Health Alert: Who Breathes America's Dirtiest Air?

The burden of air pollution throughout the U.S. is not spread equally— low-income residents and people of color bear the brunt of this problem. So say recent findings by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of Massachusetts, Amherst who measured whether toxic pollution released by industry unequally pollutes air in communities where minority and low-income families live. The most polluted communities are likely to have higher percentages of people of color and low-income people.

The research echoes the views of many community and environmental justice groups who have long called attention to environmental racism—the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color.

Research findings show just how much of a problem environmental racisim is…

• In Tennessee, people of color bear 43% of the air pollution health risk but are only 21% of the population—a difference of 22 percentage points.
• In Illinois, low-income people are exposed to 18% of the health risk although they are 11% of the population.
• When the scope of analysis went from state level to city level, the discrepancies were even more apparent. In Birmingham, Alabama, people of color bear 65% of the air pollution health risks, and comprise 34% of the population—a gap of 31 percentage points.
• Researchers also found that minority communities bear unequal exposure to air pollution even when they are not low-income. And low-income white communities also bear unequal environmental hazards.

Our commitment to stringent environmental standards and policies that require polluters to clean up is grounded in the knowledge that environmental hazards affect everyone, and that some communities are unequally burdened.