<p>This thesis discusses a longitudinal study of psychosocial effects in a population living within 2 kilometers of the Taro Aggregates Ltd. East Landfill site in Stoney Creek, Ontario. This facility has been the source of longstanding concerns among residents in the surrounding community. The focus of the study is local residents' reappraisal of the landfill over a nine-year period. The theoretical basis for the research lies in the fields of environmental stress and coping, place effects and risk perception. A telephone survey was administered to a random stratified (by distance) sample of households during the decision making process (1996) and five years after the landfill site was constructed and began operation (2002). In-depth interviews were conducted with a sub-set of respondents in 2005 in order to better understand how people act in, and give meaning to, their own lives. The scope of this research is based on the need for additional comparative, as well as longitudinal, studies that measure how individuals and communities respond to the process of making the decision to site a landfill, and how these responses change over time as they live with the landfill. This work is part of an ongoing, multidisciplinary research program designed to determine the impacts of exposure to environmental stressors on human health and well-being and to develop strategies to reduce their adverse effects.</p> <p>Residents' reappraisal of the Taro East Landfill site reveals little change in the frequency of landfill concerns over time, with over half the respondents maintaining concerns about the site in the post-siting process. There was a significant increase in the frequency of health concern, a shift in the nature of the health concern (short-term vs. long-term) and a reduced frequency of daily life effects (perceived/anticipated) and action-focused coping as residents lived with the landfill. While most used a variety of coping strategies to mitigate effects, emotion-focused strategies were used with greater frequency. The results reveal a range of factors that mediate residents' reappraisal of the landfill related to context (e.g., lack of meaningful involvement in the siting process, mismanagement, incidents), composition (e. g., socioeconomic status, dwelling tenure and type) and collective (e.g., distrust, inequity, stigma). These findings imply an ongoing process of reappraisal whereby, for many, latent concerns remain even though they have adapted to the landfill over time. The longitudinal nature of this study, the integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches, and the focus on factors affecting the reappraisal of an environmental stressor, are the primary contributions of this research.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/10419 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Sousa, Jessica L. |
| Contributors | Elliott, Susan J., Geography and Earth Sciences |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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