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Environment and Society: Advances in Research 12 (2021): 108–126 © e Author(s)
doi:10.3167/ares.2021.120107
Toxic Waste and Race in Twenty-First Century America
Neighborhood Poverty and Racial Composition
in the Siting of Hazardous Waste Facilities
Michael Mascarenhas, Ryken Grattet, and Kathleen Mege
䡲 ABSTRACT: In 1987, the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice
released its groundbreaking study, Toxic Waste and Race in the United States. e report
found race to be the most signi cant predictor of where hazardous waste facilities were
located in the United States. We review this and other studies of environmental racism
in an e ort to explain the relationship between race and the proximity to hazardous
waste facilities. More recent research provides some evidence that the e ect is causal,
where polluting industries follow the path of least resistance. To date, the published
work using Census data ends in 2000, which neglects the period when economic and
political changes may have worsened the relationship between race and toxic exposure.
us, we replicate ndings using data from 2010 to show that racial disparities remain
persistent in 2010. We conclude with a call for further research on how race and siting
have changed during the 2010s.
䡲 KEYWORDS: environmental justice, race, racial and socioeconomic disparities, toxic
waste
Environmental justice studies investigate the role of race, class, and other social attributes in the
uneven distribution of environmental hazards. A major line of inquiry has been about the place-
ment of toxic waste facilities and the demographic and socioeconomic composition of the sur-
rounding areas (Been and Gupta 1997; Bullard et al. 2007; Mohai and Saha 2006, 2007, 2015a,
2015b; Oakes et al. 1996). ese studies point to a range of e ects of race on proximity, which
vary based on the methods and data used. is has made it di cult to assess to what extent racial
and socioeconomic disparities in the location of environmental hazards have changed over time
and how race and class intersect in the context of siting (Downey and Hawkins 2008; Pulido
1996, 2000). is article reviews this accumulated literature that aims to clarify the relationships
between the racial and class composition of areas where environmental hazards are located. We
highlight the methodological challenges that emerge in these studies, giving particular focus
to the issue of how to conceptualize and measure the appropriate geographical scale (e.g., zip
code, tract, or block), and how to document changes over time in the relationship between race,
class, and environmental hazards. Additionally, we consider questions of causal order, namely,
are poor communities of color targeted for the siting of toxic waste facilities or do poor people
of color concentrate near facilities because they have few other options?1 Because prior research
has only relied upon data up to 2000, we also include a descriptive study of the period between
Toxic Waste and Race in Twenty-First Century America 䡲 109
2000 and 2010 in order to bring the research into the twenty- rst century. Race continues to
be associated with the location of hazardous waste sites in the United States. We also nd that
while poverty worsened nationally during the decade, host areas’ increase in the percentage of
people living below the poverty line was roughly parallel to the larger national trend. e story
is somewhat di erent for other measures of economic change. Namely, income growth was
much less in the host areas than in non-host areas of the country, and housing values in host
areas decreased while elsewhere in the country experienced modest increases. ese patterns,
while largely consistent with prior research that uses a similar methodology, are both theoret-
ically and politically signi cant because they highlight the intersectionality in which race and
class oppression are manifested in the siting of hazardous waste facilities in the United States.
We want to be clear that this research highlights one of the many environments of injustice that
communities of color face in this country, namely, proximity to toxic waste facilities. We close
with a consideration of possible next steps for research.
Origins and Early Studies
Although the precise origin of the environmental justice movement is di cult to pin down, a
major protest staged in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982 was certainly an important
moment. e protest erupted over the dumping of 120 million pounds of soil contaminated
with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in a land ll in a majority African American town. Sev-
eral hundred protesters (many of them high-pro le civil rights activists) were arrested, and
the issue of environmental justice was thrust into the national spotlight and onto the political
agenda. In the year following the Warren County protest, the US General Accounting O ce
(GAO) conducted a study in several Southern states of the Environmental Protection Agency’s
(EPA) Region 4.2 In the rst study of its kind, the GAO identi ed four licensed commercial
hazardous waste facilities: Chemical Waste Management, Sumter County, Alabama; Industrial
Chemical Company, Chester County, South Carolina; SCA Services, Sumter County, South
Carolina; and the Warren County PCB land ll, North Carolina. Using 1980 census data, the
GAO computed the Black percentage of the population, mean family income (all races and
Black), and percentage of the population below the poverty line (all races and Black). ese
statistics were computed at several di erent geographic scales, including census areas within
four miles of the site, city, county, and state. e GAO (1983) found that all four facilities were
located in areas with high percentages of Black residents (ranging from 38% to 90%), and it also
found high percentages of Black residents living below the poverty level in these areas (ranging
from 90% to 100%). e study also found that the areas within which the sites were located pos-
sessed greater percentages of Blacks and Blacks living below the poverty level than the county
that hosted the site, neighboring counties, and the state as a whole.
e GAO study focused on an individual region, and, while its ndings were alarming, ques-
tions were raised about whether the patterns discovered in three Southern states were applicable
to the nation as a whole. In 1987, the rst national study, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United
States, was published by the United Church of Christ (UCC) Commission for Racial Justice.
e UCC research expanded the focus to the entire United States, relying on data compiled
by the EPA under its Hazardous Waste Data Management System and veri ed by commercial
hazardous waste directories. rough these methods, they identi ed 415 o site commercial
hazardous waste facilities as of May 1986. ese are businesses that receive, treat, store, or dis-
pose of toxic material and represent only a subset of the universe of sites containing hazardous
waste. e census data that UCC relied upon in the study included a broad array of racial and
110 䡲 Michael Mascarenhas, Ryken Grattet, and Kathleen Mege
ethnic groups (not just African Americans) and a greater number of economic measures. e
study also sharpened the geographic methods used in the GAO study, relying on census data
aggregated at the zip-code level to make comparisons between zip codes with and without a
commercial hazardous waste facility.
e UCC study found that race was the most signi cant factor in determining where com-
mercial hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs) were located in the
United States. Speci cally, the study found that zip codes with no TSDFs had 12.3% minority
population, while zip codes with one TSDF had about 23.7%, and zip codes with more than one
TSDF or with one of the ve largest land lls in the United States had the highest proportion of
people of color at 37.6% (Commission for Racial Justice 1987).
e study also examined the locations of “uncontrolled toxic waste sites” that included “a
wide range of closed and abandoned sites which pose a present and potential threat to human
health and the environment” (Commission for Racial Justice 1987: 3). Uncontrolled toxic
waste sites included dumps, accidental spills, illegal discharges, or abandoned factories or
warehouses where toxic materials remained. e ndings showed that more than half of all
Americans live in zip codes containing at least one uncontrolled toxic waste site, but that three
out of ve African Americans and Hispanic Americans lived in zip codes with at least one such
site (1987: 13).
e UCC report exposed the systemic disregard for people of color in the United States
regarding the persistent siting of toxic wastes in their neighborhoods. e report concluded that
race was the primary predictor of where hazardous waste sites would be located in the United
States, more powerful than household income, the value of homes, and the estimated amount of
hazardous waste generated by industry (Commission for Racial Justice 1987).
In 1990, sociologist Robert Bullard published his now-classic book Dumping in Dixie: Race,
Class, and Environmental Quality, which linked hazardous-facility-siting with historical pat-
terns of segregation in the South. Bullard’s study also explored the social and psychological
impacts of environmental racism on local populations and analyzed the response from local
communities against environmental threats. Scholars have pointed to the GAO study, the UCC
report, and Bullard’s book as the beginning of the modern environmental justice movement in
the United States (Brulle and Pellow 2006; Szasz and Meuser 1997). As such, they established a
link between research evidence and the emerging social movement to address institutionalized
environmental racism (Brulle and Pellow 2006; Szasz and Meuser 1997).
Changing Scholarly and Policy Contexts in the 1990s and 2000s
In addition to the growing body of research, conferences such as the Urban Environment Con-
ference in New Orleans in 1983 and the University of Michigan Conference on Race and the
Incidence of Environmental Hazards in 1990 brought together researchers from around the
nation who were studying racial and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of environ-
mental contaminants. ese conferences were attended by several leading “activist-scholars”
who, while working closely with community activists, came together to present and debate their
ndings and implications (Brulle and Pellow 2006; Mascarenhas 2015; Mohai and Bryant 1992).
e proceedings of the conference were forwarded to the EPA, and at the request of its admin-
istrator, William Reilly, the agency established the Environmental Equity Workgroup to review
this growing body of evidence. In 1992, the EPA published the ndings and recommendations
of the Environmental Equity Workgroup in a report entitled Environmental Equity: Reducing
Risks for All Communities. e 130-page report concluded that racial minority and low-income
Toxic Waste and Race in Twenty-First Century America 䡲 111
populations were disproportionately exposed to lead, selected air pollutants, hazardous waste
facilities, contaminated sh tissue, and agricultural pesticides (EPA 1992).
e EPA’s report lent considerable legitimacy to environmental justice activists’ claims, and
corroborated the evidence of the earlier reports by the General Accounting O ce and the United
Church of Christ. e report also signaled a major commitment by a branch of the federal govern-
ment, which put forth a comprehensive set of policy proposals to address these issues identi ed
in the report. It led to the creation of an O ce of Environmental Justice in the EPA in 1992 as well
as the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC). e date 30 September 2013
marked the twentieth anniversary of the NEJAC, which, through its 27-member committee,3 has
continued to provide advice and recommendations in consultation, with relevant stakeholders
and communities, about issues and policy related to environmental justice. is commitment
also inspired legislation in the United States that identi ed hazardous waste sites—commonly
known as “Superfund sites”—and established a protocol for remediation.
In February 1994, in an attempt to remedy environmental inequality and injustice nationally,
President Bill Clinton established Executive Order 12898. e order required that each federal
agency make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing,
as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental e ects of
its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations.
e order charged all federal agencies with integrating environmental justice concerns into
their operations in a concerted e ort to reverse the historical trends that have disproportion-
ately a ected minority and low-income populations (EPA 1995). Although the order gave legit-
imacy and visibility to environmental justice claims, its central prescriptions about the necessity
of assessing and addressing the adverse environmental and health impacts of programs and pol-
icies on minority communities were not required by law. As a result, adoption of environmental
justice practices in federal agencies has been fairly weak and subject to political cooption and
industry capture (Faber 2008; Harrison 2016; Holi eld 2015; Pellow 2018; Pulido 2017).
Two decades have passed since the executive order, yet its e ect on environmental justice
programs such as Superfund is still rather ambiguous (Arquette et al. 2002; Holi eld 2004; Mur-
phy-Greene and Leip 2002; O’Neil 2007; Sicotte 2009; Tesh 2001). e Superfund program was
originally nanced by a tax levied on the petroleum and chemical industries. However, this
“polluter-pays” tax was allowed to expire in 1995, and the fund o cially reached a zero balance
by the end of 2003 (O’Neil 2007). Since its depletion, the Superfund program has relied on tax-
payer dollars, in the form of annual appropriations, and the monies recovered by the EPA from
successful liability settlements (Faber 2008).
Many policy, research, and advocacy groups also attribute the lack of further environmental
justice milestones and reforms to the eight years of President George W. Bush’s administration.
For example, Bush’s budget for the scal year 2002 slashed overall spending for environmental
and natural resources agencies by $2.3 billion, or 7.2%. is amounted to nearly a $500 million
reduction in the budget of the EPA (NRDC 2015).4 e US environmental justice movement
was largely stalled for the eight years of President George W. Bush’s administration. Moreover,
a Supreme Court ruling (Alexander v. Sandoval )5 in 2001 reversed earlier court interpretations
of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , which had previously allowed private parties to use
the federal courts to enforce violations of federal agency regulations that had a disparate impact
on people of color, regardless of intent. e Sandoval decision implied that those dispropor-
tionately impacted by federal agency regulations now had to prove intent, e ectively ending the
EPA’s ability to rely on Title VI for environmental justice (Core 2002).
Despite particular empirical and political challenges, the environmental justice movement
has had a signi cant impact on the direction of environmental policy, research, and activism in
112 䡲 Michael Mascarenhas, Ryken Grattet, and Kathleen Mege
the United States and around the world. In particular, the emergence of a network of scholars,
the tireless e orts of grassroots activists, and the formation of federal and state government
agencies have provided a means by which research ndings and environmental justice concepts
were carried into policymaking. History has also taught us that those early gains, and prog-
ress in embedding environmental justice concepts into policy, more generally, has been slow.
e enduring racialized environmental disparities have prompted many scholars in the eld to
claim that we need to rethink environmental justice (Checker 2005; Pellow 2016; Pulido 2000,
2017; Wilson Gilmore 2008). For example, Laura Pulido (2000, 2016) argues that we need to
move past the notion of a few bad actors with an emphasis on events or cases. She argues that
we should instead focus on the institutions and systems that structure environmental racism.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore has echoed this observation, writing that siting of hazardous materials
and destructive materials are “planned concentrations or sinks . . . whether state-sanctioned
or extralegal . . . regardless of the intent of the harms produced” (2008: 35–36). In response,
David Pellow and others have developed a critical environmental justice framework to further
contextualize the problem of environmental racism (Mascarenhas 2020; Pellow 2016, 2020).
Researchers and activists alike have responded accordingly, asking to what extent government
(in)action has contributed to ongoing toxic exposure for communities of color in the follow-
ing decade and century. is concern about whether disparities improved, worsened, or stayed
the same engendered the next generation of environmental justice studies, which asked deeper
methodological and political questions about the persistent toxic inequality between White and
non-White communities.
Measurement and Methodological Debate
During the 1990s, documenting the existence of the “disproportionate impact” on people of
color and poor populations of environmental hazards became hotly contested. e key debate
revolved around this central question: “What is the best geographic method of analysis to deter-
mine who is most at risk from hazardous sites”? e groundbreaking studies by the United
Church of Christ and the General Accounting O ce both used the “unit-hazard coincidence”6
method in determining that race was the most signi cant factor in determining where licensed
commercial hazardous waste facilities and uncontrolled toxic waste sites were located in the
United States. Using census areas and zip codes, these studies compared the racial and socio-
economic characteristics of people living in “host” tracts with those of non-host census tracts.
However, the use of the unit-hazard-coincidence method for conducting environmental justice
analyses has been the subject of much debate and criticism.
Douglas Anderton and colleagues (1994a, 1994b) led a series of studies arguing that the nd-
ings of the UCC and GAO studies were an artifact of geographic scale and not environmental
racism. Instead of using zip codes, which the authors deemed too large to identify local ineq-
uities, Anderton and colleagues (1994a) compared census tracts with TSDFs to tracts without,
and concluded that the “evidence of racial and ethnic inequity in location of hazardous waste
facilities is almost nonexistent” (1994a: 242). Given that the smaller census tract “found no
nationally consistent and statistically signi cant evidence of racial or ethnic bias” (Oakes et al.
1996: 128) in the location of commercial TSDFs, Anderson and colleagues (1994a) concluded
that previous studies using zip codes areas overaggregated their cross-sectional ndings.7 Con-
trary to previous research, Anderton and colleagues (1994a, 1994b) concluded that the most
signi cant and consistent di erence regarding the distribution of facilities across social groups
amounted to labor force indicators.8 Speci cally, they found that both the mean and the median
Toxic Waste and Race in Twenty-First Century America 䡲 113
percentages of the population employed in precision manufacturing occupations were substan-
tially greater in tracts containing TSDFs than in other tracts. In e ect, they asserted that class,
speci cally income and occupation, and not race, was the most consequential predictive vari-
able of where a TSDF would be located for both the nation as a whole and in 9 of the 10 EPA
regions (Anderton et al. 1994a).
Questions of appropriate scale or geographic unit, exempli ed in the work of Anderton and
colleagues (1994a, 1994b), have produced con icting ndings and prolonged the uncertainty
to which the existence and extent of environmental disparity can be assessed to be a function
of race, class, or both.9 e work of Anderton and colleagues has come under much criticism
by environmental justice scholars. For example, the former did not consider rural areas in their
analyses, but the UCC study did. Moreover, Anderton and colleagues (1994a, 1994b) excluded
metropolitan areas not already containing a TSDF, whereas the UCC study included all metro-
politan areas in their study (Been 1995; Mohai 1995). In a subsequent empirical analysis, Paul
Mohai (2008) found that Anderton and colleagues’s principal indicator of industrial activity,
percentage of people employed in manufacturing, was found to be statistically insigni cant
between metropolitan areas containing a hazardous waste facility and those areas that did not.
Previous national and regional studies did not account for the exact geographic location of haz-
ardous waste facilities but rather compared the demographic characteristics of host geographic
units, such as census tracts (the 1983 GAO and the 1987 UCC Reports) or zip codes (Anderton
et al. 1994a, 1994b), with the characteristics of non-host units. is method was termed the
“unit-hazard coincidence” method because the geographic unit used was coincident with where
the facility was located (Bullard et al. 2007; Mohai and Saha 2015a, 2015b).
In an e ort to match exposure and hazardous locations more precisely, Paul Mohai and
Robin Saha (2006, 2007) turned to the distance-based method. Zip codes and census tracts,
they argued, were simply too crude a measure to analyze exposure and hazardous locations.
First, the unit-hazard-coincidence method only included people living within the host unit.
However, given a facility’s location, people living in adjacent areas may be equally impacted but
not counted with this method. is was particularly true for clustered and single facilities that
were located at or near the boundary of a host unit. For example, Mohai and Saha (2006, 2007)
in their distance-based studies found that 49% of the nation’s hazardous waste TSDFs were
located within .25 miles of the boundary of their host census tracts, while 71% were located
within half a mile of their census tract boundary. Moreover, the opposite may be true where
people were counted in a given host unit but lived a far distance from the facility and were there-
fore not impacted by its location. is scenario may be particularly relevant in the case where
facilities were located in larger census tracts. In e ect, in the former example the unit-hazard-
coincidence method undercounts people impacted by a hazardous waste facility, and in the
latter example it exaggerates facility impact.
Instead of determining whether a particular geographic unit and hazardous waste site were
coincident, Mohai and Saha (2006) identi ed the exact locations of hazardous waste facilities
and then classi ed all geographic units—not just the host unit—within a speci ed distance
from the hazardous facility as a host neighborhood. Racial and socioeconomic characteristics
of people living in host neighborhoods were then compared to non-host census tracts. A host
neighborhood was identi ed as having one or more facilities within a three-kilometer radius.
is radius, approximately 1.8 miles, is a particularly noteworthy boundary marker, as it cor-
responds to the distance within which empirical studies have noted adverse health, property
value, and quality-of-life impacts associated with living next to a hazardous waste site or waste
facility (Baibergenova et al. 2003; Bullard et al. 2007; Dolk et al. 1998; Fielder et al. 2000; Vri-
jheid 2000).
114 䡲 Michael Mascarenhas, Ryken Grattet, and Kathleen Mege
In their national-level reassessment, Mohai
and Saha (2006, 2007) applied a 50% areal con-
tainment method to examine the racial and
socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of
the nation’s hazardous waste. Any census tract
in which at least 50% of its area was within three
kilometers of the facility was considered to be
part of the host neighborhood. e result pro-
duced circular bu ers around each facility. Fig-
ure 1 provides two illustrations of neighborhoods
around a hazardous waste facility that are at one,
three, and ve kilometers away from the facility.
Mohai and Saha (2006, 2007) used the 1990 dig-
itized census areas (tracts and block groups) and
zip code areas to analyze the demographic char-
acteristics around the nation’s TSDFs. ey found
that the distance-based method was a more accu-
rate representation of where people and environ-
mental hazardous sites are located. In particular,
using distance-based measures Mohai and Saha
(2007) found that, although non-Whites com-
prised about 25% of the US population, the per-
centage of non-Whites living within one mile of
a hazardous facility was 40% in 1990. Moreover,
the di erence between the proportion of non-
Whites in host and non-host areas was over 20
percentage points when the distance-based method was applied, compared to the modest 1 to 3
percentage-point di erences found when the unit-hazard-coincidence method was applied.
is more accurate method e ectively indicated that racial disparities around hazardous
waste sites were even greater than previously reported in the 1983 GAO and 1987 UCC studies.
And it intimated the degree to which a lack of understanding regarding the unequal distribution
of environmental burdens by academic researchers and government agencies alike had preju-
diced the rst two decades of the environmental justice movement in the United States.
In 2007, Robert Bullard and colleagues (2007) published Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty
1987–2007 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the environmental justice movement in the
United States. In an e ort to provide some longitudinal data to these long-standing debates,
the 2007 report used updated information on hazardous waste facility locations, the 50% areal
apportionment method, and demographic data from the 2000 census to perform a national-level
reassessment of where facilities and people were located. is research was the rst national-
level environmental justice study to conduct longitudinal analyses using the distance-based
method. Again, this report found that the poor and people of color were more heavily concen-
trated around the nation’s TSDFs than what previous studies had identi ed, including the 1983
GAO and 1987 UCC reports. In fact, the 2007 report found that in 2000 people of color made
up the majority (56%) of those living within three kilometers of where hazardous waste facilities
were located, despite being only 30% of the national population. And where two or more facili-
ties were clustered together, people of color made up 69% of those living in host neighborhoods
(Bullard et al. 2007). e report concluded that “signi cant racial and socioeconomic dispari-
Figure 1
Toxic Waste and Race in Twenty-First Century America 䡲 115
ties persist in the distribution of the nation’s commercial hazardous waste facilities” (2007: xi).
Another key nding of their report was that “race continues to be an independent predictor of
where hazardous wastes are located,” stronger “than income, education, and other socioeco-
nomic indicators” (2007: xi).
In addition to the race versus class debate, the question of who came rst, poor communi-
ties and communities of color or toxic industry, has been the cause of much misunderstand-
ing in environmental justice communities surrounding the root causes of the issue. In 2015,
Mohai and Saha put this debate to rest. Using a national database of commercial hazardous
waste facilities sited from 1966 to 1996, they conducted a longitudinal analysis using the dis-
tance-based method and concluded that “neighborhood transition serves to attract noxious
facilities rather than the facilities themselves attracting people of color and low income popula-
tions” (2015b: 1). In other words, “contrary to the post-siting demographic change hypothesis
. . . the demographic changes appear to ‘attract’ the facilities rather than the facilities attract
minorities” (2015b: 7). In other words, industry has targeted poor communities nd communi-
ties of color when choosing where to locate its toxic waste sites (Mohai and Saha 2015a, 2015b;
Pastor et al. 2001).
Bringing the Discussion into the Twenty-First Century
Given the availability of 2010 census data, we can now provide an assessment of how trends and
patterns observed in prior research look a er the rst decade of the twenty- rst century. To do
so, we repeat the distance-based methodology of Bullard and colleagues (2007) and Mohai and
Saha (2007, 2016a, 2015b) using the 2011 National Biennial RCRA Hazardous Waste Report
(EPA 2012). e EPA biennially collects information regarding the generation, management,
and nal disposition of hazardous wastes regulated under the Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976. RCRA hazardous waste management information is obtained
from the data reported by facilities that treat, store, or dispose of RCRA hazardous waste.10 Only
facilities in operation for the purpose of making a pro t from waste management are included
in the list. Hazardous waste that is stored, bulked, and/or transferred o site with no prior
treatment/recovery, fuel blending, or disposal at the site are excluded from the management
quantities reported (EPA 2012). Both the 2001 and 2011 National Biennial Reports include
management and receipt data from both permitted treatment, storage, and disposal facilities
and generators that are not required to be permitted (e.g., those that recycle solvent hazardous
waste generated onsite) (EPA 2003).
In all, 563 sites were identi ed in the 2001 RCRA report and 456 facilities were identi ed in
the 2011 RCRA Report. ese sites represented all the commercial hazardous waste facilities
operating in the United States in 2000 and 2010, respectively, with the exception of Puerto Rico
and Guam.11 We mapped facility locations using their latitude and longitude data. e census
tract geographies12 (2000 and 2010 sets) came from the US Census website.13 Both the site and
tract geographic data were loaded into a PostgreSQL database with the PostGIS extension. ey
were analyzed and processed using a GeoDjango application. Google Maps was used only for
visualization purposes.14
Combining the 2000 and 2010 census data with the 2001 and 2011 Biennial RCRA reports
makes it possible to determine the racial and socioeconomic characteristics for host and non-
host areas at the same time the facilities were known to be in operation. For the year 2000,
the 2000 long-form census data was used. However, for the year 2010 the census abandoned
116 䡲 Michael Mascarenhas, Ryken Grattet, and Kathleen Mege
the long form and created the American Community Survey. For this, we used the 2010
American Community Survey’s ve-year estimate. e total population; the number of
respondents identifying as non-Hispanic or Latino White only; and the number of respon-
dents identifying as Black or African American, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian,
or Native Hawaiian or Paci c Islander were calculated for each individual census tract and
then summed across each geographical unit rst and then divided by the appropriate summed
denominator. For example, for the percentage of people of color, the numbers of non-Whites
were summed across every tract in a given state and then that sum was divided by the sum of
the populations for every tract in that state. e numbers in Table 1 are the averages for the
four categories analyzed made up of the two years (2000, 2010) and the host versus non-host
neighborhoods.
Table 1 provides a detailed breakdown of the demographics of host versus non-host census
tracts across di erent years. e 2000 and 2010 statistics re ect our original data collection
Table 1. Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities between Host Neighborhoods and Non-Host Areas
(2000 and 2010 census data does not include Alaska, Washington DC, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming).
2000 2010
Host Non-Host Di . Ratio Host Non-Host Di .Ratio
Population
Total Population
(1000s) 10,792 266,741 ‒255,949 0.04 8,101 291,542 ‒283,441 0.03
Population Density 1,287 43 1,244 30 1,287 43 1,244 30
Race/Ethnicity
% People of Color 41.00% 24.00% 17.00% 1.71 44.90% 28.30% 16.60% 1.59
% African American 21.10% 10.32% 10.78% 2.04 21.00% 10.83% 10.17% 1.94
% Hispanic or Latino 13.02% 7.78% 5.24% 1.67 15.99% 10.27% 5.72% 1.56
% Asian 3.72% 2.98% 0.74% 1.25 4.92% 3.74% 1.18% 1.32
% Paci c Islander 0.33% 0.28% 0.05% 1.18 0.29% 0.31% ‒0.02% 0.94
% Native American 0.91% 1.28% ‒0.37% 0.71 0.92% 1.23% ‒0.31% 0.75
Socioeconomics
Poverty Rate 17.80% 11.80% 6.00% 1.51 20.10% 13.30% 6.80% 1.51
Mean Household
Income1$37,031 $42,628 ($5,597) 0.87 $56,238 $68,564 ($12,326) 0.82
Mean Housing Value $10,2825 $115,503 ($12,678) 0.89 $95,578 $13,3586 ($38,008) 0.72
% of 25+ Year Olds with
4-Yr College Degree 28.60% 30.30% ‒1.70% 0.94 32.20% 35.10% ‒2.90% 0.92
Data taken from Bullard et al. (2007)
Bullard and colleagues report combined % Asian and % Paci c Islander in one category (%Asian/Pac. Is.).
1 e home value is estimated by the respondent. It appears that the value is not in ation-adjusted in its aggregate form,
which is what we used. We calculated the mean by summing the aggregate values and dividing by the sums of the count
of respondents/homeowners for that question. Additional information about data de nition for the 2010 American
Community Survey we used can be found here: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech _docs/subject_
de nitions/2010_ACSSubjectDe nitions.pdf#value.
Toxic Waste and Race in Twenty-First Century America 䡲 117
and analysis. Host tracts are consistently home to double-digit higher percentages of people of
color, especially higher percentages of African Americans and Latinos. Host tracts also have
consistently higher percentages of people living under the poverty line and with lower mean
household income and a lower mean home value.
More than 8 million people (8,101,414) lived in census tracts that had at least 50% of their
area fall within at least three kilometers (1.8miles) of the nation’s 456 commercial hazardous
waste facilities in 2010. In 2000, there were 563 sites and 10 million people who lived in tracts
falling within a three-kilometer radius. In 2010, 44.9% of the host area population was made
up of people of color as compared to the non-host area population, 28.3% of which was made
up of people of color. ese gures are slightly higher than those of 2000, when 41% of the host
area population was made up of people of color and 24% of the non-host area population was
made up of people of color. Although the percentage of people of color in host areas increased
by four percentage points, the percentage of people of color in non-host areas also increased by
four percentage points, which suggests that the change was due to a common trend a ecting
the American population more generally. e increases in the percentage of people of color in
both host and non-host areas appear mostly due to growth in the Latinx population occurring
between 2000 and 2010. Latinx people were 13% of the host areas in 2000 and 16% in 2010. e
percentage of Asians in the host areas was 3.7 in 2000 and 4.9 in 2010. However, both of these
groups also experienced growth in non-host areas between the two years. African Americans
remain the largest share of the percent people of color living in host areas, but that has remained
stable across both years.
Table 1 also reveals signi cant socioeconomic disparities over time. In 2000, the percentage
of people below the poverty line in host tracts was 17.8% and in non-host tracts it was 11.8%.
In 2010, the percentage of people below the poverty line in host tracts rose to 20.1% percent, an
increase of 2.3 percentage points. However, the percentage of people below the poverty line also
increased in non-host tracts, from 11.8% to 13.3%, an increase of 1.5 percentage points. us,
it appears that there was an increase in the percentage of people below the poverty line in host
areas in 2010 and that most of that increase was due to an increase in the poverty rate in both
host and non-host areas.
e story is a bit di erent for the other two measures of poverty: mean household income and
mean owner-occupied housing value. Both in 2000 and in 2010, household income and home
values were substantially lower in host tracts than in non-host tracts, which may have been due
to the di erential impacts of the 2008 recession on poor communities. Household income grew
in both host and non-host tracts, although the amount of growth was greater in non-host tracts
($12,326) than it has in host tracts ($5,597). Mean owner-occupied housing value in non-host
tracts increased from $115,503 to $133,586, whereas in host areas the housing values actually
decreased from $102,825 to $95,578 (see Table 1). us, unlike the poverty measure, both the
income and housing value measures show that the gaps between host areas and non-host areas
worsened over the decade.
EPA Regional Disparities
Table 2 shows that racial disparities for people of color as a whole continue to exist in all 10 EPA
regions. In 2000, disparities in people of color percentages between host and non-host areas were
greatest in Region 5 (45% vs. 19%), Region 9 (76% vs. 49%), Region 6 (66% vs. 42%), and Region
4 (52% vs. 30%) (see Figure 2). In 2010, Region 9 became the EPA Region where the percent-
118 䡲 Michael Mascarenhas, Ryken Grattet, and Kathleen Mege
age of people of color between
host and non-host areas was
most signi cant (85% vs. 54%).
Regions 9, 5, 6, and 4 remained
national hotspots, with all re-
gions increasing the percentage
people of color between host
and non-host areas over the
decade: Region 9 (76% vs. 85%),
Region 5 (45% vs. 50%), Region
6 (67% vs. 70%), and Region 4
(52% vs. 53%). Moreover, racial
disparities in the location of the
nation’s commercial hazard-
ous waste facilities numerically
increased in all EPA regions
over the decade. is increase
is geographically unequal, with
the Mid-West, Southern and Southwestern states disproportionately burdened. California and
Nevada (the principal states of Region 9) represent a particularly signi cant hotspot, where 85
of every 100 US residents living within three kilometers of one or more of the states’ 47 (Califor-
nia has 41 and Arizona 6 facilities) commercial hazardous waste facilities are persons of color.
Geographically widespread numerical socioeconomic disparities are evident in 2010 (see
Table 3). Regions 5, 9, 6, and 4, the national hotspots, have on average poverty rates between
20% to 23% in host neighborhoods. Di erences in poverty rates between host neighborhoods
and non-host areas are numerically greatest for Region 8 (23% vs. 12%), Region 5 (23% vs.
13%), Region 3 (19% vs. 11%), Region 7 (20% vs. 13%), and Region 9 (20% vs. 13%). Moreover,
disproportionately low mean household incomes and housing values are found in all 10 EPA
regions in 2010.
Table 2. People of Color Percentages for Host Neighborhoods and Non-Host Areas by EPA Region
(2000 and 2010 Census)
2000 2010
Regions Host Non-Host Ratio Host Non-Host Ratio
Region 1 33% 16% 2.02 26% 21% 1.23
Region 2 50% 36% 1.39 51% 40% 1.28
Region 3 32% 23% 1.39 43% 28% 1.55
Region 4 52% 30% 1.72 53% 35% 1.52
Region 5 45% 19% 2.45 50% 22% 2.32
Region 6 66% 42% 1.58 70% 47% 1.48
Region 7 27% 14% 1.95 32% 17% 1.89
Region 8 26% 19% 1.32 38% 23% 1.67
Region 9 76% 49% 1.55 85% 54% 1.58
Region 10 29% 26% 1.10 42% 30% 1.40
Figure 2
Toxic Waste and Race in Twenty-First Century America 䡲 119
Table 3. Socioeconomic Disparities between Host Neighborhoods and Non-Host Areas by EPA Region in 2010
Poverty Rates Mean Household Income Mean Household Value
EPA Region Host Non-Host Di . Ratio Host Non-Host Di . Ratio Host Non-Host Di .Ratio
Region 1 15% 10% 4% 1.41 $61,641 $83,891 $22,250 0.73 $15,6645 $229,508 $72,862 0.68
Region 2 17% 12% 4% 1.33 $63,041 $85,099 $22,058 0.74 $178,963 $235,887 $56,923 0.76
Region 3 19% 11% 8% 1.75 $57,206 $75,612 $18,405 0.76 $94,145 $147,846 $53,701 0.64
Region 4 22% 16% 6% 1.39 $53,888 $62,347 $8,459 0.86 $77,686 $103,861 $26,175 0.75
Region 5 23% 13% 10% 1.80 $60,080 $67,526 $7,446 0.89 $104,912 $113,236 $8,324 0.93
Region 6 22% 17% 5% 1.29 $55,084 $64,877 $9,793 0.85 $55,313 $82,064 $26,751 0.67
Region 7 20% 13% 8% 1.59 $50,524 $62,651 $12,126 0.81 $69,259 $83,889 $14,631 0.83
Region 8 23% 12% 12% 2.00 $50,497 $72,226 $21,729 0.70 $91,906 $141,734 $49,828 0.65
Region 9 20% 13% 7% 1.50 $64,002 $81,089 $17,087 0.79 $228,759 $249,193 $20,433 0.92
Region 10 14% 12% 2% 1.14 $63,685 $ 72069 $8,384 0.88 $135,392 $185,666 $50,274 0.73
120 䡲 Michael Mascarenhas, Ryken Grattet, and Kathleen Mege
State Disparities
Table 4 identi es the states with the 10 largest di erences in people of color percentages between
host neighborhoods and non-host areas in 2010. Illinois and Georgia, while not on the top 10
list, have similar di erences between host neighborhoods and non-host areas as Ohio (26%).
Similar to the Bullard and colleagues report (2007), the states are shown in order (le to right)
by the percentages of people of color living in the host neighborhoods relative to the percentages
of people living in non-host areas. For example, in Mississippi 97% of residents of host areas
were people of color, as compared with 41% of non-host areas. Other states that had high levels
of disparities included Arkansas (74% of host tracts were people of color vs. 25% on non-host
tracts), Michigan (64% vs. 22%), Nevada (78% vs. 44%), Kansas (55% vs. 21%), Arizona (70%
vs. 41%), Tennessee (53% vs. 24%), California (86% vs. 57%), Virginia (62% vs. 34%), and Ohio
(44% vs. 18%). Only the District of Columbia, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming did not have
licensed and operating commercial hazardous waste facilities in 2010.15 In 21 of the remain-
ing 46 states with commercial hazardous
waste facilities, the overwhelming major-
ity (50% or greater) of people living in
host neighborhoods were people of color.
In the state of Mississippi, the percentage
of people of color as a whole is 2.4 times
greater in host neighborhoods than in
non-host areas. In the Arkansas, Kansas,
and Michigan, the percentage of people
of color was three times greater in host
neighborhoods than in non-host areas.
Additionally, numerous other states had
numerically large disparities in people
of color percentages in 2010 but did not
make up the majority of those living less
than three kilometers from one or more
commercial hazardous waste facilities.
Rethinking Toxic Exposure
It has now been more than three decades since Toxic Waste and Race was published in 1987. Since
then, advances in research and a sustained and tenacious grassroots organizing and community-
based advocacy have impelled the notion that not all communities are treated equally into the
public consciousness. is particular conjuncture of research and activism moves beyond the
anecdote to provide evidence of the impact of institutionalized racism in the arena of environ-
mental policy. e 2007 follow-up study, Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty (using 2000 census
data and the distance-based method) found that racial disparities were even greater than pre-
viously reported (Bullard et al. 2007, 2008; Mohai and Saha 2007). Recent research has moved
beyond mere association to begin to unpack causal relationships between race and siting. is
deeper understanding is re ected in recent longitudinal work that seeks to determine whether
it is the demographic characteristics of a community that make it “the target” for a hazardous
waste site or whether the demographic characteristics change once a facility has been sited. e
ndings suggest that the former is more o en the case than the latter (Mohai and Saha 2015b).
Table 4. States with the 10 largest Di erences in
People of Color Percentages between
Host Neighborhoods and Non-Host Areas
State Host Non-Host Di .Ratio
Mississippi 97% 41% 56% 2.36
California 86% 57% 29% 1.51
Nevada 78% 44% 35% 1.79
Arkansas 74% 25% 49% 2.98
Arizona 70% 41% 29% 1.72
Michigan 64% 22% 42% 2.92
Virginia 62% 34% 28% 1.82
Kansas 55% 21% 34% 2.67
Tennessee 53% 24% 29% 2.23
Ohio 44% 18% 26% 2.48
Toxic Waste and Race in Twenty-First Century America 䡲 121
is research moves beyond purely associational approaches and nds that over time polluting
industries still follow the path of least resistance, choosing to locate where land, labor, and lives
are deemed to be cheaper and expendable (Mohai and Saha 2015a, 2015b; Pellow 2016, 2018;
Pulido 2017).
Using the 2010 census data and the distanced-based method, our research builds on previ-
ous innovations in environmental justice methodology. We found that although the percentage
of people of color and percentage of people in poverty increased in host tracts during the rst
decade of the twenty- rst century, comparable increases also occurred in non-host tracts. is
nding is re ective of national demographic and poverty trends during the decade. e impli-
cation is that, while the racial disparities did not worsen during the Bush years, they certainly
did not improve either. In particular, we found that host tracts lagged behind non-host tracts in
economic measures, as both household income and home values in host tracts did not increase
at the same rate as non-host tracts. With respect to these measures, it appears that host tracts
lost ground to non-host tracts in terms of wealth between 2000 and 2010. Moreover, we found
that some states and regions have particularly pronounced racial disparities.
Our ndings also elucidate the theoretical and policy limitations of framing hazardous waste
sites as a function of racial inequalities or socioeconomic position, a controversy that has come
to be known as the “race versus class debate.” Race continues to be an independent predictor of
the location of the nation’s hazardous waste sites. is correlation between race and toxic waste,
rst documented in the 1980s, continues today. is fact is also particularly true for people of
color who live in the toxic waste “hotspots” of the Mid-West, Southern, and Southwestern states.
Our analysis also illustrates that, while the number of people of color in the United States has
increased overall during the decade, the di erence in the percentage of people of color that live
in host neighborhoods versus non-host areas has remained the same from the 2000 to the 2010
census data. However, of those people of color that live in neighborhoods with one or more
hazardous waste facilities, both their mean annual household incomes and owner-occupied
housing values have signi cantly decreased in host neighborhoods versus non-host areas from
2000 to 2010. As a result, people of color living in host neighborhoods are poorer today than
they were a decade ago, revealing the fact that this form of injustice disproportionately burdens
low-income communities of color.
is longitudinal analysis, then, highlights how the intersection between race and class
oppression are manifested in the siting of hazardous waste facilities in the United States. In
e ect, we argue that these structural forms of inequality are not additive or divisible in some sort
of comparable way but rather intersecting to constantly reproduce a racial formation that dis-
criminates on the basis of race and class (Omi and Winant 2015). is is both theoretically and
politically signi cant, since both racial and ethnic groups continue to increase at higher rates
than the White population, while the wealth gap between rich and poor continues to widen,
indicating that the United States will remain a highly segregated and unevenly exposed society.
However, Black Lives Matter and the Poor People’s Revival Campaign have given heightened
visibility to how governmental institutions reinforce and sometimes worsen class and racial
inequality. As a collateral consequence of the e orts of these movements, the environmental
justice movement may gain traction in ways that it has not previously.
Environmental racism in the United States, as measured by the proximity of commercial
hazardous waste facilities and other environmental pollutants, continues to increase in spite of
decades of environmental justice policy by both state and federal agencies, sustained activism,
and a growing public awareness of the problem. In e ect, this longitudinal analysis impels us
to think more critically about governments’ role in the making and remaking of environmental
racism in the United States. For example, the deregulation of the nancial sector in the United
122 䡲 Michael Mascarenhas, Ryken Grattet, and Kathleen Mege
States and elsewhere, which ultimately led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States
and the recession of 2008, disproportionately impacted urban poor and people of color, many
of whom lost their homes and/or savings as a result of the predatory lending schemes of the
nancial elite. More recently, the tragedy that unfolded in Flint, Michigan, where residents
in the majority-Black city were knowingly poisoned by the decisions of state elected o cials
underscores the extent to which people of color are harmed at the hand of their government.
Similarly, the combination of funding cuts to environmental agencies and the rolling back of
environmental protections, particularly under the Bush presidency, and again under Trump,
harms all people, but particularly BIPOC communities and the poor. On top of this, the Trump
administration’s failed attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, combined with
the COVID-19 pandemic, have made it less likely that all poor and people of color will be
counted in the 2020 census. If this is the case, then data on the demographic characteristics of
communities near toxic waste facilities might become less accurate than in prior census years.
ese governmental decisions have the potential to further erode the linkage between evidence
of racial and economic disparities in siting and the activism that serves as an important hall-
mark of the environmental justice movement.
䡲 MICHAEL MASCARENHAS is a rst-generation college graduate and a person of color. He is an
Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management
at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Where the Waters Divide: Neo-
liberalism, White Privilege, and Environmental Racism inCanada (Lexington Books, 2012),
New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity: Good Intentions on the Road to Help (Indi-
ana University Press, 2017), and Lessons in Environmental Justice: From Civil Rights to Black
Lives Matter and Idle No More (Sage Publishing, 2020). Email: mascarenhas@berkeley.edu
䡲 RYKEN GRATTET is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis. He has
published on a range of topics relating to law and policy implementation, including studies
of the enforcement of hate crime law, the reform of the California correctional system, and
the governance of climate change. His scholarly work has been published in the Law & Soci-
ety Review, Law & Policy, the American Sociological Review,American Behavioral Scientist,
the Annual Review of Sociology, Criminology, the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminol-
ogy,Social Forces, and Social Problems. Email: rtgrattet@ucdavis.edu
䡲 KATHLEEN MEGE is a Manager with an IT consulting rm in New York City. She focuses on
how data is processed, stored, and interpreted. Kathleen holds a Master’s degree in com-
puter science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Email: kathleen.tully@gmail.com
䡲 NOTES
1. is study builds on the work of Tessum and colleagues (2019) that highlights the relationship
between consumption and racial–ethnic disparity.
2. e EPA’s Region 4 consists of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Tennessee.
Toxic Waste and Race in Twenty-First Century America 䡲 123
3. e membership comprises representation from academia, community groups, industry/business,
nongovernmental organizations / environmental organizations, state/local governments, and tribal
governments/Indigenous groups, in addition to one Designated Federal O cer (DFO).
4. Speci c cuts included nearly $500 million from the EPA, nearly $400 million from the Department
of Interior, and nearly $500 million from the US Forest Service. In addition to this $2.3 billion reduc-
tion, the budget would cut about $450 million from the Department of Energy, concentrating reduc-
tions in clean energy programs and environmental cleanup programs (NRDC 2015).
5. 532 U.S. 275 (2001). See also Core (2002).
6. e unit-hazard-coincidence method involves compiling the demographic characteristics of the geo-
graphic units (e.g., zip codes, census tracts, counties) that host toxic facilities as compared with units
that do not host facilities. e method is premised on the idea that geographic units de ned in the
census are useful ways of gauging risk for the adverse health e ects of toxic facilities.
7. Anderton and colleagues (1994a) focus on private commercial hazardous waste treatment, storage,
and disposal facilities identi ed by Environmental Information, Ltd. (1992).
8. However, the 1994a Anderton et al. study also concluded that “TSDFs are more likely to be found in
tracts with Hispanic groups, primarily in regions with the greatest percentage of Hispanics” (1994a:
229).
9. is controversy has come to be known as the “race versus class debate” (see Been 1995; and Mohai
1995, 2008).
10. We should acknowledge that previous research by Bullard and colleagues (2007) and Mohai and Saha
(2006, 2007, 2015b) supplement the RCRA National Biennial Reports with data from the RCRIS,
Envirofacts, and EDS directories. e Bullard and colleagues study directly contacted facilities to
provide further veri cation. us, the sites in our analysis, while identi ed using a consistent source
across 2001 and 2011, are not directly comparable to the previous work.
11. State-by-state data was retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/enviro/br-search. “Management Loca-
tion” was set to “All,” “Waste Origin” was set to “Wastes received from o site.” Data was downloaded
by state, as a national dataset could not be downloaded from the interface.
12. We use tracts to be comparable with prior research using the distance-based method. For future
research, it is worth pursuing use of census blocks to derive even more precise measures of host-area
composition. However, with 11 million census blocks the creation of the demographic and economic
measures becomes signi cantly more demanding to compute.
13. e US Census Bureau abandoned the long form and created the American Community Survey in
2010.
14. Clustered facilities also presented a methodological challenge. To identify clustered facilities, we
started with the three-kilometer cluster previously analyzed in the Bullard and colleagues report
(2007). en, we used the GeoDjango’s distance lte lter to determine whether any other points were
within twice the radius (six kilometers) of both the original facility and any other facilities found to
be nearby. e polygons for each distance level were created for all the points in a cluster. We then
created a multi-polygon from the union of the polygons for each distance. Figure 4 shows a cluster
of hazardous waste sites in Los Angeles and the one-, three-, and ve-kilometer boundary multi-
polygons. As explained above, the 50% areal containment method was applied for these joined poly-
gons. is means that, for example, an intersecting census tract that passes through the one-kilome-
ter boundary polygons for two hazardous waste sites and that has at least 50% of its area between the
two boundaries would be included in the one-kilometer cohort.
15. Hawai‘i was also not included in this calculation.
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