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Climate Health Rollback Hurts Poor 02/20 06:22
(AP) -- In a stretch of Louisiana with about 170 fossil fuel and
petrochemical plants, premature death is a fact of life for people living
nearby. The air is so polluted and the cancer rates so high it is known as
Cancer Alley.
"Most adults in the area are attending two to three funerals per month,"
said Gary C. Watson Jr., who was born and raised in St. John the Baptist
Parish, a majority Black community in Cancer Alley about 30 miles outside of
New Orleans. His father survived cancer, but in recent years, at least five
relatives have died from it.
Cancer Alley is one of many patches of America -- mostly minority and poor
-- that suffer higher levels of air pollution from fossil fuel facilities that
emit tiny particles connected to higher death rates. When the federal
government in 2009 targeted carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as a
public health danger because of climate change, it led to tighter regulation of
pollution and cleaner air in some communities. But this month, the Trump
administration's Environmental Protection Agency overturned that "endangerment
finding."
Public health experts say the change will likely mean more illness and death
for Americans, with communities like Watson's hit hardest. On Wednesday, a
coalition of health and environmental groups sued the EPA over the revocation,
calling it unlawful and harmful.
"Not having these protections, it's only going to make things worse," said
Watson, with the environmental justice group Rise St. James Louisiana. He also
worries that revoking the endangerment finding will increase emissions that
will worsen the state's hurricanes.
The Trump administration said the finding -- a cornerstone for many
regulations aimed at fighting climate change -- hurts industry and the economy.
President Donald Trump has called the idea "a scam" despite repeated studies
showing the opposite.
Growing evidence shows that poor and Black, Latino and other racial and
ethnic groups are typically more vulnerable than white people to pollution and
climate-driven floods, hurricanes, extreme heat and more because they tend to
have less resources to protect against and recover from them. The EPA, in a
2021 report no longer on its website, concluded the same.
The finding's reversal will affect everyone, but "overburdened communities,
which are typically communities of color, Indigenous communities and low-income
communities, they will, again, suffer most from these actions," said Matthew
Tejada, senior vice president for environmental health at the Natural Resources
Defense Council and a former deputy with the EPA's office for environmental
justice.
Hilda Berganza, climate program manager with the Hispanic Access Foundation,
said: "Communities that are the front lines are going to feel it the most. And
we can see that the Latino population is one of those communities that is going
feel it even more than others because of where we live, where we work."
Research shows the unequal harms of pollution, climate change
A study published in November found more than 46 million people in the U.S.
live within a mile of at least one type of energy supply infrastructure, such
as an oil well, a power plant or an oil refinery. But the study found that
"persistently marginalized" racial and ethnic groups were more likely to live
near multiple such sites. Latinos had the highest exposure.
The EPA, in that 2021 report, estimated that with a 2-degree Celsius (3.6
Fahrenheit) rise in global warming, Black people were 40% more likely to live
in places with the highest projected rise in deaths because of extreme heat.
Latinos, who are overrepresented in outdoor industries such as agriculture and
construction, were 43% more likely to live where labor hour losses were
expected to be the highest because of heat.
Julia Silver, a senior research analyst at the University of California, Los
Angeles' Latino Policy and Politics Institute, found in her own research that
California Latino communities had 23 more days of extreme heat annually than
non-Latino white neighborhoods. Her team also found those areas have poor air
quality at about double the rate, with twice as many asthma-related emergency
room visits. Other research shows that Latino children are 40% more likely to
die from asthma than white children in part because many lack consistent health
care access.
"What we're risking with a rollback like this at the federal level is really
human health and well-being in these marginalized groups," Silver said.
Experts say the disparate impacts will be significant
Armando Carpio, a longtime pastor in Los Angeles, has seen firsthand how
vulnerable his mostly Latino parishioners are. Many are construction workers
and gardeners who work outside, often in extreme heat. Others live and work
near polluting freeways. He sees children with asthma and elders with dementia,
both linked to exposure to air pollution.
"We're regressing," he said. "I don't know how many years back, but all of
this really affects us."
It is difficult to quantify how much more communities of color could be
impacted by the finding's revocation, but experts who spoke with The Associated
Press all said it would be significant.
"You will see statistically significant increases in excess morbidity and
mortality when it comes to climate impacts and health impacts associated with
co-pollutants" in communities of color, said Sacoby Wilson, a University of
Maryland professor and executive director of the nonprofit Center for
Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health INpowering Communities.
Beverly Wright, founding director of the Deep South Center for Environmental
Justice in New Orleans, said at least four Black communities in Cancer Alley no
longer exist because of the expansion of industrial facilities. The repeal will
bring more pollution, higher cancer rates, more extreme weather and the
disappearance of more historic communities, she said.
"It has us going in the wrong direction, and our communities are now at
greater risk," she said.
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