Environmental injustices of childrenʹs exposure to air pollution from road-transport within the model British multicultural city of Leicester: 2000–09 Original Research Article

The significant contribution of road-transport to air pollution within the urban arena is widely acknowledged, and traditionally explored in relation to health outcomes across a temporal scale. However, the structure of the urban environment is also of importance in dictating the existence of extremely variable traffic pollutant levels, which often tend to be linked with social disparities. Nevertheless ‘Environmental Justice’ studies have rarely tackled the adverse health implications of exposures from mobile sources (Chakraborty, 2009), or have applied statistical techniques that are appropriate for such spatial data (Gilbert and Chakraborty, 2011). This article addresses these gaps by spatially examining the distribution of respiratory hospitalisation incidents of children aged 0–15 years in relation to social circumstances and residential exposures of annual PM10 road-transport emissions within Leicester during 2000–09. Continuing upon the theme of ‘Environmental Justice’, the research explores the intra-urban spatial distribution of those who produce and residentially experience the majority of road-transport emissions. The findings indicate significant global relationships to exist between childrenʹs hospitalisation rates and social-economic-status, ethnic minorities, and PM10 road-transport emissions within Leicester. Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) identified important localised variations within the dataset, specifically relating to a double-burden of residentially experienced road-transport emissions and deprivation effecting inner city childrenʹs respiratory health. Furthermore, affluent intra-urban communities tended to contribute the highest levels of emission from private transport, while residentially experiencing relatively low exposure of transport emissions. This would suggest that environmental injustices prevail across the model British multicultural city of Leicester.