By Erin McCormick, Photo: US Federal Housing Administration/Richmond University Mapping Inequality, The Guardian, March 9, 2022
A new study has found thatneighborhoods in which the federal government discouraged investment nearly 100 years ago – via a racist practice known as redlining – face higher levels of air pollution today.
Looking at more than 200 cities across the nation, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, found that people who live in neighborhoods that were once categorized as “hazardous”, based on racist factors such as how many Black or “foreign-born” people lived there, now breathe 56% more of the freeway pollutant nitrogen dioxide than those in top-rated areas.
Those formerly redlined neighborhoods also suffer from higher levels of the sooty particle known as PM 2.5, the study found. And both pollutants are associated with health effects, including higher rates of asthma, cardiovascular disease and even Covid-19.
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