Abstract
AbstractOver the last decades, air pollution emissions have decreased substantially; however, inequities in air pollution persist. We evaluate county-level racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in emissions changes from six air pollution source sectors (industry [SO2], energy [SO2, NOx], agriculture [NH3], commercial [NOx], residential [particulate organic carbon], and on-road transportation [NOx]) in the contiguous United States during the 40 years following the Clean Air Act (CAA) enactment (1970-2010). We calculate relative emission changes and examine the differential changes given county demographics using hierarchical nested models. The results show racial/ethnic disparities, particularly in the industry and energy generation source sectors. We also find that median family income is a driver of variation in relative emissions changes in all sectors—counties with median family income >$75 K vs. less generally experience larger relative declines in industry, energy, transportation, residential, and commercial-related emissions. Emissions from most air pollution source sectors have, on a national level, decreased following the United States CAA. In this work, we show that the relative reductions in emissions varied across racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups.
Funder
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services | NIH | National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
General Physics and Astronomy,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Chemistry,Multidisciplinary
Reference61 articles.
1. US EPA, O. Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act 1990-2020, the Second Prospective Study. https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/benefits-and-costs-clean-air-act-1990-2020-second-prospective-study (2015).
2. Aldy, J. E., Auffhammer, M., Cropper, M. L., Fraas, A. G. & Morgenstern, R. D. Looking Back at Fifty Years of the Clean Air Act. SSRN Electron. J. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3544266 (2020).
3. Amann, M., Klimont, Z. & Wagner, F. Regional and global emissions of air pollutants: recent trends and future scenarios. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 38, 31–55 (2013).
4. Jbaily, A. et al. Air pollution exposure disparities across US population and income groups. Nature 601, 228–233 (2022).
5. Liu, J. et al. Disparities in Air Pollution Exposure in the United States by Race/Ethnicity and Income, 1990–2010. Environ. Health Perspect. 129, 127005 (2021).