Alignment of Air Pollution Exposure Inequality Metrics with Environmental Justice and Equity Goals in the United States
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: A growing literature within the field of air pollution exposure assessment addresses the issue of environmental justice. Leveraging the increasing availability of exposure datasets with broad spatial coverage and high spatial resolution, a number of works have assessed inequalities in exposure across racial/ethnic and other socioeconomic groupings. However, environmental justice research presents the additional need to evaluate exposure inequity-inequality that is systematic, unfair, and avoidable-which may be framed in several ways. We discuss these framings and describe inequality and inequity conclusions provided from several contrasting approaches drawn from recent work. We recommend that future work addressing environmental justice interventions include complementary "Exposure-driven" and "Socially weighted" metrics, taking an intersectional view of areas and social groups that are both disproportionately impacted by pollution and are impacted by additional health risks resulting from structural racism and consider implications for environmental justice beyond distributional equity.
Institutions: The University of Texas at Austin, Brown University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,842
Awards: G1435456691, G1586322449, G2341746727, G2588647370, G2792749773, G2950524789, G3734566047, G4571076123, G4827808846, G5128968281, G5658744450, G5832173155, G6259939789, A culturally tailored, scalable asthma intervention for Mexican American children, Childhood Asthma: Disease Course and Lung Function Trajectories and Air Pollution Exposure, G8626930078, G9000161953, Urban planning, siting of air pollution sources, and asthma disparities, Research Training to Promote Scientist Diversity & Health Equity in Cardiovascular & Lung Disease
OpenAlex ID: W4405727095