A regional approach to militarized riskscapes: An environmental justice analysis of military proximity and air pollution in United States Environmental Protection Agency's regions

Abstract

Recent advances in sociological appreciation of risk have culminated in the concept of riskscapes, which describe how the social, political, biophysical, and technological drivers of risk are embedded within different spaces in ways that can reinforce systemic inequities. The U.S. military has long been recognized as an important structural and institutional contributor to environmental problems and therefore potentially riskscapes. However, the regional environmental injustice consequences of military presence have received little attention. To address this need, here we construct a regionalized military riskscapes modeling strategy that focuses on understanding environmental riskscapes across regional contexts. Using multilevel models with random intercepts, our exploratory analysis reveals differences in racial and ethnic environmental health exposure associated with proximity to military facilities across the 10 administrative regions used by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Furthermore, we find that the relative contributions to local air pollution profiles arising from military and non-military sources likely differ by region, as do consequent environmental justice concerns. For example, in the Midwest, Central Mountain, and West/Southwest regions neighborhoods with more Latinx residents experience intensified air pollution inequalities associated with proximity to military installations. Neighborhoods with more