Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Residential Segregation and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Ambient Air Pollution

  • Published:
Race and Social Problems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Race and ethnicity are consequential constructs when it comes to exposure to air pollution. Persistent environmental racial/ethnic inequalities call for attention to identifying the factors that maintain them. We examined associations between racial residential segregation and racial/ethnic inequalities in exposure to three types of air pollutants. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1990–2011), the U.S. Census (1990–2010), and the Environmental Protection Agency, we tested the independent and joint contributions of race/ethnicity and metropolitan-level residential segregation on individual levels of exposure to air pollution nationwide. We found that racial and ethnic minorities were exposed to significantly higher levels of air pollution compared to Whites. The difference between minorities and Whites in exposure to all three types of air pollution was most pronounced in metropolitan areas with high levels of residential segregation. The environmental inequities observed in this study call for public health and policy initiatives to ameliorate the sources of racial/ethnic gaps in pollution exposure. Given the links between the physical environment and health, addressing such uneven environmental burdens may be a promising way to improve population health and decrease racial/ethnic inequalities therein.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Source Authors’ analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1990–2011), Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Census (1990–2010). Low segregation refers to the 10th percentile of the dissimilarity index. High segregation refers to the 90th percentile of the dissimilarity index

Fig. 2

Source Authors’ analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1990–2011), Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Census (1990–2010). Low segregation refers to the 10th percentile of the dissimilarity index. High segregation refers to the 90th percentile of the dissimilarity index

Fig. 3

Source Authors’ analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1990–2011), Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Census (1990–2010). Low segregation refers to the 10th percentile of the dissimilarity index. High segregation refers to the 90th percentile of the dissimilarity index

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Aguinis, H., Gottfredson, R. K., & Culpepper, S. A. (2013). Best-practice recommendations for estimating cross-level interaction effects using multilevel modeling. Journal of Management, 39, 1490–1528.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Akinbami, L. J., Moorman, J. E., Bailey, C., Zahran, H. S., King, M., Johnson, C. A., & Liu, X. (2012). Trends in asthma prevalence, health care use, and mortality in the United States, 2001–2010. NCHS Data Brief, 94, 1–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ash, M., Boyce, J. K., Chang, G., & Scharber, H. (2013). Is environmental justice good for White folks? Industrial air toxics exposure in urban America. Social Science Quarterly, 94(3), 616–636.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ash, M., & Fetter, T. R. (2004). Who lives on the wrong side of the environmental tracks? Evidence from the EPA’s risk-screening environmental indicators model. Social Science Quarterly, 85(2), 441–462.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, S. H., Van Hee, V. C., Bergen, S., Szpiro, A. A., DeRoo, L. A., London, S. J., … Sandler, D. P. (2015). Long-term air pollution exposure and blood pressure in the Sister Study. Environmental Health Perspectives, 123(10), 951–958.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chi, G. C., Hajat, A., Bird, C. E., Cullen, M. R., Griffin, B. A., Miller, K. A., … Kaufman, J. D. (2016). Individual and neighborhood socioeconomic status and the association between air pollution and cardiovascular disease. Environmental Health Perspectives, 124(12), 1840–1847.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crowder, K., & Downey, L. (2010). Interneighborhood migration, race, and environmental hazards: Modeling microlevel processes of environmental inequality. American Journal of Sociology, 115(4), 1110–1149.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Downey, L. (2005). The unintended significance of race: Environmental racial inequality in Detroit. Social Forces, 83(3), 971–1007.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Downey, L. (2007). US metropolitan-area variation in environmental inequality outcomes. Urban Studies, 44(5 6), 953–977.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Downey, L., Dubois, S., Hawkins, B., & Walker, M. (2008). Environmental inequality in metropolitan America. Organ and Environment, 21(3), 270–294.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elliott, J. R., & Frickel, S. (2013). The historical nature of cities: A study of urbanization and hazardous waste accumulation. American Sociological Review, 78(4), 521–543.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gee, G., & Payne-Sturges, D. C. (2004). Environmental health disparities: A framework integrating psychosocial and environmental concepts. Environmental Health Perspectives, 112(17), 1645–1653.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, M. R., Diez-Roux, A. V., O’Neill, M. S., Guallar, E., Sharrett, A. R., Post, W., … Navas-Acien, A. (2015). Ambient air pollution and racial/ethnic differences in carotid intima-media thickness in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 69(12), 1191–1198.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kampa, M., & Castanas, E. (2008). Human health effects of air pollution. Environmental pollution, 151(2), 362–367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kravitz-Wirtz, N., Crowder, K., Hajat, A., & Sass, V. (2016). The long-term dynamics of racial/ethnic inequality in neighborhood air pollution exposure, 1990–2009. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 13(2), 237–259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krieger, N., Waterman, P. D., Spasojevic, J., Li, W., Maduro, G., & Van Wye, G. (2016). Public health monitoring of privilege and deprivation with the index of concentration at the extremes. American Journal of Public Health, 106(2), 256–263.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu, R., Young, M. T., Chen, J. C., Kaufman, J. D., & Chen, H. (2016). Ambient air pollution exposures and risk of Parkinson disease. Environmental Health Perspectives, 124(11), 1759–1765.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lopez, R. (2002). Segregation and Black/White differences in exposure to air toxics in 1990. Environmental Health Perspectives, 110, 289–295.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massey, D. S., & Denton, N. A. (1988). The dimensions of residential segregation. Social Forces, 67(2), 281–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massey, D. S., & Denton, N. A. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mohai, P., & Saha, R. (2015). Which came first, people or pollution? A review of theory and evidence from longitudinal environmental justice studies. Environmental Research Letters, 10(12), 125011.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morello-Frosch, R., & Jesdale, B. M. (2005). Separate and unequal: Residential segregation and estimated cancer risks associated with ambient air toxics in US metropolitan areas. Environmental health perspectives, 114(3), 386–393.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morello-Frosch, R., & Lopez, R. (2006). The riskscape and the color line: Examining the role of segregation in environmental health disparities. Environmental Research, 102(2), 181–196.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morello-Frosch, R., & Shenassa, E. D. (2006). The environmental “riskscape” and social inequality: Implications for explaining maternal and child health disparities. Environmental Health Perspectives, 114(8), 1150–1153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ogbu, J. U. (1978). Minority education and caste: The American system in cross-cultural perspective. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Orfield, M. (2005). Land use and housing policies to reduce concentrated poverty and racial segregation. Fordham Urban Law Journal, 33(3), 101–159.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pope, I. I. I., C. A., & Dockery, D. W. (2006). Health effects of fine particulate air pollution: Lines that connect. Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, 56(6), 709–742.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Preacher, K. J., Curran, P. J., & Bauer, D. J. (2006). Computational tools for probing interactions in multiple linear regression, multilevel modeling, and latent curve analysis. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 31(4), 437–448.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pulido, L. (2000). Rethinking environmental racism: White privilege and urban development in Southern California. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 90(1), 12–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raudenbush, S. W., & Bryk, A. S. (2002). Hierarchical linear models: Applications and data analysis methods (Vol. 1). Los Angeles: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reding, K. W., Young, M. T., Szpiro, A. A., Han, C. J., DeRoo, L. A., Weinberg, C., … Sandler, D. P. (2015). Breast cancer risk in relation to ambient air pollution exposure at residences in the Sister Study Cohort. Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Biomarkers, 24(12), 1907–1909.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sampson, P. D., Richards, M., Szpiro, A. A., Bergen, S., Sheppard, L., Larson, T. V., & Kaufman, J. D. (2013). A regionalized national universal kriging model using Partial Least Squares regression for estimating annual PM2. 5 concentrations in epidemiology. Atmospheric Environment, 75, 383–392.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sampson, P. D., Szpiro, A. A., Sheppard, L., Lindström, J., & Kaufman, J. D. (2011). Pragmatic estimation of a spatio-temporal air quality model with irregular monitoring data. Atmospheric Environment, 45(36), 6593–6606.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, D. (2014). Toxic communities: Environmental racism, industrial pollution, and residential mobility. New York: NYU Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • United States Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). Particulate Matter (PM) Pollution. Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matte.

  • Williams, D. R., & Collins, C. (2001). Racial residential segregation: A fundamental cause of racial disparities in health. Public Health Reports, 116(5), 404–416.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Young, M. T., Sandler, D. P., DeRoo, L. A., Vedal, S., Kaufman, J. D., & London, S. J. (2014). Ambient air pollution exposure and incident adult asthma in a nationwide cohort of US women. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 190(8), 914–921.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Grant (R01 HD078501) to Crowder from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Social Work, University of South Carolina, 1512 Pendleton Street, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Bongki Woo

  2. Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California, Davis, Davis, USA

    Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz

  3. Department of Sociology, University of Washington, Seattle, Seattle, USA

    Victoria Sass & Kyle Crowder

  4. School of Social Work, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, USA

    Samantha Teixeira & David T. Takeuchi

Authors
  1. Bongki Woo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Victoria Sass
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Kyle Crowder
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Samantha Teixeira
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. David T. Takeuchi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bongki Woo.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Woo, B., Kravitz-Wirtz, N., Sass, V. et al. Residential Segregation and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Ambient Air Pollution. Race Soc Probl 11, 60–67 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-018-9254-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-018-9254-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation