Metal air pollution partnership solutions: building an academic-government-community-industry collaboration to improve air quality and health in environmental justice communities in Houston

Abstract

Background: From 2006 to 2011, the City of Houston received nearly 200 community complaints about air pollution coming from some metal recycling facilities. The investigation by the Houston Health Department (HHD) found that while operating within legal limits, emissions from facilities that use torch cutting, a technique generating metal aerosols, may increase health risks for neighboring residents. Choosing to use collaborative problem solving over legislative rulemaking, HHD reached out to The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) to further evaluate and develop plans to mitigate, if necessary, health risks associated with metal emissions from these facilities. Methods: Utilizing a community-based participatory research approach, we constituted a research team from academia, HHD and an air quality advocacy group and a Community Advisory Board (CAB) to draw diverse stakeholders (i.e., frustrated and concerned residents and wary facility managers acting within their legal rights) into an equitable, trusting and respectful space to work together. Next, we investigated metal air pollution and inhalation health risks of adults living near metal recyclers and ascertained community views about environmental health using key informant interviews, focus groups and surveys. Finally, working collaboratively with the CAB, we developed neighborhood-specific public health action plans to address research findings.

Evaluation of metal aerosols in four communities adjacent to metal recyclers in Houston, Texas, USA

“…The health risk estimates displayed similar patterns. While risks, if they were elevated, were relatively modest, these findings coupled to community survey results have been used to develop a public health action plan that will be reported on separately – including voluntary controls implemented by the metal recyclers – to improve environmental health in our MAPPS neighborhoods ( Symanski et al 2020 ).…”

“…Given resident 311 calls, the HHD air monitoring campaign and the potential risks of acute or chronic metal exposures as they relate to cancer ( IARC 1990 ) and neurodevelopmental ( Haynes et al 2018 ; Leonhard et al 2019 ) and cardiovascular ( Yang et al 2019 ; Ye et al 2018 ) outcomes, we designed and conducted a community-based participatory research (CBPR) study, Metal Air Pollution Partnership Solutions (MAPPS) (NIEHS #R01ES023563) to evaluate and mitigate the impact of metal emissions from MRs in four environmental justice (EJ) communities in Houston, TX ( Symanski et al 2020 ). The purpose of this paper is to describe results from our 20-month air monitoring campaign where we simultaneously measured 7-hour concentrations of 10 metals in inhalable particle samples (aerodynamic particle size less than 10 μm, PM 10 ) at four sampling sites in each neighborhood, including the fence line, an upwind site and two downwind neighborhood sites, as well as our neighborhood-, location- and metal-specific inhalation risk assessment findings.…”

CBPR Partnerships and Near-Roadway Pollution: A Promising Strategy to Influence the Translation of Research into Practice

“…CBPR is designed specifically to move research to practice and policy [26]. For example, in Houston a CBPR partnership including residents as well as stakeholders from the academy, government and industry and focused on metal emissions was able to increase capacity for change by creating a shared understanding of the issue across stakeholder groups [27]. This process led to the development of a comprehensive community action plan [27].…”

Applying Social Science to Bring Resident Stakeholders into Pollution Governance: A Rural Environmental Justice Public Health Case Study

“…As things progressed, a few of the Houston neighborhood recycling companies relocated to an industrial location and one facility closed. However, some of the companies, such as Allied Alloys, took a proactive approach to voluntarily limit emissions (Lobet 2012; Symanski et al 2020). In response to ongoing resident complaints, a task force was eventually created and a CBPR approach was taken to address the air pollution coming from some of the metal recycling facilities (Han et al 2020).…”

“…Despite the failure of governance efforts to regulate pollution, Houston successfully developed a community-academic-government-industry partnership that secured funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to conduct a 20-month air monitoring public health campaign. They partnered with a community organization but also expanded upon traditional partnerships to include representatives from the impacted neighborhoods and from industry (Symanski et al 2020). They gathered information about stakeholder’s views and concerns about their neighborhood and environmental health and worked with the Houston Health Department to conduct community air monitoring in four selected neighborhoods that focused on public health.…”