| Chapter 1: | Spatial and Environmental Justice in the Metropolis |
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the racial, ethnic, and poverty status of the resident population. The analyses are based on the cumulative distribution function (CDF) methodology which addresses the limitations of previous analytical approaches for identifying people and places potentially at risk from point-source pollution.
In chapter 5, the focus shifts from spatial inequities in the distribution of polluting facilities to environmental health risks, a significant topic within environmental justice research literature. While previous studies have assessed disproportionate burdens on the basis of pollution-source locations, or the quantity of pollutants released, this chapter incorporates atmospheric dispersion and chemical toxicity information to assess human exposure to industrial toxic releases in Hillsborough County. Industrial pollution sources considered for this analysis comprise facilities listed in the EPA's 2000 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). The EPA's Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) model is used to estimate potential human health risks from air pollutants based on data on toxicity and atmospheric dispersion of toxic chemicals released by TRI facilities. Information from the RSEI model is statistically related to race, ethnicity, and poverty data from the U.S. Census to determine inequities associated with TRI facility location, total quantities of air emissions, toxicity-weighted quantities of emissions, and cumulative health risks from air emissions.
The need to establish a systematic connection between exposure to pollutants and their public health risks is also the focus of chapter 6, which seeks to determine if there are potential racial, ethnic, and poverty-based disparities in the distribution of cancer and respiratory health risks associated with toxic air emissions from mobile sources. Although the environmental justice literature on air pollution has traditionally focused on stationary point sources, the equity implications of mobile