffective health reforms. Although health trends in the East have become more positive in recent years, they are unlikely to converge rapidly with those in western Europe unless health sector institutions in transition countries are allocated more resources and improve their efficiency and effectiveness.     

Exploring Social Justice for Clinical Social Work Practice

This article explores social work practitioners' understanding of social justice and how understanding facilitates or impedes the pursuit of social justice within the practice field of mental health. Existing confusion and ambiguity regarding what social justice is poses a barrier to social justice pursuits. Analysis of qualitative interview data from practitioners resulted in a multidimensional conceptualization of social justice as social systems, resources, and transformative respect. Clinical social workers in the field of mental health with an enhanced understanding of social justice may be better prepared to meet the profession's social justice aims.     

论工程风险的分配正义

现代工程已经把我们带入了一个"风险社会",工程风险分配的不公正会引发社会的不平等和非正义,因此,公正地分配工程风险是工程伦理学的重要课题。功利主义路径虽然具有很强的实用性,但没有充分尊重每个个体自由选择的权利,更缺少道德上的逻辑支撑。自由主义路径充分尊重了人的自由权利,却从根本上祛除了道德前提。德性主义路径以道德为根基,包含功利主义的考量,也给自由主义留下了空间。因此,在工程风险的分配中,德性主义路径最能彰显社会正义。