Paved with Good Intentions: An Empirical Analysis of Risk and Equity in Hazardous Materials Transportation. M. P. Lydon and M. Atlas, North Carolina State University
Environmental equity studies have been done on various topics, but not on incidents during the transport of hazardous materials. According to U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) data more reported incidents occur during transport than at stationary facilities. In addition a spill during transport could pose greater risk than one at a stationary facility. It also is possible that such incidents could disproportionately occur in minority and low income areas. This could be because the industrial facilities that are the origins and destinations of these shipments are located in such areas or because industrial transportation routes are more likely to be in disadvantaged areas. This paper assesses environmental inequity in hazardous material transportation incidents. I use DOT’s hazardous materials incident data. About 85% of the over 17,000 such incidents reported in 1999 were on highways. I use a random sample of several hundred of them. Among the information reported is the street address of the incident’s location. Using this I determine the latitude and longitude coordinates of the locations. I then use GIS software to draw concentric rings around the locations and to extract relevant demographic characteristics of the population within the rings. My analyses include whether these incidents are more likely to occur near certain types of people. The DOT reports also include the consequences of the incident, the materials involved, and the amount of property damage and contamination cleanup, these also will be used as measures of health and environmental risk.
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