School locations and road transportation nuisances in Montreal: An environmental equity diagnosis

The analysis of the concentration of the traffic-related pollutants in the environments around elementary schools constitutes an important issue, as children are at school for a large part of the day and are physiologically vulnerable to these nuisances. The study has three main objectives. These are, respectively, to compare the levels of NO2 concentrations and road traffic noise in parcels of land that include a school with the levels for the rest of the Island of Montreal, to determine whether there are significant differences in the values obtained for the air and noise pollution indicators according to the schools' socioeconomic deprivation levels, and to identify, among these schools, those showing the highest levels of pollutants. The methodology was carried out in two stages. The parcels of land that include the 234 elementary schools and the 7,765 inhabited city blocks in the study area were first geocoded, and two air and road traffic noise pollution indicators were then calculated in all of the city blocks in the study area and in all of the parcels that include an elementary school. Our results show that elementary schools, regardless of their level of socioeconomic deprivation, are located in parcels where there is a lower level of road traffic noise but a similar level of NO2 concentration compared with city blocks without schools. However, the NO2 concentration in the parcels that include elementary schools is significantly and positively associated with the schools' socioeconomic deprivation level.