Assessing Residential Socioeconomic Factors Associated with Pollutant Releases using EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory

Abstract

Prior work has shown that when comparing the placement of hazardous waste facilities and the demographic groups in the surrounding areas, there are trends in which demographic groups are disproportionately exposed. Minorities and low-income individuals are often the focus of these studies, which are highly location dependent. Therefore, this study sought to determine whether four comparable counties in Upstate New York (Albany, Erie, Monroe, and Onondaga) display any trend of having higher quantities of polluting facilities and chemical releases located in neighborhoods comprised of certain demographics. Nine population identifiers assessing residential socioeconomic status (R-SES) were obtained from the 2000 US Census at the block group level. The demographics were grouped together based upon their similarities using a hierarchal clustering method which produced seven unique residential clusters. The location of each Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) facility within the four counties was geocoded into the clusters to determine whether a particular cluster had a disproportionate quantity of TRI facilities within it. In addition, we could determine whether particular population characteristics were most highly correlated with the number of facilities present in each cluster. Contrary to the results from prior studies, we found that minorities and low-income individuals were not disproportionately exposed to these polluting facilities in our geographic area. Rather, the largest demographic group found to be located near polluting facilities was workers who were employed in non-managerial positions. The R-SES cluster with one of the highest percentages of laborers in non-managerial positions (78.59% of residents) released over 5 million pounds of chemicals in 2000 alone. In comparison, the next greatest release of chemicals within a cluster was just under 3 million pounds of chemicals. In conclusion, we found that the presence of polluting TRI facilities was highest in locations where the population held non-managerial positions.