Journal Article

Environmental Racial Inequality in Detroit

Downey, Liam

2006

Overview

This study uses industrial pollution data from the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and tract-level demographic data from the 2000 U.S. census to determine whether environmental racial inequality existed in the Detroit metropolitan area in the year 2000. This study differs from prior environmental inequality research in two important ways. First, it offers a positive rationale for using hazard proximity indicators. Second, it uses a distance decay modeling technique to estimate hazard proximity. This technique weights each hazard's estimated negative effect by distance such that the estimated negative effect declines continuously as distance from the hazard increases, thus providing more accurate estimates of proximity-based environmental risk than can be obtained using other variable construction techniques currently found in the literature. Using this technique, I find that Detroit's black neighborhoods were disproportionately burdened by TRI facility activity in 2000 and that neighborhood racial composition had a strong independent effect on neighborhood proximity to TRI activity.

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press,University of North Carolina Press,Oxford University Press
• Subject: African American Community / African Americans / Area Studies / Census tracts / Censuses / Chemical hazards / Computation / Demography / Detroit, Michigan / Disproportionate Representation / Distance decay / Empirical research / Environmental aspects / Environmental economics / Environmental hazards / Environmental justice / Environmental problems / Environmental Protection / Environmental risk / Evidence / Hazardous Materials / Health hazards / Hispanics / Human ecology and demography / Industrial pollution / Inequality / Inventory / Literature Reviews / Low Income Groups / Mathematical functions / Median income / Metropolitan Areas / Michigan / Millennium / Minority Groups / Neighborhoods / Pastor, Manuel / Pollution / Problems / Protection / Proximity / R&D / Race / Race discrimination / Racial Composition / Racial Discrimination / Racial inequality / Racism / Regression (Statistics) / Research & development / Researchers / Risk / Risk factors / Rural and urban sociology / Social aspects / Sociology / Statistical median / Stretesky, Paul / Studies / U.S.A / Urban planning / Urban sociology