title: Assessing environmental inequalities in ambient air pollution across urban Australia.
abstract: Identifying inequalities in air pollution levels across population groups can help address environmental justice concerns. We were interested in assessing these inequalities across major urban areas in Australia. We used a land-use regression model to predict ambient nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels and sought the best socio-economic and population predictor variables. We used a generalised least squares model that accounted for spatial correlation in NO2 levels to examine the associations between the variables. We found that the best model included the index of economic resources (IER) score as a non-linear variable and the percentage of non-Indigenous persons as a linear variable. NO2 levels decreased with increasing IER scores (higher scores indicate less disadvantage) in almost all major urban areas, and NO2 also decreased slightly as the percentage of non-Indigenous persons increased. However, the magnitude of differences in NO2 levels was small and may not translate into substantive differences in health.
authors.affiliation: School of Population Health, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Electronic address: l.knibbs@uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Luke D
authors.initials: LD
authors.lastname: Knibbs
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health and Social Work & Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
authors.forename: Adrian G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Barnett
mesh_terms: D000397:Air Pollution / Q000032:analysis* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D001315:Australia; D004781:Environmental Exposure / Q000032:analysis* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009585:Nitrogen Dioxide / Q000032:analysis; D010083:Oxidants, Photochemical / Q000032:analysis; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014507:Urbanization / Q000639:trends
chemical_list: D010083:Oxidants, Photochemical; D009585:Nitrogen Dioxide
keywords: Air pollution; Australia; Environmental justice; Indigenous; Socio-economic