Motairek Issam, Chen Zhuo, Makhlouf Mohamed H E, Rajagopalan Sanjay, Al-Kindi Sadeer
Harrington Heart and Vascular Institute, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, Cleveland, OH.
School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH.
Local Environ. 2023;28(4):518-528. doi: 10.1080/13549839.2022.2155942. Epub 2022 Dec 10.
To stabilize the housing market during the great depression, the government-sanctioned Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) created color coded maps of nearly 200 United States cities according to lending risk. These maps were largely driven by racial segregation, with the worst graded neighborhoods colored in red, later termed redlined neighborhoods. We sought to investigate the association between historical redlining, and trends in environmental disparities across the US over the past few decades. We characterized environmental exposures including air pollutants (e.g., NO2 and fine particulate matter), vegetation, noise, and light at night, proximity hazardous emission sources (e.g., hazardous water facilities, wastewater discharge indicator) and other environmental and social indicators harnessed from various sources across HOLC graded neighborhoods and extrapolated census tracts (A [lowest risk neighborhoods] to D [highest risk neighborhoods]). Lower graded areas (C and D) had consistently higher exposures to worse environmental factors. Additionally, there were consistent relative disparities in the exposures to PM2.5 (1981-2018) and NO2 (2005-2019), without significant improvement in the gap compared with HOLC grade A neighborhoods. Our findings illustrate that historical redlining, a form of residential segregation largely based on racial discrimination is associated with environmental injustice over the past 2-4 decades.
为了在大萧条期间稳定住房市场，政府批准成立了房主贷款公司（HOLC），该公司根据贷款风险为近200个美国城市绘制了颜色编码地图。这些地图很大程度上受种族隔离的驱动，评级最差的社区被涂成红色，后来被称为红线社区。我们试图研究历史上的红线划分与过去几十年美国各地环境差异趋势之间的关联。我们对环境暴露进行了特征描述，包括空气污染物（如二氧化氮和细颗粒物）、植被、噪音和夜间灯光、靠近危险排放源（如危险水设施、废水排放指标）以及从HOLC评级社区和推断的人口普查区（从A[风险最低的社区]到D[风险最高的社区]）的各种来源获取的其他环境和社会指标。评级较低的区域（C和D）始终面临更差环境因素的更高暴露。此外，在PM2.5（1981 - 2018年）和二氧化氮（2005 - 2019年）的暴露方面存在持续的相对差异，与HOLC A级社区相比，差距没有显著改善。我们的研究结果表明，历史上的红线划分，一种主要基于种族歧视的居住隔离形式，与过去二至四十年的环境不公正有关。
