Redlining means 45 million Americans are breathing dirtier air, 50 years after it ended
Related: Historical Redlining Is Associated with Present-Day Air Pollution Disparities in U.S. Cities
______________________________________________________________________
Source: Washington Post
Redlining means 45 million Americans are breathing dirtier air, 50 years after it ended
Boyle Heights, a heavily Latino area in Los Angeles singled out for its ‘detrimental racial elements,’ has one of the highest pollution scores in California
By Darryl Fears
Today at 7:00 a.m. EST
Decades of federal housing discrimination did not only depress home values, lower job opportunities and spur poverty in communities deemed undesirable because of race. It’s why 45 million Americans are breathing dirtier air today, according to a landmark study released Wednesday.
The practice known as redlining was outlawed more than a half-century ago, but it continues to impact people who live in neighborhoods that government mortgage officers shunned for 30 years because people of color and immigrants lived in them.
The analysis, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters, found that, compared with White people, Black and Latino Americans live with more smog and fine particulate matter from cars, trucks, buses, coal plants and other nearby industrial sources in areas that were redlined. Those pollutants inflame human airways, reduce lung function, trigger asthma attacks and can damage the heart and cause strokes.
“Of course, we’ve known about redlining and its other unequal impacts, but air pollution is one of the most important environmental health issues in the U.S.,” said Joshua Apte, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor in the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/03/09/redlining-pollution-environmental-justice/