Green Space, Wildfires, and Access to Clean Vehicles: Characterizing Public Health and Equity Outcomes Associated with Environmental Exposures and Policy Implementation across California

• Main Author: Connolly, Rachel Emma
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2023
• Subjects: Environmental Health; Environmental Justice; Public health
• ISBN: 9798377644903

Despite a growing body of research and policy action to increase environmental equity in California, vulnerable populations remain disproportionately environmentally disadvantaged, experiencing a wide spectrum of environmental injustices. Though California is a national leader in combating climate change, with ambitious climate change targets and priorities, the vulnerability of disadvantaged populations also has the potential to increase with impending climate impacts. Ultimately, this dissertation aims to identify pathways to improve environmental health and attain equity across California. We use various methods in the environmental health sciences field – including geospatial techniques, dose-response analysis, qualitative thematic analysis, and predictive modeling – to characterize environmental health impacts from various exposures and identify evidence-based strategies to improve environmental conditions, providing action-oriented research that can result in policy change. This dissertation includes three aims, each of which has a distinct motivation stemming from California’s climate priorities and environmental justice concerns throughout the state. This work is divided into the following five chapters: an introduction (Chapter 1), three chapters of primary research (Chapters 2-4) and the conclusions and future research directions (Chapter 5).First, we used recently released small-area life expectancy data to quantify the relationship between life expectancy and green space in Los Angeles County, a large diverse region with inequities in park access. Our predictive models analyzing remote sensing and satellite imagery-based greenness metrics demonstrated that neighborhood-level greenness is positively associated with life expectancy. Additionally, we found evidence that access to higher park acreage is only predictive of longer life expectancy for populations residing in neighborhoods with a lower percentage of tree canopy cover than the county median. This finding suggests that parks become a more important component of green infrastructure when other sources of green space are unavailable, which within the Los Angeles context is often in neighborhoods with lower socioeconomic status and more communities of color. We found that more than 110,000 years of life expectancy could be saved for just Hispanic/Latinx and Black residents if park acreage were to be increased to the median level in less green areas. This has distinct environmental justice implications.Then, we quantified the total mortality burden for exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) due to wildland fires in California using eleven years of Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system fire PM2.5 estimates. We applied ZIP code level mortality data and an estimated wildfire-specific chronic dose-response coefficient accounting for the likely toxicity of wildfire smoke, estimating between 47,100 and 50,360 premature deaths are attributable to wildland fire PM2.5 over the eleven-year period. This mortality burden for 2008-2018 equates to an economic impact of $387 to $413 billion. These findings extend evidence on climate-related health impacts, suggesting that wildfires account for a substantial mortality and economic burden.Finally, we analyzed procedural equity in household-level just transition policies and associated programs, which are designed to increase the uptake of novel technologies through the provision of incentives and rebates. We accomplished this through a case study of a longstanding equity-focused electric vehicle incentive program in the United States, the Clean Cars 4 All (CC4A) program offered in California. We used the academic literature to develop a broader conceptual procedural equity framework for household-level just transition policies. We then conducted interviews with program stakeholders and benefit recipients to analyze the extent to which various regional CC4A program implementation strategies have achieved procedural equity outcomes, using the framework we developed. We find that while regionally distinct strategies are valuable in tailoring approaches to meet community heterogeneity, the decentralized program implementation structure has resulted in inconsistency in the realization of procedural equity outcomes. These procedural impacts also influence the distributive dimension of equity. The framework developed in this study can be applied in future procedural equity analyses of other policies, and our findings have significant implications for ensuring a just transition to clean energy more broadly.