The fifth installment of a blog series of 13 sharing art, articles, and abstract ideas that spark a contagious conversation.
This week we have been analyzing the common ground between COVID-19 and the climate crisis. There are many, many parallels between the two situations, but this post is going to dive deeply into perhaps one of the most catastrophic similarities: the communities most impacted.
It is no secret that minority communities tend to have less access to fresh food, safe water sources, clean living environments, libraries, and other social goods. It is also no secret that minority communities tend to have more challenges with health. These are connected phenomenons – and the evidence has become ever clearer during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released preliminary data on coronavirus cases broken down by race and ethnicity as provided by state health departments. But 78 percent of the data were missing details on race and ethnicity as of April 15, the report said. “In small metro areas as well as rural areas, we’re seeing disproportionately higher COVID-19 deaths taking place in primarily black counties,” said Gregorio Millett, a lead investigator on the study and amFar vice president. The study also found that the disproportionately black counties ravaged by coronavirus cases and deaths showed high levels of underlying conditions like heart disease, hypertension and diabetes.
The EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment released a study indicating that people of color are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air. Specifically, the study finds that people in poverty are exposed to more fine particulate matter than people living above poverty. According to the study’s authors, “results at national, state, and county scales all indicate that non-whites tend to be burdened disproportionately to Whites.”
Particulate matter was named a known definite carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and it’s been named by the EPA as a contributor to several lung conditions, heart attacks, and possible premature deaths. The pollutant has been implicated in both asthma prevalence and severity, low birth weights, and high blood pressure.
As the study details, previous works have also linked disproportionate exposure to particulate matter and America’s racial geography. A 2016 study in Environment International found that long-term exposure to the pollutant is associated with racial segregation, with more highly segregated areas suffering higher levels of exposure. A 2012 article in Environmental Health Perspectives found that overall levels of particulate matter exposure for people of color were higher than those for white people. That article also provided a breakdown of just what kinds of particulate matter counts in the exposures. It found that while differences in overall particulate matter by race were significant, differences for some key particles were immense. For example, Hispanics faced rates of chlorine exposure that are more than double those of whites. Chronic chlorine inhalation is known for degrading cardiac function.
The links between health and environment are strong. When it comes to seeing the common ground connecting the coronavirus to our climate crisis, this becomes abundantly clear.
Written by Tatum Eames, Western Washington University Senior and Climate Justice Now Intern.