A nice cup of tea.

who share the benefits of the undesirable facility provide compensation to those who host the facility. The compensation could be in the form of direct payment to individuals in the community, or through investments to improve the community. Boerner and Lambert also detailed benefits that communities could reap by supporting the construction of polluting and waste facilities in their areas. Among these are the economic benefits a facility could bring to a disadvantaged neighborhood, such as the creation of jobs. This type of compensation approach would allow communities to be involved in the negotiating process. Early results of an ongoing empirical study at the University of Massachusetts also cast doubt on claims that hazardous waste facilities are more likely to be located in low-income and minority neighborhoods. The researchers, Douglas Anderton and Andy Anderson, both sociology professors , released a preliminary study revealing that commercial, off-site treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs) are actually more likely to be located in white, working-class, industrial neighborhoods. The two-year study examined census bureau tracts, groupings of 4,000 people, rather than ZIP-code data, which had been used in many of the previous studies. Tracts containing commercial hazardous waste TSDFs were compared to tracts without TSDFs. The researchers had expected to find results similar to previous studies on environmental al justice. "We were all pretty surprised , including the waste industry," Anderton said. "In retrospect we shouldn't have been, because what we found was that these facilities were not much different than any other industrial facilities." They found that the neighborhoods surrounding TSDFs were made up of white, working-class people , similar to most communities located around other types of industrial facilities. The study has been criticized by environmental justice advocates because the pre-1990 census tract data that was analyzed excludes rural areas. They claim that if rural areas were assessed, the results could be different. However, Anderton says ongoing research involves 1990 census data that includes rural areas, and the results appear to be similar. Anderton and Anderson do admit that there are limitations to this study. For example, only commercial, off-site TSDFs were studied; Superfund sites, closed TSDFs, and on-site storage were excluded. They also cited other sources of environmental risk not studied that could unfairly burden minority and poor populations, including lead paint, soil contamination, and air pollution. "Some of the limitations of this research should be noted so the results of …