Abstract
Background
Legacies of discriminatory federal housing practices—e.g., racialized property appraisal by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and institutionalized redlining by the Federal Housing Administration—include disparate present-day environmental health outcomes. Noise pollution is health-harming, but just one study has associated contemporary noise with redlining in some HOLC-mapped United States (US) cities, while two national studies found associations between greater neighborhood-level people of color composition and increased noise. No studies have examined noise pollution exposure disparities across all HOLC-mapped cities or based on the intersection of race/ethnicity and redlining.
Objective
We address three objectives: (1) Assess disparities in fine-scale, per person transportation noise exposures by historical redlining status across all HOLC-mapped cities. (2) Quantify disparities in noise exposures by race/ethnicity nationwide. (3) Explore interactions between redlining status and race/ethnicity in noise exposures.
Methods
We analyzed three data sources: (1) complete digital HOLC maps of ordered investment risk grades (A–D), (2) fine-scale (30 m) estimates of transportation noise levels (year-2020), and (3) sociodemographic characteristics of individuals in year-2020 census blocks.
Results
We find an approximately monotonic association for excess transportation noise with HOLC grade, marked by a pronounced exposure increase (17.4 dBA or 3× loudness) between contemporary residents of grade A (highest-graded) and D (lowest-graded) neighborhoods, a pattern consistent across HOLC-mapped cities. People of color experience ~7 dBA greater (2× louder) excess transportation noise exposures than White people nationwide, a pattern consistent across US counties. Noise exposure disparities are larger by HOLC grade than by race/ethnicity. However, contemporary racial/ethnic noise exposure disparities persist within each HOLC grade at levels approximating those disparities existing in ungraded areas, indicating that historical redlining is one of multiple discriminatory practices shaping contemporary national soundscape injustices.
Significance
Findings illustrate how historical redlining and broader racialized inequalities in US society have shaped environmental injustices nationwide.
Impact statement
Excessive noise exposures harm human health. Communities of color in the United States experience disparate noise exposures, although previous studies are limited by reliance upon aggregated data. They are also disproportionately concentrated in historically redlined areas. Legacies of redlining include persistent racial and economic inequalities and environmental health disparities. Here, we conduct the first complete national examination of contemporary noise pollution disparities with respect to historical redlining and race/ethnicity. Findings advance understanding of the historical roots and enduring salience of race-based disparities in noise pollution exposures and can inform efforts to address these disparities through noise pollution policy-making.
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Data availability
All data used in this analysis are publicly available, as described in the Methods and Materials section. Complete data used in the analysis of HOLC city-level disparities between HOLC D zones and A zones are provided in Supplementary Table 3. Complete data used in the analysis of CONUS county-level disparities between people of color and White people are provided in Supplementary Table 4. The complete integrated dataset used in census block-level analyses are available from the corresponding author (TWC) upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the guest editors of this special issue for inviting us to submit this study as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. We are accountable for any errors of fact or omission.
Funding
This article is based on work supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences under award R25 ES031497.
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Both authors meet the four criteria for authorship as per the ICMJE Recommendations. 1) We have contributed to the conception and design of the work (TWC), the acquisition of the data (TWC) or the analysis and interpretation of the findings (TWC, SEG). And, 2) we have both contributed to the writing and revising of the manuscript and 3) have approved this version for submission to the journal. 4) We both agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
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Collins, T.W., Grineski, S.E. Race, historical redlining, and contemporary transportation noise disparities in the United States. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-024-00682-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-024-00682-x