Associated Press

December 13, 2005

MORE BLACKS LIVE WITH POLLUTION

David Pace

CHICAGO -- An Associated Press analysis of a little-known government
research project shows that black Americans are 79 percent more likely
than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is
suspected of posing the greatest health danger.

Residents in neighborhoods with the highest pollution scores also tend
to be poorer, less educated and more often unemployed than those
elsewhere in the country, AP found.

"Poor communities, frequently communities of color but not
exclusively, suffer disproportionately," said Carol Browner, who
headed the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton
administration when the scoring system was developed. "If you look at
where our industrialized facilities tend to be located, they're not in
the upper middle class neighborhoods."

With help from government scientists, AP mapped the risk scores for
every neighborhood counted by the Census Bureau in 2000. The scores
were then used to compare risks between neighborhoods and to study the
racial and economic status of those who breathe America's most
unhealthy air.

President Clinton ordered the government in 1993 to ensure equality in
protecting Americans from pollution, but more than a decade later,
factory emissions still disproportionately place minorities and the
poor at risk, AP found.

In 19 states, blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to live
in neighborhoods where air pollution seems to pose the greatest health
danger, the analysis showed.

More than half the blacks in Kansas and nearly half of Missouri's
black population, for example, live in the 10 percent of their states'
neighborhoods with the highest risk scores. Similarly, more than four
out of every 10 blacks in Kentucky, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin
live in high-risk neighborhoods.

And while Hispanics and Asians aren't overrepresented in high-risk
neighborhoods nationally, in certain states they are. In Michigan, for
example, 8.3 percent of the people living in high-risk areas are
Hispanic, though Hispanics make up 3.3 percent of the statewide
population.

All told, there are 12 states where Hispanics are more than twice as
likely as non-Hispanics to live in neighborhoods with the highest risk
scores. There are seven states where Asians are more than twice as
likely as whites to live in the most polluted areas.

The average income in the highest risk neighborhoods was $18,806 when
the Census last measured it, more than $3,000 less than the nationwide
average.

One of every six people in the high-risk areas lived in poverty,
compared with one of eight elsewhere, AP found.

Unemployment was nearly 20 percent higher than the national average in
the neighborhoods with the highest risk scores, and residents there
were far less likely to have college degrees.

Research over the past two decades has shown that short-term exposure
to common air pollution worsens existing lung and heart disease and is
linked to diseases like asthma, bronchitis and cancer. Long-term
exposure increases the risks.

The Bush administration, which has tried to ease some Clean Air Act
regulations, says its mission isn't to alleviate pollution among
specific racial or income groups but rather to protect everyone facing
the highest risk.

"We're going to get at those folks to make sure that they are going to
be breathing clean air, and that's regardless of their race, creed or
color," said Deputy EPA Administrator Marcus Peacock.

Peacock said industrial air pollution has declined significantly in
the past 30 years as regulations and technology have improved. Since
1990, according to EPA, total annual emissions of 188 regulated toxins
have declined by 36 percent.

Still, Peacock acknowledged, "there are risks, and I would assume some
unacceptable risks, posed by industrial air pollution in some parts of
the country."

Government scientists and contractors spent millions of dollars
creating the health risk measures. They're based on air emission
reports from industry, ratings of each chemical's potential health
dangers, the paths pollution takes as it spreads through
neighborhoods, and the number of people of different ages and genders
living near plants.

The AP used EPA risk scores from 2000 so they would match the Census
data and because it takes years for the government to get corrected
emissions data. Some risks may have changed since then as factories
opened or closed or their emissions changed. The risk scores aren't
meant to calculate a citizen's precise odds of getting sick but rather
to help compare communities and identify those in need of further
attention.

The scores also don't include risks from other types of air pollution,
such as automobile exhaust.

Kevin Brown's most feared opponent on the sandlot or basketball court
while he was growing up wasn't another kid. It was the polluted air he
breathed.

"I would look outside and I would see him just leaning on a tree or
leaning over a pole, gasping, gasping, trying to get some breath so he
could go back to playing," recalls his mother, Lana Brown.

Kevin suffered from asthma. His mother is convinced the factory air
that covered their neighborhood triggered the son's attacks that sent
them rushing to the emergency room week after week, his panic filling
the car.

"I can't breathe! I have no air, I'm going to die!"

The air in the neighborhood where Kevin played is among the least
healthy in the country, according to research that assigns risk scores
for industrial air pollution in every square kilometer of the United
States.

Altgeld Gardens, the housing project where Kevin spent most of his
childhood staying with his grandmother and going to school, is in a
virtually all-black neighborhood where more than half the people live
in poverty. The two-story project is nestled among the south Chicago
steel mills, which for decades turned the night skies orange with
pollution.

Most of those steel mills are now closed, victims of imports. But the
area still retains enough industry to rank among the nation's
neighborhoods with the highest health risks.

Just across the Little Calumet River from Altgeld, the ISG Riverdale
steel plant annually releases into the air tens of thousands of pounds
of heavy metals like manganese, zinc, lead and nickel. Dave Allen, a
spokesman for Mittal Steel, which acquired the factory this year, said
his company is committed to improvements.

"The environment is a matter of focus and pride for us and we hope to
be good operators," he said.

Mrs. Brown said the asthma attacks that hit Kevin, now 29, were most
serious and frequent during the time he stayed in Altgeld Gardens.

"He may now get an attack maybe once a year, if that often, where he
has to go to a hospital," she said. "He was having them at one point
quite frequently, at least two to three times a month."

Mrs. Brown was interviewed at the home she purchased seven years ago
on a tree-lined street neighborhood south of the plant, where the
health risk from industrial pollution is one-fifth the level in
Altgeld Gardens.

She said she never considered pollution the culprit in her son's
asthma, even after she left the neighborhood. It was only after she
moved back into her mother's home for several years that she began to
realize how widespread breathing problems were in Altgeld Gardens. Two
children who lived next door had asthma, and one used a breathing
machine as many as three times a day, she said.

"You see things happening and then you say let me start
investigating," she said. "I found out a lot of people either had
bronchitis or some kind of respiratory problem. Someone in each
household seemed to have a respiratory problem."

In Louisville, Ky., Renee Murphy blames smokestack emissions in the
"Rubbertown" industrial strip near her home for the asthma attacks
that trouble her five children. Her neighborhood, which is 96 percent
black, ranks among the nation's highest in risk from factory
pollution.

"It's hard to watch your children gasp for breath," she said.

The Murphy family lives just a few blocks from Zeon Chemicals, which
released more than 25,000 pounds of a chemical called acrylonitrile
into the air during 2000. The chemical is suspected of causing cancer,
and the government has determined it is much more toxic to children
than adults.

Tom Herman, corporate environmental manager at Zeon, said the plant is
reducing its emissions and is talking with area residents concerned
about air quality to show that "there are real people working here
concerned for them as well as our own health."

Malcolm Wright, 43, operates power washing equipment in Camden, N.J.,
where several neighborhoods also rank among the worst nationally. He
said he developed asthma after moving to the city in his early 30s,
and he blames the city's air pollution for attacks that sent him to
the hospital four times last year.

Air pollution "works with many other factors, genetics and
environment, to heighten one's risk of developing asthma and chronic
lung disease, and if you have it, it will make it worse," said Dr.
John Brofman, director of respiratory intensive care at MacNeal
Hospital in the suburban Chicago town of Berwyn.

"Evidence suggests that not only do people get hospitalized but they
die at higher rates in areas with significant air pollution," he said.

Repeated studies during the 1980s and 1990s found that blacks and poor
people were far more likely than whites to live near hazardous waste
disposal sites, polluting power plants or industrial parks. The
disparities were blamed on a lack of political clout by minorities to
influence land use decisions in their neighborhoods.

The studies brought charges of racism. Clinton responded in 1993 by
issuing an "environmental justice" order requiring federal agencies to
ensure that minorities and poor people aren't exposed to more
pollution and other environmental dangers than other Americans.

Recent reports suggest little has changed:

* The Government Accountability Office concluded earlier this year
that EPA devoted little attention to environmental equality when it
developed three major rules to implement the Clean Air Act between
2000 and 2004.

* The EPA's inspector general reported last year that the agency
hadn't implemented Clinton's order nor "consistently integrated
environmental justice into its day-to-day operations." The watchdog
said EPA had not identified minority and low income groups nor
developed any criteria to determine if those groups were bearing more
than their share of health risks from environmental hazards.

* The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded two years ago after an
investigation that "federal agencies still have neither fully
incorporated environmental justice into their core missions nor
established accountability and performance outcomes for programs and
activities."

EPA Assistant Administrator Granta Nakayama disputed those reports,
saying the agency has been choosing its enforcement initiatives to
maximize the impact on minority and poor communities.

Environmental experts say most pollution inequities result from
historical land use decisions and local development policies. Also,
regulators too often focus on one plant or one pollutant without
regard to the cumulative impact, they say.

Short of government action, citizens in high-risk neighborhoods have
little legal recourse. They can file lawsuits under the 1964 Civil
Rights Act but must prove intentional discrimination, a difficult
burden.

And while some federal agencies have rules that ban environmental
practices that result in discrimination, the Supreme Court has said
private citizens can't file lawsuits to enforce those rules.

Citizen complaints to EPA have had little effect. From 1993 through
last summer, the agency received 164 complaints alleging civil rights
violations in environmental decisions and accepted 47 for
investigation. Twenty-eight of the 47 later were dismissed; 19 are
pending.

"There is no level playing field," said Robert Bullard, director of
the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University.
"Any time our society says that a powerful chemical company has the
same right as a low income family that's living next door, that
playing field is not level, is not fair."

The Associated Press analyzed the health risk posed by industrial air
pollution using data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and
the Census Bureau.

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.