Author: CHEJ Intern

By: Leija Helling, Communications Intern
As evidence highlighting the racial inequity of COVID-19 impacts has grown clear over the past few months, activists have harnessed the science to fight against polluters.
Data through the end of May 2020 showed Black and Latinx people were three times as likely to become infected with COVID-19 and twice as likely to die from it. Research points to the disproportionate exposure of Black and Latinx communities to polluted air as a key driver of disparity. A CHEJ Blog post last week stated that particulate matter (PM) in the air is a “huge risk factor” for COVID-19; even a small increase in PM leads to a large increase in COVID-19 mortality.
Residents of Andreson, North Carolina, are one of many predominantly Black communities experiencing a storm of injustices threatening their health, and using the science COVID-19 racial inequities to back their fight. In support of the group’s efforts to stop an asphalt mixing plant from being built in their town, the CHEJ Science and Technology Team wrote a letter to North Carolina officials underscoring the devastating effect an asphalt plant would have on the health of the community, especially during COVID-19 pandemic. “Particulate matter in the air causes health risks, and these risks are disproportionately shouldered by Black people,” the letter reads. “Both of these facts are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Invoking racial disparities in COVID-19 impacts has already succeeded in shutting polluters out of communities. In July, the community group Livable Arlington was able to stop fracking wells from being built by a preschool in a low-income, predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhood of Arlinton, Texas. The area also had the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in the city. In a Living Room Leadership interview with CHEJ in September, Ranjana Bhandari, the founder and director of Liveable Arlington, explained that the group used research linking air pollution with higher COVID-19 mortality rates to convince the City Council to oppose the permit.
Going forward, these fights should remind us of the power in approaches that draw links between science, systems of oppression, and health outcomes. The pandemic has not introduced new inequities but rather amplified those that already exist. Although COVID-19 will be temporary, the strategies leading activists to invoke COVID-19 racial disparities are evergreen because they highlight a broader conversation about equitable public health and safety. “The pandemic has made the disproportionate impact of environmental justice issues on poor minority communities more clear,” Ranjana says. “I hope we remember what COVID has taught us about how inequitable our country is—who is most vulnerable, and who has the least protection.” 

By: Mihir Vohra, Research Associate
Particulate matter (PM) is a form of air pollution composed of a mixture of dust, chemicals, and liquid droplets. PM is primarily released into the air by industrial facilities that perform mixing and combustion. When people inhale PM in the air, it gets into their lungs and bloodstream, worsening existing lung diseases and even causing lung disease, heart disease, and lung cancer. Very fine particulate matter less then 2.5 micrometers in diameter – called PM2.5 – is especially dangerous. The National Ambient Air Quality Standards has determined that the maximum safe concentration of PM2.5 in outdoor air to be 12 μg/m3, and while the national average measurement of PM2.5 is 8.4 μg/m3, there are some regions in the US where PM2.5 are above this standard. The EPA’s interactive air quality map that shows current PM pollution can be found here.
While our understanding of the COVID-19 virus is still limited, scientific research is already showing that exposure to PM2.5 increases the risk of death from COVID-19. A recent study from the Harvard School of Public Health determined that in the US there is a link between increased PM2.5 in the air and COVID-19 fatality. This link existed even when the researchers controlled for a host of other factors that influence COVID-19 death risk: an area’s population size and density, number of COVID-19 tests performed, number of hospital beds, smoking, body mass index, poverty, income, education, age, race, and weather. This means that the connection between PM2.5 and death from COVID-19 is likely to be real. More concerning than the fact that PM2.5 increases the risk of death from COVID-19 is that the magnitude of the increased risk is very high. The authors calculate that “an increase of only 1 μg/m3 in PM2.5 is associated with an 8% increase in the COVID-19 death rate”, ultimately concluding that “a small increase in long term PM2.5 exposure leads to a large increase in COVID-19 death rate.” Thus existing PM2.5 pollution, even at levels below national health standards, poses serious dangers to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Research from outside the US seems to corroborate these findings. In Italy, COVID-19 infection and mortality peaked in the spring of 2020, with Northern Italy experiencing particularly high levels of mortality. A recent study discovered that the high level of air pollution in Northern Italy was a factor in causing the high level of mortality relative to the rest of the country. This demonstrates more generally that existing air pollution puts people at risk of death from COVID-19 all over the world.
In the US, COVID-19 fatality is particularly high for people of color. Black and Latinx people are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white people. Many factors contribute to this reality, including medical racism and inequities in access to healthcare. However, we should also consider that research shows that Black people disproportionately shoulder the burden of PM-emitting facilities. This means that existing inequities in the impact of pollution are being exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that fights to keep communities safe and healthy must include fights to end racial injustice.