How Environmental Injustice is Playing a Role in Racial Disparity of COVID-19 Deaths
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Environmental injustice is not a new phenomenon: many urban communities who face the largest burdens of pollution are also low income and/or communities of color. Recently, startling connections have been made by the country’s leading public health experts on a possible connection between the disproportionate COVID-19 deaths in racial minorities and the environmental hazards of the communities in which they live.
The city of Chicago has seen one of the nation’s largest racial inequalities of coronavirus deaths. Initial COVID-19 numbers from Chicago health officials showed black individuals have accounted for 70% of deaths in the area, while only representing one-third of the total Chicago population. Chicago is just one of the many places where this racial disparity can be seen. Black communities -- and Hispanic communities to a lesser degree -- make up a disproportionate fraction of deaths compared to their percentage of the overall population. While this can be attributed to pervasive issues around race in our public health system and government, such as lack of access to health care and lower life expectancy among black communities, there is also a connection to environmental injustice.
At the same time as these racial disparities are coming to light, researchers have linked air pollution with higher COVID-19 death rates. A recent study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health surveyed 3000 counties across the United States and found a correlation between long-term exposure to fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) and higher rates of hospitalization and death from COVID-19. Though particulate matter is not the only air pollutant that negatively impacts health, it is a key pollutant in urban and industrial regions and the first with a demonstrated connection to coronavirus fatalities.
It doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to connect the dots between these two issues, and that’s what leaders in the study of environmental justice are doing. One leader in this field, Sacoby Wilson of the University of Maryland, articulated these links with great clarity in an interview with Yale Environment 360. Dr. Wilson pointed out the prevalence of underlying health conditions in communities of color that would make individuals more susceptible to the coronavirus, such as diabetes, heart disease, and asthma. These health conditions are a result of the historic injustice against racial minorities, in terms of economic disadvantages that contribute to a lack of equal access to health care, but also a lack of political power and voice to argue for the right to cleaner air.
The United States has a long and painful history of establishing the country’s most polluting industrial sites, such as mines, factories, and toxic waste facilities, near neighborhoods without the political and economic voice to object to it. While this is not always along racial lines, for example, the community in the famous Love Canal disaster was predominantly white, oftentimes African American and Native American communities are plagued with environmental damages. This has been repeated throughout American history: the Navajo people suffered pollution from the Black Mesa Mine to bring power to the cities of Arizona throughout the 20th century, the black communities of St. Louis bore the burden of poisonous lead paint in their homes, and residents of Louisiana’s aptly named “Cancer Alley” are mostly African American as well. Of course, no one wants to live near any industrial or toxic facility, but the economic and political disadvantages of many communities of color mean that they are often the ones forced to live in close proximity to these pollutants and unjustly burdened to suffer the health consequences.
Clearly, the existence of environmental injustice and racism in the United States is no secret, and our country has an onus to address it. Environmental injustice has caused a pattern of disproportionate health burdens for communities of color, on top of already flagrant economic and social inequalities. The coronavirus pandemic has only made that glaringly clearer, as higher death rates of COVID-19 shine a light on decades of air pollution and other disadvantages suffered by communities of color.