Air quality has always been thought of as a public health problem, but is it an issue for public safety? In this episode, we examine how pollution can impact levels of violent crime. Plus, how poor air quality in prisons creates a hostile environment for inmates and corrections officers.
Sources:
Air Pollution and Criminal Activity: Evidence from Chicago Microdata by Evan Hernstadt and Erich Muehlegger, 2015 .
On-going research into environmental factors and behavioral data at a prison on the East Coast, Dr Angela Haken.
Mukherjee A, Sanders NJ. The causal effect of heat on violence: social implications of unmitigated heat among the incarcerated. National Bureau of Economic Research; 2021.
Extreme Heat and Suicide Watch Incidents Among Incarcerated Men, David H Cloud, Emory University, Brie A Williams University of California, San Francisco, Regine Haardörfer, Emory University, Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, Vanderbilt University, 2023.
Impact of heat on all-cause and cause-specific mortality: A multi-city study in Texas, Chunyu Guo University at Albany, State University of New York, Kevin Lanza The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Dongying Li Texas A&M University, Yuyu Zhou The University of Hong Kong, 2023.
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