Industrial Pollution, Social Trust, and Civic Engagement: A Nationwide Study of the Socioenvironmental Nature of Social Capital

I conduct a nationwide investigation of the relationship that toxic industrial pollution and the facilities that produce it have with trust and civic engagement within communities. Data on pollution exposure come from the Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators Geographic Microdata (RSEI-GM) and Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data sets for the years 1995 to 1999. Data on trust and civic engagement come from the 2000 restricted-access Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS). Statistical analyses provide strong support for Freudenburg and Jones’ conceptualization of corrosive communities and indicate that exposures to more toxic air pollution associate negatively with various measures of trust, and that increased numbers of TRI facilities associate negatively with various measures of civic engagement. The implication is that exposure to toxic industrial air pollution and the facilities that produce it not only adversely affect the physical health of nearby communities, but also their social well-being and underlying capacities for collective action.