Analyzing patterns of community interest at a legacy mining waste site to assess and inform environmental health literacy efforts

Monica D. Ramirez-Andreotta, Nathan Lothrop, Sarah T. Wilkinson, Robert A. Root, Janick F Artiola, Walter Klimecki, Miranda M Loh

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

Understanding a community’s concerns and informational needs is crucial to conducting and improving environmental health research and literacy initiatives. We hypothesized that analysis of community inquiries over time at a legacy mining site would be an effective method for assessing environmental health literacy efforts and determining whether community concerns were thoroughly addressed. Through a qualitative analysis, we determined community concerns at the time of being listed as a Superfund site. We analyzed how community concerns changed from this starting point over the subsequent years, and whether: (1) communication materials produced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other media were aligned with community concerns; and (2) these changes demonstrated a progression of the community’s understanding resulting from community involvement and engaged research efforts. We observed that when the Superfund site was first listed, community members were most concerned with USEPA management, remediation, site-specific issues, health effects, and environmental monitoring efforts related to air/dust and water. Over the next 5 years, community inquiries shifted significantly to include exposure assessment and reduction methods and issues unrelated to the site, particularly the local public water supply and home water treatment systems. Such documentation of community inquiries over time at contaminated sites is a novel method to assess environmental health literacy efforts and determine whether community concerns were thoroughly addressed.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)543-555
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Environmental Studies and Sciences
Volume6
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 1 2016

Keywords

  • Community engagement
  • Community-engaged research
  • Environmental health literacy
  • Hazardous waste site
  • Legacy mining waste
  • Superfund site

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Geography, Planning and Development
  • General Environmental Science

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