This section includes articles documenting connections
between environmental hazards and health. Environmental hazards include
air pollution, contaminated drinking water, contaminated fish consumption,
lead, agricultural chemicals, and proximity to hazardous waste sites, nuclear
plants, waste treatment sites, transportation corridors, mining waste,
and chemical and manufacturing plants.
Although the disproportionate exposure of communities of color to environmental
hazards is well documented, there is less literature on the connections
between exposure to environmental hazards and specific health outcomes.
The articles in this section discuss associations between outdoor air pollution
and the exacerbation of asthma, outdoor air pollution and the development
of new cases of asthma, outdoor air pollution and lifetime cancer risks,
exposure to traffic and asthma and cancer risks, neighborhood economic
status and lead exposure, proximity to transportation corridors and lead
exposure, proximity to mining areas and lead exposure, and proximity to
brownfields and mortality rates due to cancer, respiratory diseases, and
other major causes of death. The authors cited in this section discuss
the challenges in measuring exposures—particularly cumulative environmental
hazard exposures—as well as in measuring these hazards' contributions
to health outcomes.
Suggested approaches for reducing environmental hazards include: 1) greater
public participation in decision making and community planning; 2) participation
in the environmental justice movement; 3) partnerships between government
and community organizations; 4) policy efforts to reduce motor vehicle
traffic, 5) more attention to such contextual factors as tax structure,
zoning policies, transportation policies, and regional economic development
and land use patterns, and the intersection of these factors with race,
ethnicity, and class; and 6) more attention to the overall role of broad
political and economic forces in shaping disproportionate exposures to
environmental hazards and health risks.
Brown
P. Race, class, and environmental health: a review and systematization of
the literature. Environmental Research. 1995;69:15-30.
Elreedy
S, Krieger N, Ryan PB, et al. Relations between individual and neighborhood-based
measures of socioeconomic position and bone lead concentrations among community-exposed
men: the normative aging study. American Journal of Epidemiology. 1999;150:129-141.
Friedman MS, Powell KE, Hutwagner
L, Graham LM, Teague WG. Impact of changes in transportation and commuting
behaviors during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta on air quality
and childhood asthma. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2001;7:897-905.
Lee
C. Environmental justice: building a unified vision of health and the environment. Environmental Health Perspective. 2002;110:141-144.
Litt JS,
Tran NL, Burke TA. Examining urban brownfields through the
public health "macroscope." Environmental
Health Perspectives. 2002;110(Suppl 2):183-193.
Macey GP, Her X, Reibling
ET, Ericson J. An investigation of environmental racism claims: testing
environmental management approaches with a geographic information system. Environmental Management. June 2001;27:893-907.
Malcoe LH, Lynch RA, Kegler
MC, Skaggs VJ. Lead sources, behaviors, and socioeconomic factors in relation
to blood lead of Native American and White children: a community-based assessment
of a former mining area. Environmental Health Perspectives. 2002;110(Suppl
2):221-231.
McConnell R, Berhane K, Gilliand
F., et al. Asthma in exercising children exposed to ozone: a cohort study. The Lancet. 2002;359:386-391.
Morello-Frosch R, Pastor
M Jr., Porras C, Sadd J. Environmental justice and regional inequality
in southern California: implications for future research. Environmental
Health Perspectives. 2002;110(Suppl 2):149-154.
Rene
AA, D. E. Daniels DE, Martin SA Jr. Impact of environmental inequity on
health outcome: where is the epidemiological evidence? Journal of the
National Medical Association. 2000;92:275-80.
Vliet PV, Knape M, de Hartog
J, Janssen N, Harssema H, Brunekreef B. Motor vehicle exhaust and chronic
respiratory symptoms in children living near freeways. Environmental
Research. 1997;74:122-132.
