U of A Study Finds Lasting Psychological Impacts from Environmental Contamination
A study by researchers at Skidmore College and the University of Arizona, published in August 2026 in the Journal of Health Psychology, revealed long-lasting mental health harms from chronic environmental contamination across generations in affected communities and impacts on their collective identity. The study, “Collective trauma in the wake of historical environmental contamination,” by Skidmore’s Harrison Schmitt, along with U of A’s Elizabeth Yee and Daniel Sullivan, Department of Psychology, and Paloma Beamer, the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, focused on a predominantly low-income community on the Tucson International Airport Area Superfund site.
Starting in the 1950s, trichloroethylene (TCE), a chemical used for cleaning jet engines, contaminated an area near the Tucson airport, where Hughes Aircraft disposed of chemical waste. The TCE seeped into the groundwater beneath South Tucson, where, in 1981, the EPA found high levels of the chemical and added the area to its Superfund list. Cleanup began six years later, but by then thousands of residents had already been drinking contaminated water for years. Many developed serious and sometimes fatal health conditions. Research indicates that South Tucson residents and their descendants are still experiencing psychological trauma from living with the environmental contamination for decades.
In the past, research about the psychological effects of contamination exposure has focused on the harms individuals experience. These harms might include depression, chronic vigilance, and changes in a person’s “deeply held assumptions about the world.” This study expands on past research by examining how environmental contamination affects entire communities.
The researchers surveyed 363 people in three groups: first, people who lived, worked, or went to school in the affected area of South Tucson before 1981 and their children; second, people who moved to the area after 1981 and live there today; and third, a control group of people who live in a similar, non-exposed neighborhood. These three groups experienced comparable social and environmental vulnerabilities, but 34% of the first group alone reported clinical screening levels of post-traumatic stress (PTS) 40 years after the contamination was recognized publicly and mitigation began—a rate characterized by the authors as “fairly alarming.” In the other two groups, only 14.8% and 17.3% reported PTS symptoms at or above the clinical screening threshold.
The authors framed the research in terms of environmental justice and collective trauma. They suggest that this framework could provide a path forward for officials and public health workers seeking to rebuild trust and for communities seeking to understand their history. The observation that such communities show higher rates of civic engagement points to an empowering effect of contextualizing shared experience.