EXPLORING ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE AND AIR POLLUTION-RELATED HEALTH EFFECTS IN PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MARYLAND
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Polluting facilities have been historically sited in disadvantaged communities of color, known as environmental justice (EJ) communities, due to limited perceived community resistance and mobilization. There is a plethora of air quality disparity research but a gap persists in ascertaining the health inequities associated with community exposure to air pollutants, such as particulate matter (PM) and black carbon (BC), at the neighborhood resolution. To address this gap in EJ science, this dissertation has four specific aims: (1) Implement the community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework to expand and enhance the community-engaged infrastructure to ensure the success of Aims 2-4; (2) Identify spatiotemporal pollution patterns across the Route 50-Sheriff Road-Kenilworth Ave Quadrant; (3) Determine short-term health impacts associated with community exposure to PM and BC via a panel study involving pulse oximeters to correlate elevated PM and BC levels to blood oxygen saturation (SpO2 levels); and (4) Conduct semi-structured interviews and use NVivo to perform thematic analysis on barriers and motivating factors towards passing EJ legislation. My findings demonstrated that a more diverse and representative community advisory board (CAB) allowed us to successfully conduct research while maintaining trust within the community, and bringing in voices from various demographic groups, including different ethnicities, ages, income levels, and geographic locations. This led to a more comprehensive understanding of the community's concerns, priorities, and needs related to air quality. Additionally, my findings revealed that both PM and BC levels were elevated during morning rush periods. PM levels did not exceed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) annual standards, but did exceed the more protective World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Robert Gray Elementary School exhibited higher PM levels than the other Quadrant sites. Furthermore, BC levels at Fairmount Heights High School were above the threshold defined in the literature above which cognitive inhibition and poor respiratory outcomes have been observed, highlighting the effect of air pollution exposure on vulnerable life stages in the Quadrant. BC peaks were also observed 10-15x these unofficial health-based thresholds. Using a pulse oximetry panel study, we found previous and concurrent day lagged fine particulate matter (PM2.5) was weakly associated with reductions in SpO2. Using NVivo, we identified 18 parent codes and 27 subcategories from our semi-structured interviews with Maryland policymakers/agency staff. Key barriers were: (1) the lack of strategic EJ plans; (2) limited community engagement particularly from those living in communities impacted by environmental injustice; and (3) interagency and policymaker collaboration exacerbated by a clear partisan divide. These findings provide evidence of previous misclassified exposure assessments from sparse existing regulatory monitors, present strategies for overcoming EJ barriers in the state, and underscore the importance of collaboration, community engagement, and policy reform to address environmental disparities and promote environmental justice.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".