Using Spatial Analysis to Examine Potential Sources of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in an Environmental Justice Community After Hurricane Harvey

Stone, Kahler W.; Casillas, Gaston; Karaye, Ibraheem M.; Camargo, Krisa; McDonald, Thomas J.; Horney, Jennifer A.

doi:10.1089/env.2019.0007

Cited by 13 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…The event, from both rainfall and coastal flooding, resulted in broad redistribution of sediments in the Houston Ship Channel and Galveston Bay, including deposition of sediment known to be contaminated by a variety of chemicals [ 2 , 46 , 47 ] on shore in densely-populated residential areas. Previous studies documented redistribution of PAHs and other chemicals after Hurricane Harvey [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 48 , 49 ]. While the data on chemical contaminants in soil, water, or sediment samples would be typically used as a basis for risk management and remediation decisions [ 50 ], the distribution of the contaminants in affected areas is difficult to ascertain with precision over large areas of potential impact.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The sediments in the Galveston Bay are known to be contaminated by various types of hazardous chemicals including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polycyclic biphenyls (PCBs), pesticides, and heavy metals [ 2 ]. Indeed, recent studies indicated that post-Harvey, pollutants such as PAHs were redistributed in the environmental matrixes such as sediments [ 3 , 4 ] and soil [ 5 , 6 ], leading to potential new human health risks. Because disasters are emergency events, there is a pressing need to develop methods for rapid and comprehensive assessments of potential exposures to, and hazards of, complex environmental mixtures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Potential Human Health Hazard of Post-Hurricane Harvey Sediments in Galveston Bay and Houston Ship Channel: A Case Study of Using In Vitro Bioactivity Data to Inform Risk Management Decisions

Chen

Jang

Kaihatu

et al. 2021

IJERPH

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Natural and anthropogenic disasters may be associated with redistribution of chemical contaminants in the environment; however, current methods for assessing hazards and risks of complex mixtures are not suitable for disaster response. This study investigated the suitability of in vitro toxicity testing methods as a rapid means of identifying areas of potential human health concern. We used sediment samples (n = 46) from Galveston Bay and the Houston Ship Channel (GB/HSC) areas after hurricane Harvey, a disaster event that led to broad redistribution of chemically-contaminated sediments, including deposition of the sediment on shore due to flooding. Samples were extracted with cyclohexane and dimethyl sulfoxide and screened in a compendium of human primary or induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cell lines from different tissues (hepatocytes, neuronal, cardiomyocytes, and endothelial) to test for concentration-dependent effects on various functional and cytotoxicity phenotypes (n = 34). Bioactivity data were used to map areas of potential concern and the results compared to the data on concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the same samples. We found that setting remediation goals based on reducing bioactivity is protective of both “known” risks associated with PAHs and “unknown” risks associated with bioactivity, but the converse was not true for remediation based on PAH risks alone. Overall, we found that in vitro bioactivity can be used as a comprehensive indicator of potential hazards and is an example of a new approach method (NAM) to inform risk management decisions on site cleanup.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential Human Health Hazard of Post-Hurricane Harvey Sediments in Galveston Bay and Houston Ship Channel: A Case Study of Using In Vitro Bioactivity Data to Inform Risk Management Decisions

Chen

Jang

Kaihatu

et al. 2021

IJERPH

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“…Compared to higher income residents, lower income households recorded almost twice the house or apartment damage, due to the structurally poor housing quality and the disproportionate exposure to Harvey-induced flooding Fitzpatrick & Spialek, 2020). Moreover, elevated exposure to flooding and industrial encroachment also led to disproportionate contamination from toxic spills from plastic and chemical plants and oil refineries (Bodenreider et al, 2019;Flores, Castor, et al, 2020;Horney et al, 2018;Stone et al, 2019).…”

Section: Hurricane Harvey: An Unprecedented Extreme With Major Socio-economic Impactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scenarios of Human Responses to Unprecedented Social‐Environmental Extreme Events

2021

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In a rapidly changing world, what is today an unprecedented extreme may soon become the norm. As a result, extreme‐related disasters are expected to become more frequent and intense. This will have widespread socio‐economic consequences and affect the ability of different societal groups to recover from and adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions. Therefore, there is the need to decipher the relation between genesis of unprecedented events, accumulation and distribution of risk, and recovery trajectories across different societal groups. Here, we develop an analytical approach to unravel the complexity of future extremes and multiscalar societal responses—from households to national governments and from immediate impacts to longer term recovery. This requires creating new forms of knowledge that integrate analyses of the past—that is, structural causes and political processes of risk accumulation and differentiated recovery trajectories—with plausible scenarios of future environmental extremes grounded in the event‐specific literature. We specifically seek to combine the physical characteristics of the extremes with examinations of how culture, politics, power, and policy visions shape societal responses to unprecedented events, and interpret the events as social‐environmental extremes. This new approach, at the nexus between social and natural sciences, has the concrete advantage of providing an impact‐focused vision of future social‐environmental risks, beyond what is achievable within conventional disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, we focus on extreme flooding events and the societal responses they elicit. However, our approach is flexible and applicable to a wide range of extreme events. We see it as the first building block of a new field of research, allowing for novel and integrated theoretical explanations and forecasting of social‐environmental extremes.

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“…During Hurricane Harvey, highly industrialized regions of Houston were impacted and released various pollutants into the environment. The floodwaters distributed over one-million gallons of hazardous materials throughout the region (Christine and Yue Xie, 2018;Miller and Craft, 2018), resulting in widescale and long-term health impacts from exposure to bacteria, chemical toxins, mold, and carcinogens (Horney et al, 2018;Kapoor et al, 2018;Schwartz et al, 2018;Stone et al, 2019).…”

Section: Environmental and Social Impactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating social, economic, and environmental risk into flood management of aging dam infrastructure by combining cost-benefit and multi-criteria decision analyses

Castro

Rifai

2021

Preprint

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Abstract. Management planning for aging dam infrastructure is typically conducted through the lens of a traditional cost-benefit analysis, in which flood characteristics are related to implementation costs while lacking endogenous consideration of environmental risks (i.e., pollutant dispersion, habitat disruption) and social impacts (i.e., vulnerability, community buy-in, hazard resiliency). To address this gap, we integrate cost-benefit ratios into a spatial multi-criterion decision analysis framework that amalgamates a suite of social and environmental criteria with stakeholder-defined weights and inundation outputs from standard flood control modelling. We use this framework to assess the costs and trade-offs for eight (8) alternative mitigation strategies associated with the Addicks and Barker Reservoir System in Houston, Texas, USA under extreme rainfall conditions. This case study illustrates how the total effectiveness of flood management scenarios may shift when flood modelling outputs are combined with spatially distributed environmental and social risks. We merge quantitative and qualitative data for high-risk decision-making, thereby fostering stakeholder collaboration amongst conflicting goals.

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Using Spatial Analysis to Examine Potential Sources of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in an Environmental Justice Community After Hurricane Harvey

Cited by 13 publications

References 19 publications

Potential Human Health Hazard of Post-Hurricane Harvey Sediments in Galveston Bay and Houston Ship Channel: A Case Study of Using In Vitro Bioactivity Data to Inform Risk Management Decisions

Potential Human Health Hazard of Post-Hurricane Harvey Sediments in Galveston Bay and Houston Ship Channel: A Case Study of Using In Vitro Bioactivity Data to Inform Risk Management Decisions

Scenarios of Human Responses to Unprecedented Social‐Environmental Extreme Events

Integrating social, economic, and environmental risk into flood management of aging dam infrastructure by combining cost-benefit and multi-criteria decision analyses

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