The type of volunteer work in which older and younger adults engage may be part of the reason for these differential effects. But the context in which older and younger adults volunteer and the meaning of their voluntarism are more likely explanations. Researchers should take into account volunteer commitment when studying volunteering's effect on well-being, not simply volunteer role.

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A growing literature examines whether the poor, the working class, and people of color are disproportionately likely to live in environmentally hazardous neighborhoods. This literature assumes that environmental characteristics such as industrial pollution and hazardous waste are detrimental to human health, an assumption that has not been well tested. Drawing upon the sociology of mental health and environmental inequality studies, we ask whether industrial activity has an impact on psychological well-being. We link individual-level survey data with data from the U.S. Census and the Toxic Release Inventory and find that residential proximity to industrial activity has a negative impact on mental health. This impact is both direct and mediated by individuals' perceptions of neighborhood disorder and personal powerlessness, and the impact is greater for minorities and the poor than it is for whites and wealthier individuals. These results suggest that public health officials need to take seriously the mental health impacts of living near industrial facilities.A growing body of literature seeks to determine whether the poor, the working class, and people of color are disproportionately likely to live in environmentally hazardous neighborhoods (United Church of Christ 1987;Mohai and Bryant 1992;Hofrichter 1993; Anderton et al. 1994; Clarke and Gerlak 1998;Hockman and Morris 1998;Stretesky and Hogan 1998). An important underlying assumption of this literature is that the presence of negative environmental characteristics (such as industrial pollution, hazardous waste, and noise) and the absence of positive environmental characteristics (such as parks, trees, and open spaces) are detrimental to human health. However, while many researchers have addressed the issue of differential proximity and exposure to environmental hazards, the underlying assumption that environmental hazards negatively impact human health has been less well documented.We seek to remedy this shortcoming by asking whether industrial activity, measured at the neighborhood level, has a negative impact on individual psychological well-being. Drawing upon the sociology of mental health and environmental inequality studies we hypothesize that residential proximity to industrial activity has a negative impact on mental health and that this impact is both direct and mediated by individual perceptions of neighborhood * We are full coauthors. Data collection for the Community, Crime, and Health Survey was supported by a National Institute of Mental Health grant RO1 MH51558 to Catherine E. Ross and Chester Britt. We thank Ross and Britt for allowing us to use these data for this project. We also thank the American Sociological Association/National Science Foundation Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline, the East Carolina University Thomas In setting forth these hypotheses, we are not arguing that residential proximity to industrial activity is psychologically harmful because residents of industrial neighborhoods are disproportionately exposed...