Impact of environmental inequity on health outcome: Where is the epidemiological evidence?

A significant amount of evidence reveals a presence of environmental inequi ty. Although there is a disproportionate distribution of waste treatment, s torage and disposal Facilities, and chemical and manufacturing plants in mi nority and low-income communities in the United States, little research has been devoted to show any associations based on analytic epidemiological me thods. To date, attempts to quantify health disparities have included demog raphic data, race, sex, income, other socioeconomic factors, and broad symp tomatic survey instruments. To study this, we examined the latest epidemiol ogical evidence documenting the existence of adverse health impacts resulti ng From environmental inequity. We observed that the overwhelming majority of studies were descriptive in nature and lacked- comparison populations. A s a result, we believe that further research based on analytic epidemiologi cal methods would further contribute to the determination of the cause-effe ct relationship between environmental exposure and health outcome.