About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

18 EPA J. 16 (1992)
Breaking Polluted Air

handle is hein.journals/epajrnl18 and id is 17 raw text is: The Issu to be discharged by industrial and municipal drain pipes. If assumed consumption is too low, toxic emissions may be permitted that are a danger to public health. In our study, the average consumption for the full sample was 18.3 grams/person/day, quite a bit higher than the 6.5 gram assumption currently used in Rule 1057. Further, when the sample was broken down by ethnic groups, non-reservation Native Americans consumed 24.3 grams/person/day compared to 20.3 grams/person/day for other minorities, and 17.9 grams/person/day for whites. In an analysis involving multiple variables, we found that middle-age Native Americans had the highest rates of consumption of all Native Americans, or 30.6 grams/person/day. We would expect on-reservation subsistence fish consumption to be even higher than these levels, especially on poorer reservations, such as Bay Mills, where poverty dictates subsistence fishing as a protein source that is also sanctioned by traditional culture. For all Great Lakes tribes with high fish consumption levels, there is strong reason for concern for the public health of the reservation. By way of illustration, studies have found a high correlation between high levels of consumption of Great Lakes fish and high levels of PCBs in the blood of the consumers. In sum, a great deal of concern is warranted for the health of Michigan Great Lakes Indians based on studies done elsewhere; based on our sport fish consumption study that includes off-reservation Indians in Michigan; and based on studies tying high Great Lakes fish consumption with high toxic loads in the human body. However, direct studies of on-reservation fish consumption are badly needed for Great Lakes tribes as well as for those in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. A major study is about to get underway in the Pacific Northwest, and Michigan tribes have approached EPA about the need for studies on their reservations. These will be key studies not only for assessing the potential impact of fish consumption on the health of Great Lakes tribes but also in terms of protecting their Great Lakes fishing rights. 0 BREATHING POLLUTED AIR by D. R. Wernette and L. A. Nieves Minorities Are Disproportionately Exposed A t Argonne National Laboratory, scientists have been studying the relative potential for exposure of minority population groups to substandard outdoor air quality. The studies have focused on areas identified by EPA as failing to attain national ambient air quality standards. Under the Clean Air Act, EPA has established standards for ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, lead, and particulate matter and annually identifies areas having excess levels of these pollutants. These so-called nonattainment areas generally consist of counties of many square miles, and residents' exposure to air pollution surely varies depending on where individuals live and work within an area. Nevertheless, the racial and socioeconomic makeup of the population in these areas can imply differences in potential exposure to pollutants and may suggest directions for research and remedial action. So (Wernette is a sociologist and Nieves is an economist in the Environmental Assessment and Information Systems Division at Argonne National Laboratory. The research described in this article has been supported under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Minority Economic Impact.) far, scientists have examined these differences for African Americans, Hispanics, and whites (non-Hispanic). In the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, higher percentages of both African Americans and Hispanics live in areas with reduced air quality than do whites. For instance, 52 percent of all whites live in counties with high ozone concentrations; for African Americans, the figure is 62 percent, and for Hispanics, 71 percent. Population group distributions were found to be similar for the other pollutants cited above. These differences in potential exposure to pollutants may be due in part to minority population distributions across regions. Hispanics, for example, are more concentrated in the West, where there is a greater tendency than elsewhere for the population as a whole to be exposed to high levels of ozone. However, the different regional concentrations of population groups do not account for all of the differences in their potential exposure to reduced air quality. Not only are percentages of minorities living in substandard air quality areas higher for the country as a whole, but they are higher when the four U.S. census regions are considered separately. For example, 50 percent of whites in the Northeast census region live in areas with excessive carbon monoxide. In contrast, 85 percent of northeastern African Americans and 88 percent of northeastern Hispanics reside in those areas. In 1990, 437 of the 3,109 counties and independent cities in the United States failed to meet at least one of the EPA ambient air quality standards. Of these counties, 136 had excessive levels of two or more pollutants, 29 exceeded standards for three or more pollutants, seven exceeded standards for four or more pollutants, and one exceeded standards for five pollutants. To what extent do the proportions of whites, African Americans, and Hispanics living in these counties differ? As the bar chart shows, 57 percent of all whites, 65 percent of African Americans, and 80 percent of Hispanics live in the 437 counties with substandard air quality. Out of the whole population, a total of 33 percent of whites, 50 percent of African EPA JOURNAL

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most