This Is How Racist Your Air Is

If you’re white, you’re probably breathing cleaner air.


health impact chart

Earlier this month, environmental scientists at the University of Minnesota came out with a startling nationwide study showing that different demographic groups are exposed to drastically different amounts of air pollution each year. The study overlaid US Census data with exposure levels of a pollutant called nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, which is created by combustion in vehicles and power plants. The results: Each year, people of color are exposed to 46 percent more NO2 than white people.

NO2 is associated with increased heart disease, lung cancer, asthma, and preterm births, and is one of six “criteria pollutants” that the Environmental Protection Agency regulates in accordance with the Clean Air Act. Interestingly, the exposure gap between races was far larger than the gap between income brackets. If your household income is more than $70,000, you’re exposed to NO2 only 3 percent less than someone who lives in a household making under $20,000.

The overall NO2 levels and the disparity levels between races varied widely by city. You can see the complete breakdown here, but here’s the short list of the most polluted and most unequal cities when it comes to NO2:

cities chart

Julian Marshall, the coauthor of the study, speculated that the racial disparity came largely from patterns in where people live; Americans in urban areas often cluster by race—these Wired maps show that quite clearly—and, as the evidence shows, those neighborhoods where people of color live are more likely to have higher NO2levels. Last year, a study from the Centers for Disease Control came to a similar conclusion, finding that more than 5 million people of color live within 150 meters of a major US highway.

Measuring the public health implications of the massive gap in pollution exposure is a tricky business, as so many different factors play a role in the development of any given disease. But what scientists can do is look at something called the “relative risk” of a given pollutant, which essentially tells you how much your risk of developing a certain disease increases as you’re exposed to more of that pollutant. The Minnesota team used NO2‘s relative risk as it relates to heart disease to come the conclusion in the chart above: 7,000 fewer people of color would die of heart disease each year if they were exposed to the same NO2 levels as white people. And while that statistic is striking, it’s only the tip of the iceberg: Thousands fewer people of color would experience asthma, lung disease, and preterm births if they had the same exposure levels to NO2 as white people do. If you applied the same hypothetical to other pollutants, like ozone and particulate matter, the numbers would grow even bigger.

So where is this pollution coming from? In urban areas, where air pollution levels are usually highest, the biggest culprit is transportation. Here’s a breakdown of how much air pollution (including NO2, but alsoozone, particulate matter, and carbon monoxide) different vehicle types emit in a year:

pollution by vehicle chart

Marshall said that his team focused on NO2 in cities because it contributes to the formation of two other pollutants—ozone and particulate matter—and it’s seen as a proxy for other pollutants that come from combustion. In other words, the results are likely to hold for lots of other pollutants.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate