Sociodemographic Resources
The Demographics of Proximity to Toxic Releases:
the Case of Los Angeles County
"Environmental racism" has recently become one of the most important areas of concern to environmental scholars and activists, alike.
Of course, in some ways, concern about the unequal burdens of industrial pollution goes back a long ways. Class effects have been observed for more than a century. One can choose, here, to read Marx and Engels, Dickens, Polanyi, or any good textbook in American labor history.
Industrial pollutants are at their highest concentrations within the plant and on the grounds of the plant, but factory workers are only the canaries for the rest of the population when it comes to the ill effects of exposure to high levels of toxic pollutants. Communities adjacent to the plants are also exposed to high levels of pollutants ... more
Environmental Inequality in Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley)
We are using Census and EPA TRI data to examine "environmental inequalities" in Santa Clara County, CA, a County that contains both Silicon Valley and San Jose, now the biggest city in Northern California. Our ultimate goal is to explore the historical dimension, or the process that leads to unequal outcomes.
There is, by now, a large body of research that suggests that poor people and people of color are more likely to live in polluted areas (neighborhoods with poorer air quality, communities in close proximity to hazardous waste and solid waste dumps). Some recent studies have failed to find such inequalities. Even where inequalities exist, the processes that produce them have only just begun to be studied systematically and are, thus, now yet well understood. Our work on Santa Clara County is one of several efforts currently underway to begin to examine the production of environmental inequality ... more
TRI Air Releases and American Indian Demographics
I created this preliminary "snapshot" to begin to understand the relationship between demographics and 1998 TRI Air releases as I await the final EPA data release in June ... more
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