Robert Earickson

The areal association of urban air pollutants and residential characteristics: Louisville and Detroit

Abstract Whereas there is substantial literature on the geographic aspects of air pollution and health effects of pollutants, there is a need to identify the specific urban neighbourhoods that are at risk from certain air pollutants. Louisville, Kentucky, and Detroit, Michigan, were selected for analysis because in these cities detailed data existed on mean blood lead levels among children aged 1–72 months. This research demonstrates (1) the dispersion of suspended particulates, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and aerosol lead over the two cities; (2) the distribution of socioeconomic characteristics and mean pediatric blood lead levels for census tracts in these cities; and (3) the statistical association between these pollutants, blood lead levels, and census characteristics. Although it is fallacious to claim, on the basis of this analysis, that lead in petrol is responsible for elevated blood lead among children in Louisville and Detroit, the implication remains that poor inner city residents, particularly children, are at higher risk of ill health due to air pollutants.

International behavioral responses to a health hazard: AIDS

This paper expands on Jonathan Manns third wave of the AIDS pandemic: the epidemic of economic, social, political, and cultural reaction and response to the HIV infection and to AIDS. This worldwide epidemic is a major economic challenge, especially in Third World countries, which can ill afford additional health care costs. AIDS is also a harbinger of political and cultural conflicts between and among nations, states, institutions, and people everywhere. It may ultimately transform law as radically as it has health care practices. In terms of management, it is possible to approach AIDS much as we do natural and technological hazards. The biology and epidemiology of AIDS require a coordinated attack, involving research on vaccines and drugs, modification of human behavior and education of populations to arrest the disease. All of these require money, of which the United States was the major contributor before the Reagan years. Funding to the United Nations and WHO has since languished, jeopardizing the AIDS efforts of those two organizations.