Environmental Health Injustice: Exposure to Air Toxics and Children's Respiratory Hospital Admissions in El Paso, Texas

Abstract

Although much environmental justice research tacitly assumes that unequal environmental exposures produce geographic disparities in adverse health outcomes, very few empirical environmental justice studies have tested that assumption. This article does so by using estimates of exposure to air toxics disaggregated by emission source (point and mobile) to predict children's hospitalization rates for both asthma and respiratory infections in El Paso, Texas. Air toxics emissions from most source categories were found to be significant predictors of children's respiratory infection hospitalization rates, but not asthma hospitalization rates, at the census tract level. Findings suggest that sociospatial disparities in respiratory infection rates might be linked to environmental inequalities.

Aunque mucha de la investigación sobre justicia ambiental tácitamente asume que la desigual exposición ambiental produce disparidades geográficas en términos de los resultados adversos para la salud, muy pocos estudios empíricos sobre justicia ambiental han puesto a prueba tal supuesto. En este artículo se hace eso utilizando estimativos de exposición a tóxicos aéreos desagregados por fuente de emisión (puntual y móvil) para predecir las tasas de hospitalización de niños en El Paso, Texas, por asma e infecciones respiratorias. Se encontró que las emisiones de tóxicos aéreos en la mayoría de las categorías generadoras son vaticinadores significativos de las tasas de hospitalización por infecciones respiratorias en los niños, mas no así las tasas de hospitalización por asma, a nivel de distrito censal. Los hallazgos sugieren que las disparidades socio-espaciales en las tasas de infección respiratoria podrían estar ligadas a desigualdades ambientales.

Key Words:

• air toxics
• children's asthma
• children's respiratory infections
• environmental health
• environmental justice

关键词:

• 空气毒物
• 儿童哮喘
• 儿童的呼吸道感染
• 环境健康
• 环境正义

Palabras clave:

• tóxicos aéreos
• asma infantil
• infecciones respiratorias de los niños
• salud ambiental
• justicia ambiental

Notes

1. In El Paso County, an urban area of approximately 751,000 residents (2009), 82 percent of residents are Hispanic and the median household income is $36,519 (2008), which is 73 percent of the U.S. national average. The poverty rate (25 percent) is roughly two times the U.S. rate (16 percent) and 31 percent of the population is children.

2. Female-headed household and poverty were not significant in the regression models. The female-headed household variable was significantly correlated with both breathing problems, and poverty was correlated with respiratory infections but not asthma. Given these correlations, it is likely that home age and RHIs accounted for these relationships in the models.