Environmental justice issues rose rapidly on the policy agenda during the 1990s, prompted by numerous but flawed studies that suggested a disproportionate effect of toxic chemicals and hazardous wastes on low-income and minority communities. Those findings were reinforced by political pressures from environmental justice groups to take corrective action to address what was often termed environmental racism. Horror stories of communities that suffered from high levels of exposure to air and water pollution and hazardous waste sites made the arguement both graphic and compelling.

Political scientists entered the fray to try to identify the key empirical questions and to bring appropriate data to bear. Attention has focused on class and race inequities in exposure to environmental risks (and the presumed health consequences), largely from living in close proximity to hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities. As scholars such as Evan Ringquist have noted so well, the methodological challenges faced in trying to address such concerns are formidable.

For example, we have good data on the location of polluting facilities, but living near such a facility is not the same as exposure to its toxic emissions. We also have fairly accurate measures of major chemical emissions by industries, courtesy of the U.S. Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), from which we infer human exposure. Further complicating the situation is the circumstantial evidence that links toxic chemical exposure to health effects, which may appear decades later.

The challenge for scholars has been to unravel this complex situation, largely by examining the relationship between chemical releases and the demographic characteristics of exposed populations. Even when statistical relationships of this kind are found, they may not tell us why environmental inequities occur and what might be done through public policies to reduce them.

Lester, Allen, and Hill offer a multilevel analysis of these relationships at different periods using multiple dependent variables. They examine the contiguous 48 states, the 2,080 U.S. counties for which TRI data are available, and the 410–414 U.S. cities with more than 50,000 residents where they could use TRI data. They employ seven measures of environmental harm to broaden the picture, including TRI chemical releases, air pollution levels, and Superfund sites. They focus on four categories of possible explanations for environmental inequities: race and ethnicity, class, political mobilization, and exogenous variables, such as pollution severity, political culture, government fiscal capacity, business climate, and the strength of environmental interest groups.

The argument is presented in ten relatively brief but densely written chapters, accompanied by 13 figures and 28 tables. The early chapters examine the nature of the environmental justice problem, review the literature (with particular attention to conceptual and methodological issues), and provide an elaborate history of the environmental justice movement.

The heart of the book is a well-developed model of environmental justice that seeks to integrate the variables noted above; three chapters that separately examinc environmental injustice at the state, county, and city level; and a summary of the findings and conclusions. The authors find no relationship between political mobilization and environmental injustice, mixed results for social class, and strong evidence of race-based injustice. Most of the additional explanations examined here, other than the severity of pollution, also yield mixed results. Two final chapters deal with policy implications. The authors review federal and state policy on environmental justice, noting in particular the impressive variation across states, and they systematically examine alternative policy designs based on the criteria of rationality, equity, and efficiency.

Readers may quibble with the selection of particular methods and in some ways question the writing style. For example, why focus on states, counties, and cities but not, as some scholars do, on finer levels of analysis, such as ZIP codes or Census tracks? The review literature tends to be rather heavy on citations (15 or 20 for some sentences) but light on a summary or assessment of what other scholars have done. This may not matter for those already familiar with the literature, but it will be difficult for undergraduates, and even many graduate students, to follow the authors' reasoning in these sections.

Similarly, the authors argue that case studies are an unreliable way to study environmental justice and that only national data of the kind they use can permit generalization. But case studies have some redeeming virtues. They often do a better job of conveying the real human burden created by environmental injustice as well as the political, economic, and social constraints that affect efforts to change the situation. The addition of some case studies might have complemented the statistical analysis.

The two policy-oriented chapters will be of special interest to many. After a detailed and finely structured policy analysis, the authors conclude that a risk-based solution that reflects the severity of pollution problems best meets their criteria. It can be justified in terms of rationality, efficiency in the use of scarce societal resources, and equity for all concerned. This conclusion squares well with arguments of environmental policy scholars over the past decade about the need to set priorities based on such risk levels. Yet, it is at odds with the views advanced by leaders of the environmental justice movement, who tend to favor race- or class-based solutions.

Lester, Allen, and Hill have much to say about how to study environmental justice and how to deal with the inherent conceptual and methodological complexities. Their analysis offers valuable insights into the multiple causes of environmental injustice and what might be done to address it. As a research report that seeks mainly to advance knowledge and further the debate over environmental equity, the volume will be of greatest interest to other scholars in the subfield and to graduate students in environmental politics and policy.