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Connecting the dots: Linking quantifiable environmental justice indicators to exposure assessment methodologies
Citation:
Huang, H., T. Barzyk, AND R. Tornero-Velez. Connecting the dots: Linking quantifiable environmental justice indicators to exposure assessment methodologies. 2016 Meeting International Society of Exposure Science, Utrecht, NETHERLANDS, October 09 - 13, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
Presented at 2016 Meeting International Society of Exposure Science
Description:
Cumulative risk assessment (CRA) offers a unique context for addressing Environmental Justice (EJ) issues from scientific perspectives, especially when it comes to examining combined effects of multiple environmental stressors1. Not only chemical stressors (e.g. radon, toluene and particulate matter) but also non-chemical stressors (e.g. smoking, noise and violence) can be evaluated2-4. EJ indicators, used as a tool to assess and quantify some of these non-chemical factors, include health, economic, and social indicators such as vulnerability and susceptibility5. Many studies have identified the associations between EJ indicators and chemical stressors6-10, but fewer focused on the interrelation between stressors and indicators and their effects on health. In this study, we utilized both established and novel quantitative methods in order to better understand how the interaction of multiple chemical and non-chemical stressors affect population level exposure assessment. Established approaches include the Average Daily Dose (ADD) model11 that has been commonly used in exposure assessment within the conventional risk assessment framework12, while novel techniques encompass unsupervised data mining methods such as association rules mining13. A major intention of this work is to quantify what are often considered qualitative EJ indicators to provide a more accurate representation of environmental exposures and impacts.
