Environmental justice beyond race: Skin tone and exposure to air pollution.

ABSTRACT: Recent research, focused mostly on the United States and Western Europe, shows that marginalized communities often face greater environmental degradation. However, the ethnoracial categories used in these studies may not fully capture environmental inequality in the Global South. Moving beyond conventional ethnoracial variables, this study presents findings exploring the link between skin tone and fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) exposure in Colombia. By matching household geolocations from a large-scale longitudinal survey with satellite-based PM_2.5 estimates, we find that skin tone predicts both initial pollution exposure levels and their changes over time. Although average exposure levels remained stable during our study period, the environmental justice (EJ) landsc

SUBMITTER: Aguilar-Gomez S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11912393 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature