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Environmental Justice in the U.S.: History, policy issues and empirical analysis

Other

Event details

Seminar

Date & time

Tuesday 17 August 2010
12.30pm–1.30pm

Venue

Griffin Room, Level 1, JG Crawford Building 132, Lennox Crossing, ANU

Speaker

Dr Wayne B. Gray

Contacts

Hayley Primrose
6125 4387
Dr Gray will begin with a discussion of the history of Environmental Justice (EJ) concerns in the U.S.,
considering both the initial political pressures related to the siting of hazardous waste facilities and
the academic literature testing for EJ influences. He will then outline EPA’s recent efforts to apply
EJ concerns throughout their rule-making process and identify some methodological and practical
concerns with these efforts.
Finally, Dr Gray will present the results of two avenues of empirical EJ analysis using plant-level EPA
and Census data for 1,616 U.S. manufacturing plants. One avenue tests whether regulators treat
different segments of the population differently, while the other tests whether pollution from those
plants (air pollution emissions and toxic releases) differs based on neighborhood characteristics.

Wayne B. Gray holds the John T. Croteau Chair in Economics at Clark University, where he has taught since
1984, upon receiving his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. Dr Gray is also a Research Associate at
the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Director of the Boston Census Research Data Center, and a
member of EPA’s Advisory Council for Clean Air Compliance Analysis.

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