Zoning Law, Health, and Environmental Justice: What’s the Connection?

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 572-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana Maantay
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Character ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Land Uses ◽  
Zoning Regulations ◽  
Human Health Impacts

Zoning laws determine what types of land uses and densities can occur on each property lot in a municipality, and therefore also govern the range of potential environmental and health impacts resulting from the land use. Zoning regulations are the most ubiquitous of the land use laws in the United States, as well as in many other countries. As such, they have far-reaching effects on the location of noxious uses, and any concomitant environmental or human health impacts.Zoning has enormous implications, in general, for shaping our environment, and because changes to zoning are made through a political process, it has possibilities for abuse. One zoning expert stated:I suppose what really disturbs me is that because zoning is the most universal of the legal tools for shaping the character of the municipality, any unwise use of the process has a far greater impact upon our national character than does the abuse of a less widely employed device.

scholarly journals Air quality and human health impacts of grasslands and shrublands in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 182 ◽  
pp. 193-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Varsha Gopalakrishnan ◽  
Satoshi Hirabayashi ◽  
Guy Ziv ◽  
Bhavik R. Bakshi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Human Health ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Human Health Impacts

scholarly journals Magnitude, Trends, and Impacts of Ambient Long-Term Ozone Exposure in the United States from 2000–2015

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl M. Seltzer ◽  
Drew T. Shindell ◽  
Prasad Kasibhatla ◽  
Christopher S. Malley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Crop Yields ◽  
Relative Yield ◽  
The United States ◽  
Average Concentration ◽  
Ozone Exposure ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Human Health Impacts

Abstract. Long-term exposure to ambient ozone (O3) is associated with a variety of impacts, including adverse human-health effects and reduced yields in commercial crops. Ground-level O3 concentrations for assessments are typically predicted using chemical transport models, however such methods often feature biases that can influence impact estimates. Here, we develop and apply artificial neural networks to empirically model long-term O3 exposure over the continental United States from 2000–2015, and generate a measurement-based assessment of impacts on human-health and crop yields. Notably, we find that two commonly-used human-health averaging metrics, based on separate epidemiological studies, differ in their trends over the study period. The population-weighted, April–September average of the daily 1-hour maximum concentration peaked in 2002 at 55.9 ppb and decreased by −0.43 [95 % CI: −0.28, −0.57] ppb/yr between 2000–2015, yielding a ~ 18 % decrease in normalized human-health impacts. In contrast, there was little change in the population-weighted, annual average of the maximum daily 8-hour average concentration between 2000–2015, which resulted in a ~ 5 % increase in normalized human-health impacts. In both cases, an aging population structure played a substantial role in modulating these trends. By contrast, all agriculture-weighted crop-loss metrics featured decreasing trends, leading to reductions in the estimated national relative yield loss ranging from 1.7–1.9 % for maize, 5.1–7.1 % for soybeans, and 2.7 % for wheat. Overall, these results provide a measurement-based estimate of long-term O3 exposure over the United States, quantify the historical magnitude, trends, and impacts of such exposure, and illustrate how different conclusions regarding historical impacts can be made through the use of varying metrics.

scholarly journals Magnitude, trends, and impacts of ambient long-term ozone exposure in the United States from 2000 to 2015

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 1757-1775 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl M. Seltzer ◽  
Drew T. Shindell ◽  
Prasad Kasibhatla ◽  
Christopher S. Malley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Crop Yields ◽  
Relative Yield ◽  
The United States ◽  
Average Concentration ◽  
Ozone Exposure ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Human Health Impacts

Abstract. Long-term exposure to ambient ozone (O3) is associated with a variety of impacts, including adverse human-health effects and reduced yields in commercial crops. Ground-level O3 concentrations for assessments are typically predicted using chemical transport models; however such methods often feature biases that can influence impact estimates. Here, we develop and apply artificial neural networks to empirically model long-term O3 exposure over the continental United States from 2000 to 2015, and we generate a measurement-based assessment of impacts on human-health and crop yields. Notably, we found that two commonly used human-health averaging metrics, based on separate epidemiological studies, differ in their trends over the study period. The population-weighted, April–September average of the daily 1 h maximum concentration peaked in 2002 at 55.9 ppb and decreased by 0.43 [95 % CI: 0.28, 0.57] ppb yr−1 between 2000 and 2015, yielding an ∼18 % decrease in normalized human-health impacts. In contrast, there was little change in the population-weighted, annual average of the maximum daily 8 h average concentration between 2000 and 2015, which resulted in a ∼5 % increase in normalized human-health impacts. In both cases, an aging population structure played a substantial role in modulating these trends. Trends of all agriculture-weighted crop-loss metrics indicated yield improvements, with reductions in the estimated national relative yield loss ranging from 1.7 % to 1.9 % for maize, 5.1 % to 7.1 % for soybeans, and 2.7 % for wheat. Overall, these results provide a measurement-based estimate of long-term O3 exposure over the United States, quantify the historical trends of such exposure, and illustrate how different conclusions regarding historical impacts can be made through the use of varying metrics.

scholarly journals Determinants and Projections of Land Use in the South Central United States

2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
SoEun Ahn ◽  
Andrew J. Plantinga ◽  
Ralph J. Alig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
The United States ◽  
Population Increase ◽  
Land Uses ◽  
The South ◽  
Net Returns ◽  
South Central ◽  
Central United States

Abstract This article presents historical trends and future projections of forest, agricultural, and urban/other land uses for the South Central region of the United States. An econometric land use model is used to investigate the relationship between the areas of land in alternative uses and economic and demographic factors influencing land use decisions. Determinants of land use included in the model are the net returns from different land uses, land quality, and demographic variables such as population density. Given projections of stumpage prices and population, the fitted econometric models are used to generate projections of future land use to the year 2050. Under a scenario in which population changes in the future, but stumpage prices remain constant, urban/other land increases by 2.2 million ac from 1992 to 2050. More private timberland (1.8 million ac) than agricultural land (0.4 million ac) is converted to urban/other land to accommodate the population increase. Under a scenario of population growth and 0.5% annual increases in stumpage prices, private timberland increases from 101.7 million ac to 107.2 million ac by 2050, and the urban/other land increases by 1.3 million ac. Agricultural land declines by almost 7 million ac, mirroring the increases in the urban/other land and private timberland. South. J. Appl. For. 26(2):78–84.

Dismantling White Privilege: The Black Lives Matter Movement and Environmental Justice in Canada

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Teelucksingh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Conceptual Tool ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Jim Crow Era

On August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, alt-right/White supremacy groups and Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporters came face-to-face regarding what to do about public monuments that celebrate key figures from slavery and the Jim Crow era. White supremacists and White nationalists did not hide their racist ideologies as they demanded that their privileged place in history not be erased. The BLM movement, which challenges state-sanctioned anti-Black racism, was ready to confront themes of White discontent and reverse racism, critiques of political correctness, and the assumption that racialized people should know their place and be content to be the subordinate other.It is easy to frame the events in Charlottesville as indicative of US-specific race problems. However, a sense that White spaces should prevail and an ongoing history of anti-Black racism are not unique to the United States. The rise of Canadian activism under the BLM banner also signals a movement to change Canadian forms of institutional racism in policing, education, and the labor market. This article responds to perceptions that the BLM movement has given insufficient attention to environmental concerns (Pellow 2016; Halpern 2017). Drawing on critical race theory as a conceptual tool, this article focuses on the Canadian context as part of the author’s argument in favor of greater collaboration between BLM and the environmental justice (EJ) movement in Canada. This article also engages with the common stereotype that Blacks in Canada have it better than Blacks in the United States.

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