Appalachian Environmental Inequality: Examining the Changing Terrain of Community Composition and Industrial PBT Emissions, 2000-2020

Abstract

The emissions of toxic chemicals—and particularly persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemicals (PBTs)—by industrial actors have been a consistent focus for environmental justice and environmental sociology scholars. This study centers Appalachia as a context for the formation and continuation of environmental inequality through a critical environmental justice (CEJ) framework (Pellow 2017) as a region associated largely with extractive and polluting industrial presence. Through descriptive analysis of demographic change in the region, assessment of disproportionality in PBT emission, and modeling demographic characteristics’ relationship to PBT emissions, this dissertation presents a praxis-oriented application of CEJ to identify potential or existent sites of environmental inequality generated by PBT emitting industries in Appalachia from 2000 to 2020.