In the past, I’ve focused most of my attention on toxins we use in, on, or around our bodies, clothes, and homes (or other buildings). I’ve done this in part because there are many things each of us can control, and it seems more manageable and hopeful to focus on those than on things that are harder to change. Also, I find that people tend to be more aware of the potential hazards of outdoor than indoor air and I feel inclined to share information that’s less generally understood.
The full truth, though, is that the state of the air in our neighborhoods can profoundly affect our health and quality of life. In this cultural moment when the nation is focused on racial issues, I feel a need to address the heartbreaking and uncomfortable fact that the air in our neighborhoods and the degree of toxin exposure we experience may be determined in part by the color of our skin. While the country and church are focusing on things we can do better, I don’t want us to overlook this.
Unfortunately, in the United States, dark-skinned people are exposed to more pollution than light-skinned people are. A 2018 study published in the American Journal of Public Health examined the toxic burden from small particle pollution, associated with a wide range of health effects, including cancer, heart attacks, lung disease, and more. The authors note that people living in poverty had a burden 1.35 times higher than the general population, all non-whites 1.28 times higher, and blacks carried a burden 1.54 times the rate of the population at large. An article on the study notes that the degree of toxin exposure is only partly explained by facility location. The data indicates that “the magnitude of emissions from individual factories appears to be higher in minority neighborhoods.”
As the study demonstrates, race is a more powerful factor than income when predicting disparities. Dr. Robert Bullard reports that “African American households with incomes between $50,000 and $60,000 live in neighborhoods that are more polluted than the average neighborhood of white households with incomes below $10,000.”
Bullard has been researching environmental inequity for decades. In the early 1980s he found that from the 1930s to 1978, 82 percent of waste in Houston was dumped in mostly black neighborhoods. These days he reports that in 46 states, people of color live with more air pollution than white people do and that black Americans are 79 percent more likely than their white counterparts to live in areas where industrial pollution is especially problematic.
Given the differences in toxic exposures, it isn’t surprising to see health differences as well, in many different conditions and diseases. African Americans have the highest cancer mortality rate among racial groups and are more likely than white Americans to report having fair or poor health. In an interview for a Yale University publication, Jacqueline Patterson focuses on lung issues and notes that “An African American child is three times more likely to go into the emergency room for an asthma attack than a white child and twice as likely to die from asthma attacks than a white child. African Americans are more likely to die from lung disease, but less likely to smoke.“ She states that “We have communities that are losing people every day from . . . toxic exposures.”
I was pleased to learn that what’s often called a “landmark” study, “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States” was commissioned and published by a church-based organization, the Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ. It was written in 1987, and 20 years later they revisited the issue in “Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty.” The conclusion of the updated publication was this: “Twenty years after the release of Toxic Wastes and Race, significant racial and socioeconomic disparities persist in the distribution of the nation’s commercial hazardous waste facilities. Although the current assessment uses newer methods . . . the conclusions are very much the same as they were in 1987.” Today, 13 years after that was written, significant racial differences in toxin exposure still exist.
What can we do to address the issue? I wish I had a simple answer. I hope we can find ways to communicate to the powers-that-be that this isn’t acceptable. I hope we can work together to try to ensure that industry takes human health effects seriously and is held responsible when they don’t.
While we work for more broad-based change we can at least keep from making the problem worse. We can choose not to add to anyone’s toxic body burden, knowing that we all have a tipping point at which our detoxification system can no longer manage everything coming in. People with smaller bodies (generally women and children), those with genetic challenges, and people already dealing with a high toxic load can handle less than others can before their systems become overwhelmed and health problems appear.
Every single product choice we make affects other people as well as ourselves. Others are exposed to our perfumes, laundry products, cleaners, pest-control solutions and more. None of us know which exposure will be the one that’s just too much. I don’t want to be responsible for pushing anyone over the edge into illness. Do you?