Racial Disparities in Childhood Exposure to Neurotoxic Air Pollution

Journal of Health and Social Behavior · 2025-07-09

Racial disparities in exposure to pollution exacerbate health and developmental inequalities. This study examines racial differences in cumulative exposure to a comprehensive set of neurotoxic air pollutants during early childhood, when individuals are especially vulnerable to their harms, and it investigates whether these disparities are attributable to or intersect with socioeconomic status (SES). Integrating the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort with data on industrial-source and criteria air pollutants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, we estimate Gini coefficients to quantify racial inequality in pollution exposure and employ inverse probability weighting and other intersectional analyses to explore their link with SES. Our findings reveal large racial disparities in exposure to neurotoxic pollutants from birth through kindergarten entry, with Black and Hispanic children consistently exposed at the highest levels. Although socioeconomic factors do not explain these disparities, they do interact with them, resulting in more pronounced racial differences among children of lower SES.

Toxic air pollution and cognitive decline: Untangling particulate matter

Health & Place · 2024-08-16 · 6 citations

Defying the Food Desert, Food Swamp, and Supermarket Redlining Stereotypes in Detroit: Comparing the Distribution of Food Outlets in 2013 and 2023

Sustainability · 2024-08-19 · 4 citations

Despite the numerous food studies conducted in Detroit, none have assessed changes in the food landscape over a decade. No previous study has systematically analyzed food store closures in the city either. We will address these oversights by examining the distribution of food outlets in the city ten years apart. This paper probes the following questions: (1) How has the distribution of Detroit’s food outlets changed in the decade between 2013 and 2023? (2) Does Detroit fit the definition of a food desert in 2013 or 2023? (3) Does Detroit fit the definition of a food swamp in 2013 or 2023? (4) Has supermarket redlining occurred in Detroit in 2013 or 2023? (5) How is population decline related to food outlet distribution? (6) How do food store closures impact food store distribution? We conducted exhaustive searches to collect information on thousands of food outlets from Data Axle, Google, and Bing. The data were analyzed and mapped in SPSS 28 and ArcGIS 10.8. We compared 3499 food outlets identified in 2013 with 2884 identified in 2023. We expanded our search for food outlets in 2023 and found an additional 611 food outlets in categories not studied in 2013. The study’s findings are significant as they unearth evidence of extensive population decline—driven by Black flight—and a vanishing food infrastructure. Detroit lost more than 600 food outlets between 2013 and 2023, a staggering number that underscores the severity of the issue. Moreover, in 2023, we documented food store closures and found 1305 non-operational or closed food outlets in the city. Regardless of the neighborhood’s racial composition, the household median income, or the educational attainment of residents, food store closures were widespread in 2023; 27.3% of the food outlets identified that year were defunct. Despite the massive food store closures, Detroit did not fit the description of a food desert; each of the city’s 54 neighborhoods had between 7 and 300 food outlets. The food swamp thesis did not accurately describe the city either, as supermarkets/large grocery stores were intermingled with convenience and corner stores in both study periods. The data did not find evidence of supermarket redlining, as supermarkets/large grocery stores were found in formerly redlined neighborhoods alongside dollar stores and variety stores in both study periods.

Impact of Air Quality on COVID-19 Outcomes in Ohio

2023-05-01

Air pollution and respiratory infections: the past, present, and future

Toxicological Sciences · 2023 · 79 citations

• Environmental health
• Medicine
• Intensive care medicine

Air pollution levels across the globe continue to rise despite government regulations. The increase in global air pollution levels drives detrimental human health effects, including 7 million premature deaths every year. Many of these deaths are attributable to increased incidence of respiratory infections. Considering the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented public health crisis that has claimed the lives of over 6.5 million people globally, respiratory infections as a driver of human mortality is a pressing concern. Therefore, it is more important than ever to understand the relationship between air pollution and respiratory infections so that public health measures can be implemented to ameliorate further morbidity and mortality. This article aims to review the current epidemiologic and basic science research on interactions between air pollution exposure and respiratory infections. The first section will present epidemiologic studies organized by pathogen, followed by a review of basic science research investigating the mechanisms of infection, and then conclude with a discussion of areas that require future investigation.

Empowering students to confront environmental injustice: Dialogue, theory, empathy, and partnership

SN Social Sciences · 2022-11-23 · 4 citations

The effect of public opinion on environmental policy in the face of the environmental countermovement

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2022-03-25

Researchers concerned with U.S. environmental policy have long studied the factors associated with political representatives' tendency to vote pro-environment. This work has increasingly pitted the interests of representatives' constituents against those of business elites. Yet little research exists that explores the relative influence of public opinion and businesses political donations on representatives' pro-environmental records. This chapter answers three questions: 1) To what extent do different industries' political contributions effect representatives' proclivity to vote for or against environmental policies; 2) To what extend does public concern towards environmental issues, among representatives' constituents, influence that representatives' environmental voting; and 3) What is the relative influence of industries' political donations and public concern on representatives' support for environmental policies? We find that both industries' political donations and public concern for the environment influence representatives' pro-environmental voting records; however, the relative influence varies according to which industry donated and the representatives' political party.

Concentrated poverty, ambient air pollution, and child cognitive development

Science Advances · 2022 · 57 citations

• Computer Science
• Environmental health
• Psychology

Why does growing up in a poor neighborhood impede cognitive development? Although a large volume of evidence indicates that neighborhood poverty negatively affects child outcomes, little is known about the mechanisms that might explain these effects. In this study, we outline and test a theoretical model of neighborhood effects on cognitive development that highlights the mediating role of early life exposure to neurotoxic air pollution. To evaluate this model, we analyze data from a national sample of American infants matched with information on their exposure to more than 50 different pollutants known or suspected to harm the central nervous system. Integrating methods of causal inference with supervised machine learning, we find that living in a high-poverty neighborhood increases exposure to many different air toxics during infancy, that it reduces cognitive abilities measured later at age 4 by about one-tenth of a standard deviation, and that about one-third of this effect can be attributed to disparities in air quality.

Intersectional inequalities in industrial air toxics exposure in the United States

Health & Place · 2022 · 35 citations

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Sociology

Environmental justice and health research demonstrate unequal exposure to environmental hazards at the neighborhood-level. We use an innovative method-eco-intersectional multilevel (EIM) modeling-to assess intersectional inequalities in industrial air toxics exposure across US census tracts in 2014. Results reveal stark inequalities in exposure across analytic strata, with a 45-fold difference in average exposure between most and least exposed. Low SES, multiply marginalized (high % Black, high % female-headed households) urban communities experienced highest risk. These inequalities were not described by additive effects alone, necessitating the use of interaction terms. We advance a critical intersectional approach to evaluating environmental injustices.

Particulate Matter Exposure across Latino Ethnicities

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · 2021-05-13 · 6 citations

The Hispanic/Latino health paradox is the well-known health advantage seen across the Hispanic/Latino racial category in the US. However, this racial category collapses several distinct ethnic groups with varying spatial distributions. Certain populations, such as Dominicans and Cubans, are concentrated in specific areas, compared to more dispersed groups such as Mexicans. Historical peculiarities have brought these populations into contact with specific types of environmental exposures. This paper takes a first step towards unraveling these diverse exposure profiles by estimating how exposure to particulate matter varies across demographic groups and narrows down which types of industries and chemicals are contributing the most to air toxins. Exposure to particulate matter is estimated for 72,271 census tracts in the continental US to evaluate how these exposures correlate with the proportion of the population classified within the four largest groups that make up the Hispanic population in the US: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican. Using linear mixed models, with the state nested within US Environmental Protection Agency regulatory region, and controls for population density, we find that the Dominican population is significantly less exposed to PM2.5 and PM10 compared to non-Hispanic Whites. Moreover, those tracts with a higher proportion of Cuban residents are significantly less exposed to PM2.5. However, those tracts with a higher proportion of foreign-born, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans had significantly higher levels of exposure to all sizes of particulate matter. We discuss the need to consider the chemical components of these particles to better understand the risk of exposure to air pollution.