the role of cumulative risk assessment in decisions about environmental justice累计风险评估决策的作用环境正义.pdfVIP

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2010, 7, 4037-4049; doi:10.3390/ijerph7114037 OPEN ACCESS International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ISSN 1660-4601 /journal/ijerph Review The Role of Cumulative Risk Assessment in Decisions about Environmental Justice Ken Sexton 1,* and Stephen H. Linder 2 1 Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics, and Environmental Sciences, University of Texas School of Public Health, Brownsville Regional Campus, 80 Fort Brown, Brownsville, TX 78520, USA 2 Institute for Health Policy, University of Texas School of Public Health, 1200 Herman Pressler, Houston, TX 77030, USA; E-Mail: stephen.h.linder@ * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: ken.sexton@; Tel: +1-956-882-5164; Fax: +1-956-943-5152. Received: 15 October 2010; in revised form: 29 October 2010 / Accepted: 17 November 2010 / Published: 18 November 2010 Abstract: There is strong presumptive evidence that people living in poverty and certain racial and ethnic groups bear a disproportionate burden of environmental health risk. Many have argued that conducting formal assessments of the health risk experienced by affected communities is both unnecessary and counterproductive—that instead of analyzing the situation our efforts should be devoted to fixing obvious problems and rectifying observable wro