ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship between community-level exposure to air toxics and socioeconomic, political, and demographic characteristics of the population. The practice of aggregating emissions by weight also has implications for academic studies of the distribution of pollution across demographic and socioeconomic lines. The chapter examines the determinants of changes over time in exposure, using the same set of explanatory variables. An index of exposure that is sensitive to toxicity differences and to distance from the emission source is constructed. The neglect of air toxics by regulators has been mirrored in academic research: studies of the distribution of exposure to air pollution have also tended to focus on exposure to the criteria pollutants. The chapter investigates the impact of various socioeconomic and political determinants on the level of exposure to toxic point-source air emissions. In order to investigate the impact of socioeconomic and political determinants on changes in the level of exposure over time, a logistic model was used.
