White US neighborhoods have more EPA air quality monitors

Former ESS graduate student Brenna Kelly's research was published in the science journal JAMA Network Open and featured in The Guardian. The research findings showed that the Environmental Protection Agency's air quality monitors are disproportionately located in whiter neighborhoods in the US, which results in fewer protections for communities of color from dangerous pollutants. The EPA relies on monitor readings to develop the agency's  policy and actions, and communities of color are generally more likely to be near major polluters. 

Kelly shared, "The project evolved over a few years, but fundamentally I wanted to know whether monitoring (and, consequentially, the EPA data) was racially biased. I first discussed this research question with Dr. Simon Brewer in GEOG 6000, but I didn't begin the analysis until a year later in Dr. Tom Cova's Hazards Geography seminar. Our discussions of slow violence and inequity definitely shaped my thinking about chronic hazards like air pollution."