“Demand for Environmental Policies to Improve Health: Evaluating Community-level Policy Scenarios”

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Using a national survey and a discrete choice experiment format, we estimate demand for environmental polices to improve health. We use a richly detailed community-level approach that describes illnesses avoided, premature deaths avoided, policy duration, and the affected population size. We allow preferences for policy attributes to vary systematically with the scenario design, with the source of risk and type of health threat, and with respondent characteristics. Using a willingness to pay (WTP) framework similar to that used for studies of individual risk, we find that omission of illness information leads to an upward bias in estimates of the value of avoided premature deaths and that individuals view avoided deaths and avoided illnesses as substitutes. We also find evidence of strongly diminishing marginal utility in policy scope. Differences in marginal WTP from different sources of risk or types of illness appear very small relative to differences associated with respondent characteristics and/or perceptions. Self-interest strongly dominates altruistic considerations.

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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJ6-4TN0KS5-2…

Why A Prevention-based Approach to Managing the Risk of Engineered Nanomaterials Makes Sense and How to Get There

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The existing toxicology literature on ultrafine particles and engineered nanomaterials suggest that nanomaterials may pose a threat to human health and the environment. A major challenge for the companies that produce and use these materials and for regulatory agencies is the issue of how to manage the risks of these materials while simultaneously leveraging the technological advantages that they offer over conventional materials. A major source of uncertainty in this field is created by the substantial gaps in our understanding about how the chemical, physical, and materials properties of nanomaterials correlate with their fate and transport in the environment and their biological activity. A major goal of the UC Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology is to engage in highly interdisciplinary research to minimize these gaps and the corresponding uncertainty. In this talk, unique opportunities for synergism between developing environmentally-safe design principles and driving medical and environmental applications of nanotechnology will be discussed. In addition, steps that can be taken at both the state and national level to minimize risk while the field of “predictive nanotoxicology” is being developed will be presented. By way of example, a review of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control’s mandatory call in for information from manufacturers of carbon nanotubes will be presented and placed in the context of how we as a country might move forward in the near term to effectively regulation of nanomaterials.

http://eprints.internano.org/499/

“Explaining Racial/Ethnic Gaps In Spatial Mismatch: The Primacy of Racial Segregation”

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Despite declines in racial segregation across most U.S. metropolitan areas in recent years, racial and ethnic minorities still display uneven geographic access to jobs. In this article, we provide a detailed analysis of the factors driving racial and ethnic gaps in spatial mismatch conditions across U.S. metropolitan areas. Using data primarily from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census, and the 1994 and 1999 Economic Census and the Zip Code Business Pattern files we generate descriptive, multivariate, and decompositional evidence to address why blacks and to a lesser extent Latinos display greater degrees of spatial mismatch than whites. The results indicate that racial segregation in housing markets among many other factors including job sprawl, is the most important factor. Our models indicate that racial differences in spatial mismatch conditions, particularly between blacks and whites, should be eliminated in 45 to 50 years should racial segregation levels continue to decline in the future at similar rates observed over the 1990s.

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