Visualizing Vulnerabilities and Impacts in Communities

1. Visualizing Vulnerabilities and Impacts in Communities Photo: GreenAction Rachel Morello-Frosch UC Berkeley, Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management and School of Public Health Collaborators: Manuel Pastor, University of Southern California, Dept. of Geography James Sadd, Occidental College, Dept. of Environmental Sciences CAPCOA – September 2007 Work supported by California Air Resources Board & US EPA, Region 9, RARE Grant

2. Science of Environmental Justice - Overview • Influence of environmental justice framework on environmental health science and regulation • Cumulative impact • Community & individual vulnerability/resilience • Synergies between these factors that shape environmental health disparities • Segregation as a case study of area-level inequality in pollutant exposures • Birth outcomes as potential area for examining synergies between stressors and pollution exposures • Tomorrow’s Session: Mapping indicators of impact/vulnerability (M. Pastor)

3. Areas of Scientific Contention in Environmental Justice EJ advocates have pushed researchers and regulators to operationalize the dynamics of: • Cumulative impact from multiple environmental hazards exposures faced by communities of color and the poor where they live, work, and play. • Community vulnerability to the adverse health effects of pollutants due to simultaneous exposures to psycho-social and physical stressors • (e.g. poverty, material deprivation, malnutrition, discrimination) Regulatory agency response: • California Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Justice Action Plan • U.S. EPA Framework for Cumulative Risk Assessment • DeFur et al. (2007) Vulnerability as a Function of Individual and Group Resources in Cumulative Risk Assessment, Environmental Health Perspectives 115(5)

4. Segregation, Social Inequality, and Environmental (In)Justice Aerial shot of fenceline community along Chevron Refinery in Richmond, CA

5. Selected Pollution Sources Near Community Richmond Pkwy Chevron General Chemical Kinder Morgan Liquids Terminal Levin Terminal Tosco Distribution British Petroleum Bio-Rad Laboratory National Gypsum California Oils

6. Chevron Refinery Fire – January 2007 Photos: KCBS News

7. Segregation, Social Inequality, and Environmental (In)Justice • Links spatial inequality and political economy of environmental health by asking: • How do legacies of discrimination shape current spatial distributions of pollution sources among diverse communities? • Are observed pollution – health associations modified by measures of social inequality and material deprivation? • Do segregation patterns affect diverse communities differently? • Promotes interdisciplinary approaches • Links sociology, city planning, policy and environmental health • Moves inquiry upstream with policy-relevant measures of institutional & socioeconomic drivers of environmental health disparities • Changes scale of inquiry– regional focus: • Decisions about economic and industrial development, land use, and transportation tend to be made at a regional or metro level

8. Basics of Segregation • Describes spatial separation of people by race and (less often) by class • Applies to various contexts • Residential • Occupational • Educational • Measurement • Used to characterize racial inequality within a metro area or region • Often focuses on dyadic comparisons • (e.g. Black v. White) • Can also be considered in context of racial diversity • (e.g. multi-group segregation)

9. How Community and Individual Stressors/Buffers Combine to Shape Exposures and Susceptibility to Environmental Hazards (Morello-Frosch & Shenassa, EHP, 2006) Individual-level Stressors/Buffers Social support Poverty/SES Working Conditions Health Care Access Diet/Nutritional Status Psycho-social Stress Health Behaviors Reproductive Events Community-level Stressors/Buffers Built Environment Land Use/Zoning Traffic Density Housing Quality Social Environment Civic Engagement/Political Empowerment Poverty Concentration Access to Services Food Security Regulatory Enforcement Activities Neighborhood Quality Social Capital Chronic Individual Stress Individual Immune Response/Weathering Area Level Contamination Pollutant Source Location Exposure Internal Dose Response & Resilience Health Effect Ability to Recover Industrial Facility/ Transportation Corridor Chemicals Emitted Indoor/Outdoor Pollution Levels Chemical Body Burden Detoxification Capacity/DNA Repair Co-Morbidity/ Mortality Birth Outcome Community-level Impact Individual-level Impact

10. uneven even Segregation Measure: Generalized Index of Dissimilarity Measures segregation across several demographic groups within a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) Indicator of Spatial ‘Uneveness’ Index varies from 0 (no segregation) to 1 (completely segregated). # people who must move from one census tract to another to attain racial/ethnic balance within a metro area Dm = maximum value of numerator if each racial/ethnic group were completely segregated

11. Multi-Group Racial/Ethnic Segregation in the United States

12. U.S. EPA’s National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) Gaussian dispersion model estimates long-term annual average outdoor concentrations for 1996 of 32 air toxics and diesel particulates for each census tract. The model includes mobile and stationary emissions sources: Manufacturing (point and area) e.g., refineries, chrome plating Non-Manufacturing (point and area) e.g., utilities, hospitals, dry cleaners Mobile (on road and off road) e.g., cars, trucks, air craft, agricultural equipment Air pollutant concentration estimates allocated to census tract centroids.

13. Estimating Cancer Risk Lifetime cancer risk calculated for each pollutant with toxicity information: Rij = Cij * IURj Rij = individual lifetime cancer risk from pollutant j in census tract i. Cij = concentration of HAP j in ug/m3 in census tract i. IUR = Inhalation Unit Risk: cancer potency associated with continuous lifetime exposure to pollutant j in (ug/m3)-1 Risks summed across pollutants

14. mobile on-road sources Estimated Lifetime Cancer Risk (per million residents) mobile non-road sources small emitters industrial facilities background low/moderate high extreme Segregation

18. Individual and area-level drivers of environmental health inequalities – birth outcomes and air pollution (course PM) Mural Photo: R. Morello-Frosch

19. Individual stressors can: • Affect birth outcomes directly (well studied) • e.g., health behaviors, inter-pregnancy interval, access to adequate health care, poverty, discrimination (using race as a crude proxy) • Enhance individual susceptibility to the toxic effects of pollutants (not extensively studied) • Bell et al., EHP, 2007: effect modification by race for association between PM2.5 and decrease in birth weight among black versus white mothers Place-based stressors can: • Affect birth outcomes directly (fairly well studied) • e.g. neighborhood poverty, material deprivation, income inequality, and segregation • Enhance susceptibility to the toxic effects of pollutants (not extensively studied) • Ponce et al., EHP, 2005: effect modification with neighborhood disadvantage for association between traffic density and risk of pre-term birth during winter season

20. Effect modification: Ponce et al EHP (2005) Low Neighborhood SES High Neighborhood SES

21. Relationship between PMcoarse and birth weight • California Births from 1996-2003 • Air pollution estimates for each live birth in the dataset, according to the mother's residence at the time of birth within 2 kilometers of a CalAIRS monitor • Developed single and multiple pollutant models to assess air pollution effects on birth weight • Used individual and area-level SES measures to examine confounding and effect modification

22. Possible Biological Mechanisms - PM Altered immunity Preterm labor, IUGR Infection Particulate matter Lower progesterone production Endocrine disruption Miscarriage, preterm labor Slowed embryonic development Th1 dominance B. Ritz, ISEE 2007

24. Individual factors = maternal race, marital status, education, age, parity, gestational age, infant sex, prenatal care, pregnancy risk factors, season and year of birth. Neighborhood factors = unemployment, education, poverty, home ownership N= 2,579,123 births

27. Implications for future work • Evidence suggests spatial forms of social inequality are associated with: • Worse environmental quality across demographic lines • Increased racial inequalities in pollution burdens • Indicators of social inequality and discrimination may reveal enhanced pollution/health outcome relationships in certain populations • E.g. individuals or communities faced with chronic socioeconomic stressors may be at higher risk of adverse health consequences of pollution exposures

28. Implications (cont.) Macro-level Questions : • Development of policy-relevant surrogates for measures of impact and vulnerability • Traffic/truck data as a surrogate for pollution exposures of concern • Area measures of social inequality, access to health care as indicators of neighborhood vulnerability • Examine different geographic scales that may be more relevant for regulation and policy? • E.g. zoning and facility siting decisions affect pollution stream distributions among diverse communities and tend to operate regionally • Intervention points would focus on -- land use planning, industrial and transportation development

29. What Is To Be Done? Four Policy/Regulatory Principles • Consider cumulative impacts – move beyond facility-by-facility regulation to holistic approaches that consider the community as the basic unit of analysis • Take into account social vulnerability – consider neighborhood stressors together with exposures/risk in regulatory programs and decision-making • Promote community participation – assessments of cumulative impact and vulnerability must involve input from and ongoing engagement of community residents. • Take meaningful action – precaution dictates that policy-relevant indicators of impact and vulnerability should guide decision-making in order to protect health and eliminate environmental health inequalities