Uncovering environmental injustice: the spatial distribution of air and noise pollution exposures in Leicestershire

Supervisors:

• Professor Anna Hansell ah618@leicester.ac.uk
• Dr Calvin Jephcote
• Dr Bharathy Kumaravel

Project description:

Project Highlights:

1) Examining how exposure to different sources of air and noise pollution (road, rail, aircraft and industry) varies across Leicestershire and their inter-relation.

2) Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) will be calculated for several health outcomes, to understand the extent to which noise-related environmental injustices exist in different age groups.

3) Diverse qualitative methods including Interviews, focus groups and auto-ethnographies will be used to understand (a) if and how modelled exposures align with everyday lived experiences of ‘sonic injustice’, and (b) how policies/interventions may mitigate such outcomes.  

The ‘triple jeopardy’ hypothesis states that low socioeconomic status communities face (1) higher exposure to air pollutants and other environmental hazards, (2) they have increased susceptibility to poor health (lifestyle and psychosocial stressors), which collectively result in (3) health disparities. A limited evidence base indicates that the burden of noise is unequally distributed in societies, however, this is not well understood, with exposures appearing more localised and different to traditionally explored environmental hazards.

Specifically, noise metrics will be locally modelled and obtained from the strategic noise maps at the postcode level for use in a quantitative ecological analysis, drawing on UK Census data.  A burden of disease assessment will calculate the disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for several health outcomes, to understand the presence and extent of noise-related environmental injustices (‘sonic injustice’) and to inform which communities a survey should target. The correlation between source specific noise and other environmental exposures, including air pollution and their relationship with deprivation and income inequality, will be analysed to quantify the accumulation of such burdens. 

Qualitative methods, such as interviews, auto-ethnographies, and focus group discussions (FGDs) will then be used to explore and analyse:  (a) how modelled exposures align with the everyday lived experience of communities identified by the GIS-based analysis, and (b) to understand how policies and interventions may mitigate such outcomes.

Scope exists for an air and noise pollution measurement campaign, with Zephyr Air Quality Monitors, in the priority areas identified by the models and survey.

To date, a single burden of disease analysis has explored the overlap between spatial variations in noise exposures and disease prevalence at a sub-national level. Furthermore, the evidence for ‘sonic injustice’ has typically only used either, self-reported noise exposure, small scale measurement campaigns, or models that only consider the partial contribution of road, rail, air pollution sources. A substantial proportion of the literature on ‘sonic injustice’ is likely impacted by exposure misclassification, to an unknown extent. This project seeks to address this concern by understanding the relationship between modelled and lived experiences.

Jephcote C, Clark S, Hansell A, et al. (2023). Spatial assessment of the attributable burden of disease due to transportation noise in England. Environment International, vol.178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2023.107966

Trudeau C, King N, and Guastavino C. (2023). Investigating sonic injustice: A review of published research. Social Science & Medicine, vol.326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115919

Pearce J, et al. (2010). Environmental justice and health: the implications of the socio-spatial distribution of multiple environmental deprivation for health inequalities in the United Kingdom. TIBG, vol.35. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2010.00399.x

Dreger S, et al. (2019). Social Inequalities in Environmental Noise Exposure: A Review of Evidence in the WHO European Region. Environmental Research and Public Health, vol.16. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16061011

Fecht D, et al (2016). Spatial and temporal associations of road traffic noise and air pollution in London: Implications for epidemiological studies. Environmental International, vol.88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2015.12.001