Airborne toxic emission hazards in Texas: Measuring the vulnerability of place

Abstract

The Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) provides the public with a general idea of the potential for public health problems associated with exposure to industrial toxic chemicals. It is, essentially, a public risk communication tool. TRI data are usually presented to the public as gross quantity of toxic chemicals annually emitted into air, into water, onto land, or transferred to other sites by facilities in the United States that handle a selected set of hazardous materials. Simply reporting annual emissions, however, fails to communicate a realistic measure of the potential for adverse impacts stemming from exposure to these emissions and fails to accurately measure a region's vulnerability. Health problems caused by local environmental contamination are, after all, of great interest to the general public. Annual reports of toxic releases for the counties of the state of Texas are used to test whether inclusion of other spatial attributes improves the association between county-level hazard measures and patterns of selected airborne-exposure-related diseases. Spatial, demographic, and toxicity-related factors are combined with release quantities into an aggregated value. Simple linear regressions and analyses of variance show that the revised value is a better predictor of mortality from certain exposure-related illnesses. The strength and significance of association between disease patterns and patterns of place vulnerability is improved by the new measure, particularly in rural counties. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.