THE NATIONAL BLACK ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE NETWORK’S

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM STATEMENT 

The National Black Environmental Justice Network (NBEJN) stands strong on the Principles of Environmental Justice that strengthen coalitions, alliances and collaborations and commitment to fight on multiple fronts to eradicate underlying conditions that create and perpetuate disparities and vulnerability. Our platform and action plans are built around data driven solutions using an equity lens to inform policies that address health, environmental, and economic justice challenges facing African Americans in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

African Americans in 19 states are 79 percent more likely than whites to live where industrial pollution poses the greatest health danger. The politics of pollution translates into more illnesses, suffering and deaths. These findings were well documented before the coronavirus pandemic first hit our shores. The heightened incidence of COVID-19 disease maps closely with race, class, housing redlining and environmental disparities.  An April 2020 Harvard study found air pollution linked to higher COVID-19 deaths. Persons living in areas with high levels of fine particulate matter are 15 percent more likely to die from the coronavirus than someone in a region with one unit less of the fine particulate pollution. Toxic living conditions and environmental racism helped inflate death rates among African Americans before COVID-19 struck.  

This new study has tremendous implications for African Americans who bear a disproportionate burden from air pollution caused mainly by white Americans. On average, researchers found that African-Americans breathe in 56 percent more pollution than they generate. Whites breathe 17 percent less air pollution than they cause.

The air pollution and COVID-19 health connection reaffirmed decades of research, studies, and books (many authored by National Black Environmental Justice (NBEJN) scholars, researchers, and community experts produced over the past four decades) that document the connection between toxic air pollution, and poor health outcomes.  Smokestack pollution, environmental racism and COVID-19 create a deadly ”triple-whammy” for much of Black America.  

Residents living near dirty coal plants are more likely to suffer from respiratory illnesses than those living farther away. More than 68 percent of African Americans live within 30 miles of a dirty coal-fired power plant, compared with 56 percent of whites and 39 percent of Latinos.  Two million Americans live within three miles of the top twelve “dirtiest” coal power plants (76 percent of these residents are people of color).  Each year between 7,500 to 52,000 Americans die prematurely from power plant emissions. This is comparable to the 40,000 Americans killed in vehicle accidents each year. 

The nation has 150 refineries located in 32 states.  African Americans and other people of color make up over half of the residents who are at greatest cancer risk from oil refinery pollution. Refineries dumping pollution on fence-line black and Latino communities is a fact of life along Houston’s Ship Channel, Port Arthur and Corpus Christi’s “refinery row,” Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” Southwest Detroit, South Philadelphia, North Richmond, CA and Los Angeles’ South Bay region.  

Zip code is still the most potent predictor of health and well-being in the United States.  America is segregated and so is pollution.  Many of the nation’s racially segregated communities have the highest poverty and most pollution. Even money does not insulate African Americans from pollution and environmental racism.  African American households with incomes between $50,000 to $60,000 live in neighborhoods that are more polluted than the average neighborhood in which white households with incomes below $10,000 live.

Polluting industries such as toxic waste facilities, high-risk chemical plants, oil refineries, coal fired power plants, and highways and freeways have turned many African American and poor communities into environmental “sacrifice zones.” African Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live where industrial pollution poses the greatest health danger.  Race is still more potent than income in predicting the distribution of pollution and polluting facilities. 

Decades of racist redlining practiced against black people are showing up in urban heat island disparities in 2020. Historically redlined black neighborhoods are nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer on average than non-redlined neighborhoods—and in some cities the difference was as much as 12.8 degrees. Redlining is also implicated in high COVID-19 dangers in segregated black and brown communities.

African Americans need clean air, clean water, healthy food, high quality jobs, clean energy, green and affordable transportation, and access to safe natural environments. Climate change is already negatively impacting black communities.  We seek real climate solutions that eliminate greenhouse gases, create millions of high-wage American jobs, build green and accessible public transportation, reduce poverty and inequality, promote equal protection of workers, frontline communities and vulnerable populations, and provide safeguards against climate-induced health threats. 

Climate change will increase the number of  “bad air days” and pose significant health threats, including cardiovascular, respiratory allergies, and asthma, with an unequal burden falling on African Americans.  Climate change will widen the racial wealth gap.  Structural racism is a major factor creating the wealth gap between black and white families. 

A disproportionate share of African Americans (55 percent) live in the South, a region where a disproportionate share of its governors and attorneys general are climate deniers who have routinely resisted stronger environmental protection and climate action. Without effective climate action the U.S. could see a 6 percent drop in its GDP by the end of this century. Some parts of the American South—already one of the poorest region of the country— could see more than a 20 percent drop in economic activity due to global warming by the end of the century.  

African Americans in southern states have not only had to fight environmental racism but have had to contend with state officials fighting the American Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare, Medicaid expansion, Clean Power Plan, climate adaptation plans and renewable energy standards. They have also had to fight unfair disaster recovery plans and funding. Ironically, many of these same climate-vulnerable southern states have the highest poverty and highest electricity bills, unhealthiest residents, and shortest life expectancy.

UNDERLYING ENVIRONMENTAL VULNERABILITIES IMPACTING COVID-19 DEATHS IN COMMUNITIES INHABITED BY BLACK AND BROWN PEOPLE

Air quality after improving over the past decades got worse in 2017-2018 and it is killing a significant portion of the population in these beleaguered communities.

Black households with incomes between $50,000 to $60,000 live in neighborhoods that are more polluted than the average neighborhood in which white households with incomes below $10,000 live.

Blacks are most at risk from dirty power plant pollution. More African Americans die from PM2.5 exposure than other ethnic groups.

African Americans and Hispanics also breathe in far more deadly air pollution than they are responsible for making.

Polluting industries such as toxic waste facilities, high-risk chemical plants, oil refineries, coal fired power plants, and highways and freeways have turned many African American and poor communities into environmental “sacrifice zones.”

African Americans and other people of color breathe 38 percent more polluted air than whites. They are exposed to 46 percent more nitrogen oxide than whites.  In 46 states people of color live with more air pollution than whites.  African Americans are exposed to 1.5 times more pollutants than whites.