The Age of Lead: Metropolitan Change, Environmental Health,and Inner City Underdevelopment in Baltimore
2017
In the Age of Lead, I use lead hazards as a case study
to explore the relationship between metropolitan development,
environmental health and social inequality. I argue that
lead-related technologies helped drive metropolitan development,
and that metropolitan development affected the size and
distribution of lead hazards. Suburbanites and suburban development
benefited from lead-related technologies, such as lead piping,
lead-solder, lead-acid batteries and leaded gasoline. These
benefits were often not shared by those in the inner city.
Moreover, many of the pollution externalities of these technologies
were foisted onto the residents of the inner city. This was
particularly true of leaded gasoline used by suburban commuters.
But the production and recycling of other lead products, such as
lead-acid batteries, was also concentrated in the inner city, and
so was the pollution from these products. In addition,
suburbanization increased lead hazards in the inner city by
accelerating housing deterioration, which exacerbated lead paint
hazards. Some suburbanites even benefited more directly from this
housing deterioration through their profitable ownership of slum
housing in the inner city. Suburbanites, meanwhile, were able to
carve out more environmentally healthy environments on the
metropolitan periphery. These dynamics were self-reinforcing. For
example, automobile pollution concentrated in the inner city pushed
more people to move to the suburbs, which created more automobile
pollution in the inner city when those suburbanites
commuted.
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