Social Inequities at the U.S.-Mexico Border: Pollution, Poverty, and Health

Southern Methodist University, Dallas TX

Investigators

Abstract

The U.S.-Mexico border provides a living laboratory in which to study the potentially detrimental effects of industrial pollution. This dissertation research in cultural anthropology will study the landscape of El Paso, Texas, as an arena in which the human and economic costs of increased ambient pollution and the unequal burdens of environmental risk can be evaluated. The project investigates the conditions under which the Hispanic-majority population in this expanding urban region along the U.S.-Mexico border perceives and responds to ambient pollution and the resultant respiratory disease in the context of their marginalized economic status. A comparative study between two ethnically and economically similar communities (but which experience different levels of environmental exposure) may reveal a difference in the incidence of respiratory disease as well as clarify some of the treatment seeking behaviors demonstrated under specific urban, industrial, and economic conditions. This research also explores the cultural significance of the relationship between the environment and health morbidity in children living in communities within, and more distant from, a contaminated atmosphere. This ethnographic research will contribute at several levels to the understanding of the relationships between pollution, poverty, and health. The empirical results from this two-community case study will be valuable to environmental scientists, health-care planners, and policy makers concerned with similar settings throughout the United States. This project also will provide important data for local-level governmental officials in the El Paso region and the broader border region by informing them of potential environmental risk situations. Finally, the research will offer culturally appropriate information that might help at-risk families in the communities to reduce their environmental risks and their rates of respiratory diseases