Low-Income Communities and People of Color Live With Much More Polluted Air Than Previously Thought

Climate change and inequality are locked in a perverse loop: Impoverished areas are home to pollutive NIMBY industries that release the gases that lead to more climate change, which in turn adversely affects these communities more than any other. And, to add insult to injury, a study out this week has found that that air quality in communities of color and low-income areas is much worse than previously thought.

A block-by-block study of San Francisco has revealed that people of color are more likely to live in smoggy conditions than white people — 55 percent more likely. Although researchers have long surmised this stark difference, the study, from California-based tech company Aclima, innovated the use of highly sensitive monitors mounted on cars that drove through the city’s neighborhoods more than 20 times, picking up on particulate matter that has otherwise gone unmeasured.

Yes, the government also studies U.S. air quality, through the Environmental Protection Agency, but it does so from stationary instruments. The more dynamic method employed by Aclima showed that the farther out they drove from the EPA’s monitors, the higher the nitrogen dioxide concentration — and the more impoverished the community. NO2 is a major component of smog.

“If you go to communities of color across this country and ask them, ‘What’s the source of the environmental problems?’ they can point you to every one: the highway, the chemical plants, the refineries, the legacy pollution left over from decades ago, in the houses, in the air, in the water, in the playgrounds,” Robert D. Bullard, a professor who studies environmental racism at Texas Southern University, told The New York Times in April 2021. “Empirical research is now catching up with the reality: that America is segregated and so is pollution.”

In fact, the Bay Area’s air pollution levels (called PM 2.5 — particulate matter that has a diameter of 2.5 microns or less, also known as soot) is at a much higher level than the World Health Organization recommends for safety, 10 micrograms per cubic feet of air. The EPA sets its limit much, much higher, at 100 micrograms, despite the major health risks in doing so.

The WHO makes clear that “small particulate pollution has health impacts even at very low concentrations — indeed no threshold has been identified below which no damage to health is observed.” Knowing this, the WHO wants the world to work toward having the lowest concentrations of particulate matter in the air possible.

A 2019 study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found that exposure to PM 2.5 “is disproportionately caused by consumption of goods and services mainly by the non-Hispanic white majority, but disproportionately inhaled by black and Hispanic minorities.”

The authors wrote that, on average, non-Hispanic whites experience what they call a “pollution advantage,” meaning that they experience less air pollution exposure than is caused by their consumption. They wrote that “Blacks and Hispanics on average bear a ‘pollution burden’ of 56 percent and 63 percent excess exposure, respectively, relative to the exposure caused by their consumption. The total disparity is caused as much by how much people consume as by how much pollution they breathe.”

Sacoby Wilson, a professor of environmental health at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health who serves on Aclima’s environmental justice advisory board, told The Washington Post: “When you compare the levels of pollution Aclima found to WHO guidelines, it’s like, ‘Oh my God.’ It’s not just a race issue. You have to look at both race and income” — not to mention historical, discriminatory redlining, which shunted people of color into low-income areas by denying them financial services like home loans.

In Wilson’s opinion, the EPA, founded in 1970, is “30 to 40 years behind where they need to be.”

And this is in just a single U.S. city. Aclima has been working on measuring hyperlocal emissions pollution everywhere from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Dublin, Ireland. With more data in hand, more solutions are possible for underserved communities. Steps to reduce the harm caused by particulate matter can — and must — be undertaken. That’s the bare minimum low-income and communities of color deserve after centuries of being shunted into the most polluted areas of the world.