GIS-based measures of environmental equity: Exploring their sensitivity and significance

In order to determine whether principles of environmental justice have been violated, a large number of empirical studies have been carried out to ascertain whether minority and low-income populations are disproportionately exposed to industrial pollution. This study provides a comparative evaluatio...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of exposure analysis and environmental epidemiology Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 18 - 28
Main Authors SHEPPARD, ERIC, LEITNER, HELGA, MCMASTER, ROBERT B, TIAN, HONGGUO
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Nature Publishing Group US 01.01.1999
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects
Adult
Air pollution
Child
Child Welfare
Empirical analysis
Environmental assessment
Environmental equity
Environmental Exposure - analysis
Environmental Health - legislation & jurisprudence
Environmental justice
Epidemiologic Methods
Epidemiology
Evaluation
Female
Geography
Humans
Industrial pollution
Male
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Minority & ethnic groups
Minority Groups
original-article
Population characteristics
Poverty
Risk Assessment
Sample Size
Sensitivity and Specificity
Software
risk assessment
environmental justice
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN1559-0631
1053-4245
1559-064X
DOI10.1038/sj.jea.7500023

Cover

More Information
Summary:In order to determine whether principles of environmental justice have been violated, a large number of empirical studies have been carried out to ascertain whether minority and low-income populations are disproportionately exposed to industrial pollution. This study provides a comparative evaluation of two commonly employed proximity measures in GIS-based environmental equity assessment, examining their influence on the results of the analysis, and proposes a methodology for evaluating the significance of these results. 1990 census data on population characteristics and data from the 1995 EPA's toxic release inventory (TRI) for the City of Minneapolis, MN are used. These results also allow a preliminary assessment of environmental equity/inequity in potential exposure to airborne toxic chemicals for racial minorities, poor people and children in Minneapolis. In the third part of the paper we develop and employ a geographic randomization methodology for assessing the significance of these results.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
content type line 23
ISSN:1559-0631
1053-4245
1559-064X
DOI:10.1038/sj.jea.7500023