Minorities suffer most from industrial pollution

By David Pace

updated 9:03 a.m. ET Dec. 14, 2005

Editor's Note: The Associated Press obtained a federal environmental health database under the Freedom of Information Act and, with the help of government scientists, mapped the risk scores to every neighborhood used during the 2000 Census. A three-part series based on the resulting analysis provides an unprecedented snapshot of the social, racial and economic legacy of air pollution from America’s factories.

CHICAGO - Kevin Brown’s most feared opponent on the sandlot or basketball court while he was growing up wasn’t another kid. It was the polluted air he breathed.

“I would look outside and I would see him just leaning on a tree or leaning over a pole, gasping, gasping, trying to get some breath so he could go back to playing,” recalls his mother, Lana Brown.

Kevin suffered from asthma. His mother is convinced the factory air that covered their neighborhood triggered the son’s attacks that sent them rushing to the emergency room week after week, his panic filling the car.

“I can’t breathe! I have no air, I’m going to die!”

The air in the neighborhood where Kevin played is among the least healthy in the country, according to a little-known government research project that assigns risk scores for industrial air pollution in every square kilometer of the United States.

An Associated Press analysis of that data shows black Americans like the Browns are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger.

Residents in neighborhoods with the highest pollution scores also tend to be poorer, less educated and more often unemployed than those elsewhere in the country, AP found.

“Poor communities, frequently communities of color but not exclusively, suffer disproportionately,” said Carol Browner, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration when the scoring system was developed. “If you look at where our industrialized facilities tend to be located, they’re not in the upper middle class neighborhoods.”

Risk scores mapped, compared
With help from government scientists, AP mapped the risk scores for every neighborhood counted by the Census Bureau in 2000. The scores were then used to compare risks between neighborhoods and to study the racial and economic status of those who breathe America’s most unhealthy air.

President Clinton in 1993 ordered the government to ensure equality in protecting Americans from pollution, but more than a decade later, factory emissions still disproportionately place minorities and the poor at risk, AP found.

In 19 states, blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to live in neighborhoods where air pollution seems to pose the greatest health danger, the analysis showed.

More than half the blacks in Kansas and nearly half of Missouri’s black population, for example, live in the 10 percent of their states’ neighborhoods with the highest risk scores. Similarly, more than four out of every 10 blacks in Kentucky, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin live in high-risk neighborhoods.

Hispanics, Asians counted, too
And while Hispanics and Asians aren’t overrepresented in high-risk neighborhoods nationally, in certain states they are. In Michigan, for example, 8.3 percent of the people living in high-risk areas are Hispanic, though Hispanics make up 3.3 percent of the statewide population.

All told, there are 12 states where Hispanics are more than twice as likely as non-Hispanics to live in neighborhoods with the highest risk scores. There are seven states where Asians are more than twice as likely as whites to live in the most polluted areas.

The average income in the highest risk neighborhoods was $18,806 when the Census last measured it, some $3,000 less than the nationwide average.

One of every six people in the high-risk areas lived in poverty, compared with one of eight elsewhere, AP found.

Unemployment was nearly 20 percent higher than the national average in the neighborhoods with the highest risk scores, and residents there were far less likely to have college degrees.

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