Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Evaluating Race in Air Pollution and Health Research: Race, PM2.5 Air Pollution Exposure, and Mortality as a Case Study

  • AIR POLLUTION AND HEALTH (S ADAR AND B HOFFMANN, SECTION EDITORS)
  • Published:
Current Environmental Health Reports Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose of Review

Racial inequities in air pollution exposure have been documented. There is also interest in documenting the modifying role of race in the link between air pollution and health. However, the empirical literature in this area has yielded mixed results with potentially unclear policy implications. We critically evaluate recent empirical papers on the interactive association between race and air pollution exposure on adult mortality in the USA as a case study of the race, pollution, and health literature. Specifically, we evaluate these studies for the conceptualization and discussion of race and the use of race variables that may contribute to the ambiguous results and policy implications both in this specific literature and in the broader literature.

Recent Findings

We evaluate ten empirical studies from 2016 to 2022 on the modifying role of race in the association between short- and long-term PM2.5 exposure and specific types of adult mortality (all cause, non-accidental, and heart or cardiovascular diseases) in the USA. In addition to comparing and contrasting the empirical results, we focus our review on the conceptualization, measurement, modeling, and discussion of race and the race variables. Overall, the results indicate no consistent role of race in the association between PM2.5 exposure and mortality. Moreover, conceptualization and discussion of race was often brief and incomplete, even when the empirical results were unexpected or counterintuitive.

Summary

To build on recent discussions in the epidemiology and environmental epidemiology literature more specifically, we provide a detailed discussion of the meaning of race, the race variables, and the cultural and structural racism that some argue are proxied by race variables. We use theoretical scholarship from the humanities and social sciences along with empirical work from the environmental literature to provide recommendations for future research that can provide an evidence base to inform both social and environmental policy.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

Papers of particular interest, published recently, have been highlighted as: • Of importance •• Of major importance

  1. Spiller E, Proville J, Roy A, Muller NZ. Mortality risk from PM25: a comparison of modeling approaches to identify disparities across racial/ethnic groups in policy outcomes. Environ Health Perspect. 2021;129(12):127004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. US Environmental Protection Agency. Integrated Science Assessment for Particulate Matter. US Environmental Protection Agency; 2019. Contract No.: EPA/600/R-19/188. https://www.epa.gov/isa/integrated-science-assessment-isa-particulate-matter

  3. • Ward JB, Gartner DR, Keyes KM, Fliss MD, McClure ES, Robinson WR. How do we assess a racial disparity in health? Distribution, interaction, and interpretation in epidemiological studies. Ann Epidemiol. 2019;29:1–7. This article discusses the ways in which health inequities can be modeled, including both exposure inequities and effect modification.

  4. • Benmarhnia T, Hajat A, Kaufman JS. Inferential challenges when assessing racial/ethnic health disparities in environmental research. Environ Health. 2021;20(1):7. This article expands up VanderWeele et al. (reference 5) and Ward et al. (reference 3) and applies the discussion specifically to environmental epidemiology.

  5. VanderWeele TJ, Robinson WR. On the causal interpretation of race in regressions adjusting for confounding and mediating variables. Epidemiology. 2014;25(4):473–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Hicken MT, Gragg R, Hu H. How cumulative risks warrant a shift in our approach to racial health disparities: the case of lead, stress, and hypertension. Health Aff (Millwood). 2011;30(10):1895–901.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Payne-Sturges D, Gee GC. National environmental health measures for minority and low-income populations: tracking social disparities in environmental health. Environ Res. 2006;102(2):154–71.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Kendi IX. Stamped from the beginning: the definitive history of racist ideas in America. New York: Nation Books; 2016.

  9. Smedley A, Smedley BD. Race in North America: origin and evolution of a worldview. 4th ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press; 2012.

  10. Roberts DE. Child protection as surveillance of African American families. J Soc Welf Fam Law. 2014;36(4):426–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Benjamin R. Race after technology: abolitionist tools for the new Jim code. Medford, MA: Polity; 2019.

  12. Garner S, Selod S. The racialization of Muslims: empirical studies of Islamophobia. Crit Sociol. 2015;41(1):9–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Selod S. Citizenship denied: the racialization of Muslim American men and women post-9/11. Crit Sociol. 2015;41(1):77–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Asad AL, Clair M. Racialized legal status as a social determinant of health. Soc Sci Med. 2018;199:19–28.

  15. Molina N. Fit to be citizens?: public health and race in Los Angeles, 1879–1939. Berkeley: University of California Press; 2006.

  16. Molina N. How race is made in America: immigration, citizenship, and the historical power of racial scripts. Berkeley: University of California Press; 2013.

  17. Silverstein PA. Immigrant racialization and the new savage slot: race, migration, and immigration in the new Europe. Annu Rev Anthropol. 2005;34:363.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Beaman J, Petts A. Towards a global theory of colorblindness: comparing colorblind racial ideology in France and the United States. Sociol Compass. 2020;14(4):e12774.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Hawthorne C. Contesting race and citizenship: youth politics in the Black Mediterranean. Ithaca: Cornell University Press; 2022.

  20. Bruce-Jones E. Race in the shadow of law: state violence in contemporary Europe. Oxfordshire: Routledge; 2016.

  21. Galonnier J. The racialization of Muslims in France and the United States: some insights from white converts to Islam. Social Compass. 2015;62(4):570–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Edwards F, Esposito MH, Lee H. Risk of police-involved death by race/ethnicity and place, United States, 2012–2018. Am J Public Health. 2018;108(9):1241–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Edwards F, Lee H, Esposito M. Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2019;116(34):16793–8.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Roberts DE. The racial geography of child welfare. Child Welfare. 2008;87(2):125–50.

    Google Scholar 

  25. • Hicken MT, Kravitz-Wirtz N, Durkee M, Jackson JS. Racial inequalities in health: framing future research. Soc Sci Med. 2018;199:11–8. This article provides an overview of interdisciplinary frameworks for racial inequities in health and provides substantial recommended reading for those developing their own research frameworks.

  26. Feagin JR. The white racial frame: centuries of racial framing and counter-framing. New York: Routledge; 2010.

  27. Bonilla-Silva E, Dietrich D. The sweet enchantment of color-blind racism in Obamerica. Ann Am Acad Pol Soc Sci. 2011;634:190–206.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. •• Mills CW. The racial contract: Cornell University Press; 2014. This seminal work in critical philosophy explicates cultural and structural racism in terms of a social contract and can facilitate the development of research frameworks.

  29. •• Bonilla-Silva E. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Ineuqality in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefiled; 2010. This book provides a strong overview of cultural and structural racism in the USA that can facilitate the development research frameworks.

  30. Haney-López I. Dog whistle politics: how coded racial appeals have reinvented racism and wrecked the middle class. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2014.

  31. • Hicken MT, Miles L, Haile S, Esposito M. Linking history to contemporary state-sanctioned slow violence through cultural and structural racism. Ann Am Acad Pol Soc Sci. 2021;694(1):48–58. This articles provides a detailed discussion on the features of cultural and structural racism as it pertains to environmental inequities.

  32. Bobo L, Kluegel JR, Smith RA. Laissez-faire racism: the crystallization of a kinder, gentler, antiblack ideology. In: Tuch SA, Martin JK, editors. Racial attitudes in the 1990s: continuity and change. Westport, CT: Praeger; 1997. p. 15–42.

    Google Scholar 

  33. • Gee GC, Hicken MT. Structural racism: the rules and relations of inequity. Ethn Dis. 2021;31(Suppl 1):293–300. This articles outlines a feature of structural racism that is often overlooked, particuarly in epidemiology—the interconnectedness of the institutions that comprise our social structure.

  34. Purifoy DM, Seamster L. Creative extraction: black towns in white space. Environ Plann D. 2021;39(1):47–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Gilmore RW. Golden gulag: prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press; 2007.

  36. Pellow DN. What is critical environmental justice? Cambridge, UK; Medford, MA: Polity Press; 2018.

  37. Bell D. Faces at the bottom of the well: the permanence of racism. New York, NY: BasicBooks; 1992.

  38. Tessum CW, Apte JS, Goodkind AL, Muller NZ, Mullins KA, Paolella DA, et al. Inequity in consumption of goods and services adds to racial–ethnic disparities in air pollution exposure. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2019;116(13):6001–6.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  39. •• Pulido L. Geographies of race and ethnicity II: Environmental racism, racial capitalism and state-sanctioned violence. Prog Hum Geog. 2017;41(4):524–33. This article provides a discussion of environmental racism in the context of American capitalism and can facilitate the development research frameworks.

  40. Seamster L, Purifoy D. What is environmental racism for? Place-based harm and relational development. Environ Sociol. 2020;7(2):1–12.

  41. Ash M, Boyce JK. Racial disparities in pollution exposure and employment at US industrial facilities. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2018;115(42):10636–41.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  42. Di Q, Dominici F, Schwartz JD. Air pollution and mortality in the Medicare population. N Engl J Med. 2017;377(15):1498–9.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Wang Y, Shi L, Lee M, Liu P, Di Q, Zanobetti A, et al. Long-term exposure to PM2.5 and mortality among older adults in the Southeastern US. Epidemiol. 2017;28(2):207–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Yazdi MD, Wang Y, Di Q, Requia WJ, Wei Y, Shi L, et al. Long-term effect of exposure to lower concentrations of air pollution on mortality among US Medicare participants and vulnerable subgroups: a doubly-robust approach. Lancet Planet Health. 2021;5(10):e689–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Pope CA 3rd, Lefler JS, Ezzati M, Higbee JD, Marshall JD, Kim SY, et al. Mortality risk and fine particulate air pollution in a large, representative cohort of U.S. adults. Environ Health Perspect. 2019;127(7):77007.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  46. Wang B, Eum KD, Kazemiparkouhi F, Li C, Manjourides J, Pavlu V, et al. The impact of long-term PM2.5 exposure on specific causes of death: exposure-response curves and effect modification among 53 million U.S. Medicare beneficiaries. Environ Health. 2020;19(1):20.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  47. Parker JD, Kravets N, Vaidyanathan A. Particulate matter air pollution exposure and heart disease mortality risks by race and ethnicity in the United States: 1997 to 2009 National Health Interview Survey With Mortality Follow-Up Through 2011. Circulation. 2018;137(16):1688–97.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  48. Bowe B, Xie Y, Yan Y, Al-Aly Z. Burden of cause-specific mortality associated with PM2.5 air pollution in the United States. JAMA Netw Open. 2019;2(11):e1915834.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Hayes RB, Lim C, Zhang Y, Cromar K, Shao Y, Reynolds HR, et al. PM2.5 air pollution and cause-specific cardiovascular disease mortality. Int J Epidemiol. 2020;49(1):25–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Di Q, Dai L, Wang Y, Zanobetti A, Choirat C, Schwartz JD, et al. Association of short-term exposure to air pollution with mortality in older adults. JAMA. 2017;318(24):2446–56.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  51. Son JY, Lane KJ, Miranda ML, Bell ML. Health disparities attributable to air pollutant exposure in North Carolina: influence of residential environmental and social factors. Health Place. 2020;62:102287.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Wang Y, Xiao S, Zhang Y, Chang H, Martin RV, Van Donkelaar A, et al. Long-term exposure to PM2.5 major components and mortality in the southeastern United States. Environ Int. 2022;158:106969.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  53. Everett BG, Rehkopf DH, Rogers RG. The nonlinear relationship between education and mortality: an examination of cohort, race/ethnic, and gender differences. Popul Res Policy Rev. 2013;32(6):893–917.

  54. Cooper RS, Wolf-Maier K, Luke A, Adeyemo A, Banegas JR, Forrester T, et al. An international comparative study of blood pressure in populations of European vs. African descent. BMC Med. 2005;3:2.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  55. Murray CJL, Kulkarni SC, Michaud C, Tomijima N, Bulzacchelli MT, Iandiorio TJ, et al. Eight Americas: investigating mortality disparities across races, counties, and race-counties in the United States. PLoS Med. 2006;3(9):e260.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. Benjamins MR, Silva A, Saiyed NS, De Maio FG. Comparison of all-cause mortality rates and inequities between black and white populations across the 30 most populous US cities. JAMA Netw Open. 2021;4(1):e2032086.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Geronimus AT, Bound J, Waidmann TA. Poverty, time, and place: variation in excess mortality across selected US populations, 1980–1990. J Epidemiol Community Health. 1999;53(6):325–34.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  58. Kioumourtzoglou MA, Schwartz J, James P, Dominici F, Zanobetti A. PM2.5 and mortality in 207 US cities: modification by temperature and city characteristics. Epidemiol. 2016;27(2):221–7.

    Google Scholar 

  59. Hunter MA, Robinson ZF. Chocolate cities: the black map of American life. Oakland, CA: University of California Press; 2018.

  60. Pattillo ME. Black picket fences: privilege and peril among the Black middle class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1999.

  61. Pattillo ME. Red lines, black spaces: the politics of race and space in a black middle-class suburb. Contemp Sociol. 2002;31(5):575–6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Yitshak-Sade M, Lane KJ, Fabian MP, Kloog I, Hart JE, Davis B, et al. Race or racial segregation? Modification of the PM2.5 and cardiovascular mortality association. PLoS ONE. 2020;15(7):e0236479.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  63. Wildeman C. Invited Commentary: (Mass) Imprisonment and (Inequities in) Health. Am J Epidemiol. 2011;173(5):488–91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  64. Wildeman C. Imprisonment and infant mortality. Social Problems. 2012;59(2):228–257.

  65. Novak NL, Geronimus AT, Martinez-Cardoso AM. Change in birth outcomes among infants born to Latina mothers after a major immigration raid. Int J Epidemiol. 2017;46(3):839–49.

    Google Scholar 

  66. Lauderdale DS. Birth outcomes for Arabic-named women in California before and after September 11. Demography. 2006;43(1):185–201.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  67. Levy JI. Invited perspective: moving from characterizing to addressing racial/ethnic disparities in air pollution exposure. Environ Health Perspect. 2021;129(12):121302.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

MTH is supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (R01MD013299) and the National Institute on Aging (R01AG074887). DPS is supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (K01ES028266).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 426 Thompson Street3358 ISR, Ann Arbor, MI, 48106, USA

    Margaret T. Hicken

  2. School of Public Health, Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, University of Maryland, 255 Valley Drive, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Devon Payne-Sturges

  3. School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, 440 Church Street; 4503 Dana, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Ember McCoy

Authors
  1. Margaret T. Hicken
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Devon Payne-Sturges
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ember McCoy
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Margaret T. Hicken.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Air Pollution and Health.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hicken, M.T., Payne-Sturges, D. & McCoy, E. Evaluating Race in Air Pollution and Health Research: Race, PM2.5 Air Pollution Exposure, and Mortality as a Case Study. Curr Envir Health Rpt 10, 1–11 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40572-023-00390-y

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40572-023-00390-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation