Faculty Mentor: Sara Grineski (Sociology, University of Utah)

This project is about Salt Lake County (SLC) residents’ perceptions of air pollution, with a focus on the differences in opinion about environmental policy between White and Hispanic residents. SLC periodically experiences some of the worst air pollution in the nation (Utah Department of Environmental Quality, 2019). Hispanic people in SLC are more exposed to dust from the Great Salt Lake (GSL) (Grineski et al., 2024), and annual average fine particulate matter (Collins & Grineski, 2019) than are White people.

The U.S. public is largely in favor of water conservation, by large industries, however, the public is not in favor of reducing water usage from agricultural sources (Stoutenborough & Vedlitz, 2014). Hispanic people have strong pro-environmental attitudes regarding political action, and climate policy (Ballew et al., 2019).

This project focuses on assessing levels of support for policies designed to reduce air pollution in SLC, including those policies focused on increasing water levels in the GSL via water conservation. We examine differences between Hispanic and White (non-Hispanic) residents.

References

Collins, Timothy W., and Sara E. Grineski. “Environmental injustice and religion: Outdoor air pollution disparities in metropolitan Salt Lake City, Utah.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 109, no. 5 (2019): 1597–1617.

Grineski, S. E., Mallia, D. V., Collins, T. W., Araos, M., Lin, J. C., Anderegg, W. R. L., & Perry, K. (2024). Harmful dust from drying lakes: Preserving Great Salt Lake (Usa) water levels decreases ambient dust and racial disparities in population exposure. One Earth, 7(6), 10561067. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2024.05.006

Utah Department of Environmental Quality, PM2.5 Moderate Area State Implementation Plans (SIPs) (2009-2014). (2019, June 13).. https://deq.utah.gov/air-quality/pm2-5-moderate-sips-20092014

Stoutenborough, J. W., & Vedlitz, A. (2014). Public Attitudes Toward Water Management and Drought in the United States. Water Resources Management, 28(3), 697–714. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-013-0509-7

Ballew, M. T., Goldberg, M. H., Rosenthal, S. A., Cutler, M. J., & Leiserowitz, A. (2019). Climate Change Activism Among Latino and White Americans. Frontiers in Communication, 3. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00058