Abstract
Recent research has identified East Baton Rouge Parish (EBR), Louisiana, as a locus of particularly high volumes of emissions of developmental neurotoxins, i.e., those toxins that put children’s health and, especially, learning abilities at greatest risk. This case study specifies the degree to which proximity to the main sources of these toxins in EBR is associated, in a bivariate sense, with high rates of neurodevelopmental diseases among children, as well as rates of childhood asthma, at the zip code level. We also examine the bivariate relationship between proximity to toxins and race and class. Even within this highly polluted context encompassing twenty zip codes, we find very strong patterns: disease rates are significantly higher in zip codes close to pollution “hot spots” than in more distant zip codes, as are percent minority and percent poverty. These patterns add to the body of evidence on “environmental ascription”, the existence of multiple, overlapping ascriptions based on race, class, and “place”, with additional emphasis on, and implications for, children’s health.
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Notes
Unlike most “neighborhood schools” in the parish, the schools in zip code 70770 (Northeast Elementary and Middle-High Schools) serve a geographically-dispersed unincorporated area that covers several zip codes. In fact, these schools enroll more students from zip codes 70714, 70739, and 70811 than from 70770. We account for this anomaly by dividing the number of students with disabilities attending the Northeast schools by the sum of the number of school-aged children residing in all four zip codes (data provided by East Baton Rouge Parish Schools’ public information office).
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Legot, C., London, B., Rosofsky, A. et al. Proximity to industrial toxins and childhood respiratory, developmental, and neurological diseases: environmental ascription in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Popul Environ 33, 333–346 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-011-0147-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-011-0147-z