Environmental justice in a toxic economy: community struggles with environmental health disorders in Nova Scotia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The impoverished communities of Whitney Pier and Pictou Landing in Nova Scotia are struggling against a toxic economy that degrades human and environmental health. Proponents of environmental justice see these communities as part of a larger pattern, in which the poor and people of colour are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards from toxic development. In the United States, considerable research shows a strong correlation between environmental health risk and the social positions of race and class. In Canada, however, prior to this study, no comparable empirical research had been conducted. Through two approaches—statistical and descriptive—the relationship, between equity and environmental health, was determined to be similar to that in the US. However, Aboriginal reserves and industrial towns, including pulp and paper and steel towns, appear more at risk, rather than inner cities. A strong relationship between environment and health was evident with worse health outcomes (i.e., more cancer, respiratory and circulatory deaths per 100,000 deaths) occurring in areas with higher environmental health risks (p < 0.01). Environmental health risks, specifically abandoned waste disposal sites, hazardous facilities and toxic emission scores, were statistically significantly greater for: reserves (p < 0.05), poor communities (p < 0.01); and minority or Aboriginal communities (p < 0.05). This research found reserves to be in “double jeopardy”, suffering from both race and class barriers. These findings were used to build on the Healthy City Model by adding another key input—equity—to create a new model called the Equitable Health Community Model. In addition to the statistical investigation, interviews with community activists provide recommendations for ecosystem-based policies relating to human health and political economy. Case studies for Pictou Landing Reserve and Whitney Pier in Sydney were contrasted with three white middle class communities in Halifax finding differences in government responsiveness and other areas.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".