Abstract
African Americans in the U.S. often live in poverty and segregated urban neighborhoods, many of which have dense industrial facilities resulting in high exposure to harmful air toxics. This study aims to explore the relationship between racial composition and cancer risks from air toxics exposure in Memphis/Shelby County, Tennessee, U.S.A. Air toxics data were obtained from 2005 National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA), and the demographic data, including racial composition, were extracted from the 2000 United States Census. The association was examined using multivariable geographically weighted regression (GWR) analysis. The risk difference between African American and White concentrated areas was defined as the absolute disparity, and the percent difference as the relative disparity. GWR analyses show that cancer risks increase with respect to increasing percent of African Americans at the census tract level. Individuals in African American concentrated tracts bear 6% more cancer risk burden than in White concentrated tracts. The distribution of major roads causes the largest absolute disparity and the distribution of industrial facilities causes the largest relative disparity. Effective strategies for reduction in environmental disparity should especially target sources of large absolute disparities.
Highlights
African Americans in the U.S are faced with significant environmental and health disparities, especially in the Mid-South region
Given the population size of around 1 million in the study area, this represents approximately 55 additional number of cancer cases resulting from air pollution
This cancer risk level is higher than the 95th percentile risk levels both for Tennessee and the nation (Table 1), indicating that Memphis residents are at the high end of air toxics exposure in the U.S The three largest contributors are secondary sources, background concentrations, and on-road emissions, contributing
Summary
African Americans in the U.S are faced with significant environmental and health disparities, especially in the Mid-South region. Shelby County, Tennessee, is a Mid-South metropolitan region with a population of 930,000, the largest in the state. The county has a much higher concentration of African Americans (53%) compared to Tennessee (17%), and Memphis has an even higher minority residential concentration of 63% [1]. Certain factors are known to contribute to poor health conditions among African Americans, such as low access to preventative care, lack of health insurance or underinsurance, and unhealthy lifestyle [3]. In addition to these factors, environmental pollution in residential areas has been recognized as a major health risk for minorities [4].
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