Polluting under the Radar: Emissions, Inequality, and Concrete Batch Plants in Houston

Abstract

Small industrial sources collectively release large amounts of pollution, including particulate matter (PM) that contributes to air quality problems in the United States and elsewhere. We study one such type of industrial facility, concrete batch plants, and analyze PM emissions and siting patterns of 131 plants located in Harris County, Texas. We find that concrete batch plants in Harris County are collectively a major pollution source, contributing between 38 and 111 tons of primary PM2.5 emissions (between 26%–76% of PM2.5 from the median Texas oil refinery) and between 109 and 493 tons of primary PM10 emissions (between 64%–290% of PM10 from the median refinery). Estimates from an integrated assessment model suggest that health damages from the PM2.5 emissions alone amount to $29 million annually, reflecting two additional premature deaths per year. We further find that concrete batch plants in Harris County are disproportionately located in census tracts with more low-income, Hispanic, and Black populations, thereby raising important environmental justice questions. On the basis of these findings, we argue that small pollution sources require more air quality monitoring and emissions reporting and that regulatory agencies should consider cumulative environmental and health impacts of these sources as part of the permitting process.

Environmental Justice and Systems Analysis for Air Quality Planning in the Port of Oakland in California

“…We elected to use InMAP/the ISRM, which models the physical transport and chemical formation of pollutants using 2005 WRF-Chem based meteorological data, as our mechanistic air quality model because of its efficiency , and applications to exposure domains of similar scale. ,− InMAP has also been used outside of the United States, − making the methodological steps presented in this research adaptable for other locations. Despite some limitations in the InMAP/ISRM (e.g., based on 2005 meteorological data, use of annually averaged input data, parametrization of some chemical relationships, underestimation of particulate sulfate and overestimation of particulate ammonium formation), it has been shown to have similar performance to other reduced-complexity air quality models and is within published air quality model performance criteria used to quantify monetized health damages. ,− …”