By: Sophie Weinberg, Intern
Money is the driving force behind many industries in the United States, and those that pollute are no exception. It is a common perception that those industries, such as coal mining, are vital to the economy, when in reality pollution that results from those industries is detrimental to economic success. Particularly, the burden of disease that comes from pollution has an immense price tag. Despite the real reason, the costs of these diseases are not typically attributed to pollution and are instead lumped in with general health expenditures. Beyond the direct costs of caring for patients who are battling life-threatening pollution-related diseases, there are also the indirect costs of decreased productivity associated with those employees missing work which then lowers the GDP of a country. This loss of GDP is estimated at $53 billion in higher income countries. That is an incredible sum of money that could be used in a wide variety of programs to build up vulnerable communities. Currently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the EPA has decided to not enforce environmental regulations in order to give polluting industries an economic break. This decision will not only add more pollution to the air, but more people will suffer the effects of coronavirus as it is a respiratory illness. The economy will ultimately become more damaged as all industry remains closed to respond to the large amount of sick people.
Beyond the cost of disease, governments also must contribute large sums of money to mitigate environmental threats that could have been prevented originally. The Michigan government, for example, settled on setting aside $97 million in order to replace corroding lead pipes in Flint, when the decision to switch water sources in the first place would only save the city about $5 million. That estimate does not include the nearly $400 million lost to the city in social costs, since so many children will suffer for the rest of their lives due to lead exposure.
Despite public belief about rolling back environmental protections in order to boost the economy, the enormous economic benefits of environmental regulations and sustainable technology are rarely discussed. Renewable energy, for example, creates jobs and also utilizes resources already found in the United States. This boosts the economy by bringing in revenue rather than relying on fuel imports. Regardless of these positives, society is not willing to uproot their livelihood to make changes, even if those changes are for the good of everyone involved. Overall, the price of sustainability may seem high at first glance but will always be worth it in the end when the environment is protected, human health is promoted, and the economy is thriving.
Category: Backyard Talk
CHEJ Blog
By: Kara Hoisington
In 2019, data of all police killings in the country compiled by Mapping Police Violence, black Americans were nearly three times more likely to die from police than white Americans. The recent murder of George Floyd finally sparked the flame for Congress to address this form of systematic racism police departments impose. Democratic lawmakers in Congress introduced legislation to address the excessive abuse of power used by police officers and make it easier to identify, track, and prosecute police misconduct.
Civil rights activists have been pushing this agenda for decades. If it took our country this long to wake up and see the light – how long will it take to address systematic racism in environmental policies?
On June 4th 2020, President Trump signed in an executive order allowing emergency authorities to circumvent environmental review of major projects. This could fast-track the approval of major highways, pipelines, oil and gas projects, and other polluting industries which disproportionately affect people of color. Erasing requirements in environmental laws including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act, Trump’s order blocks such communities from fighting back against unwanted projects.
If police brutality doesn’t kill people of color, toxic pollution will. This executive order bars communities first amendment rights to speak up and say no! Here at the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice we serve to amplify your communities voice past the thick wall of pollution.
Written by Kara Hoisington, CHEJ Summer Intern.
By: Gustavo Andrade
What happens to people when the air they breathe is so polluted with chemicals that the simple act of inhaling hurts? When they go out to their car every morning to find a half-inch-thick layer of ‘dust’ on it? When kids in the neighborhood seem to share certain birth defects and developmental challenges to a disturbing degree? When so many neighbors develop cancers at an alarmingly young age?
Here’s what’s been happening to people who have to live in America’s Sacrifice Zones: They perish, as shamefully as Mr. Floyd; with the knee of corporate polluters pushing steadily and unrelentingly against their necks.
No individual or corporation will be held responsible, no charges will be filed, and no damages will be paid to grieving families.
After all, the company settled on this area for a reason: local residents are black, latino, indigenous, white and in all cases, poor. They can’t afford lawyers and don’t have time on their side. They lack political power, are unorganized and don’t even know what is being done to them. To those in power, they are easy prey.
When you live in a Sacrifice Zone, it means your neighborhood falls in the 70th percentile of cancer and respiratory illness in your state. You might have a power plant down the street from the kids’ school, or some type of factory just up the road from your church. You’re told they’re good people who bring jobs in so you shouldn’t ask too many questions about their business.
Now, what happens when those residents start to organize?
Well then, friend, all hell breaks loose.
They start asking questions. They start talking to one another and having meetings. Yes, sometimes even on Zoom. They form coalitions and neighborhood organizations and hold press conferences and make demands.
They start misbehaving.
And that’s how they, like the brave protesters and freedom fighters out on the streets, finally force that knee off their necks and win.
Racial and class division has long been one of the tactics used by the rich and powerful to keep working people from organizing. Today it’s so blatant; as we move tragically through the devastating impacts of COVID-19 there’s not even an attempt to hide or disguise the behavior. I’m frustrated, angry and ready to figure out how to move forward, stand together and speak with one voice. We need to demand immediately that the federal government takes the following first three steps.
- Immediately reduce air pollution by 50% until the pandemic is over.
EPA announced in March that they will no longer monitor air or enforce environmental regulations. Families who live around polluting facility are forced to shelter in place — with their “place” so polluted that they cannot go outdoors and cannot open windows. The chemicals are respiratory irritants.
- First test people in the vulnerable areas which are low income, black and brown communities and senior centers.
Black and brown people make up the majority of “essential front-line workers.” These essential workers drive trucks, process food, run public transportation, clean hospitals and so much more. Today if you have money not you are an essential worker you can get tested.
- Expand health care access through mobile clinic or other means to vulnerable communities (usually health care deserts).
You just need to listen to the news to see that athletes, famous TV people, rich families have no problems getting a test if they want one. Patrick Ewing tested positive, went to the hospital and is now healing at home. Patrick’s a great basketball coach/player we wish him well. But Mr. Hernandez and Thomas were unable to receive a test. After driving a long distances to seek help, there is no medical facilities in their communities, they were turned away (even with COVID symptoms) told to go home and quarantine themselves. This is just not right.
Categories
A Pandemic of Pollution
The death toll due to Covid-19 passed the 90,000 mark in the United States this week. This is a truly staggering if not sobering number that raises many questions about how we as a nation respond to this incredible loss of life. These are not just numbers, but people – someone’s mother, father, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, friend, lover, child… The daily news boils this down to statistics. Numbers of new cases and deaths are reported each day before the newscaster moves on to the next story. Are we normalizing this staggering loss of life? Even worse, are we accepting it?
Yet I look at the leadership of this country and I don’t see people who empathize with those who have lost someone to this deadly virus. I don’t see people who are taking steps to minimize the impact of this insidious virus.
There is still much that we don’t know about Covid-19 and its effects on people, but it is becoming quite clear that low income residents and people of color are disproportionately impacted by exposure to the coronavirus. It’s also become clear that underlying health conditions, such as respiratory problems like asthma and COPD; diabetes, high blood pressure, immune diseases like lupus multiple sclerosis make people more vulnerable to covid-19, not just among the elderly, but among people of color and others with these diseases.
Why then is the USEPA doing all that it can to dismantle (repeal or weaken) regulations that protect people’s health. A report released today by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee describes how specific actions taken by EPA to weaken or repeal air pollution rules and regulations will “harm public health and potentially add to COVID-19 risks.”
The report specifically points to seven rules that were initially designed to remove greenhouse gas, soot, mercury and other pollution from the air that the agency has targeted and proposed or finalized actions since March 1st that “will result in increased air pollution and could cause tens of thousands of premature deaths. EPA has, in short, unleashed a pandemic of pollution in the middle of an actual pandemic, the respiratory effects of which may be amplified by pollution exposure.”
The committee is clear that the agency should reverse its deregulating efforts and strengthened rather than weaken the country’s air pollution laws and regulations, and take steps to address the Covid-19 specific risks posed by air pollution. In the committee’s words:
“EPA should re-focus its enforcement, compliance and monitoring activities in a manner that prioritizes the early detection of high exposure to air pollutants in communities that have both historically experienced such exposures and those at greatest risk of adverse outcomes from COVID-19.”
This and other recommendations made by the Senate Committee offer hope that we will not accept 90,000 deaths and counting as the cost of doing business in the United States. There are steps we can take to reduce and minimize the impacts of Covid-19.
Read the full report here.
Blog by Sharon Franklin
On May 7, 2020 A group from the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S. has steadily climbed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local governments continue to release data about the characteristics of people who have developed serious illness when infected with coronavirus, as well as the number of hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19. The emerging national and state level data suggest that serious illness resulting from coronavirus disproportionately affects people in communities of color, due to the underlying health and economic challenges. Notably, adults with low incomes are more likely to have higher rates of chronic conditions compared to adults with high incomes, which could increase their risk of serious illness, if infected with coronavirus.
The Key Findings Show
In a previous study this research group found that approximately one in five adults (21%) ages 18-64 have a higher risk of developing serious illness, if they become infected with the coronavirus due to underlying health conditions. In this study they found that American Indian/Alaska Native and Black Adults are at higher risk of serious illness if infected with coronavirus than White adults. More than one in three (34%) American Indian/Alaska Native and 27% Black Adults are at higher risk of serious Illness if infected with the Coronavirus, greater than other racial and ethnic groups.
More than one in four (27%) Black non-elderly adults who are at a higher risk of serious illness if infected with the coronavirus, compared to about one in five (21%) of White adults.
More than one in three (35%) non-elderly adults with household incomes below $15,000 are at higher risk of serious illness if infected with coronavirus, compared to about one in seven (16%) adults with household incomes greater than $50,000. See Figure 2.
Conclusion: American Indian/Alaska Native and Black Adults are at higher risk of serious illness if infected with the Coronavirus, compared to White adults; and A larger share of non-elderly adults with lower household income compared to higher household incomes have a greater risk of serious illness if they are infected with the coronavirus.
Why?
- Because of underlying health conditions that are more prevalent among American Indian/Alaska Native and Black non-elderly adults especially with incomes less than $15,000.
- Lack of health insurance could also pose challenges to people seeking treatment for COVID-19, which could disproportionately affect non-elderly adults with low incomes and people in communities of color.
To learn more click here.
Do you have friends or family members who live in a vulnerability zone? Check out the map below.
The first map looks at high risk facilities across the U.S. These high risk communities are especially important now that Trump’s EPA is no longer requiring monitoring and will not take enforcement actions.
Across the United States, almost 12,500 high-risk chemical facilities place 39% of the U.S. population, 124 million people, who live within three miles of these facilities at constant risk of chemical disaster. The full vulnerability zones for these industrial and commercial sites can extend up to twenty five miles in radius. You can click on the link below to see if your community is at risk.
Whether you live in these areas or not CHEJ could use your help signing and circulating this petition. The petition is demanding that President Trump revokes EPA’s decision to not enforce environmental laws and regulations and allow dangerous industries to operate without monitoring what they are putting into the air. Allowing polluters to spew more toxins will exacerbate the suffering and death toll from pollution and COVID19. This is a cruel, cynical, and unneeded attempt to put polluter profits before public health. We have to fight back.
Those dots on the first map and the dark purple areas on the second represent the type of communities CHEJ works with. Our No More Sacrifice Zones Campaign is about reducing the toxic pollution in air of vulnerable communities. We need your support to gain the people power we need to create the policy changes we need to protect innocent families. Join our No More Sacrifice Zones campaign to create a solution from the bottom up.
A new screening tool is now available that identifies populations across the country that are most vulnerable to severe complications following exposure to the coronavirus and development of covid-19. This community vulnerability map which was developed by Jvion, a health care data firm, in collaboration with Microsoft. Jvion uses socioeconomic and environmental factors, such as lack of access to transportation, exposure to pollution, unemployment and mortality rates at the census block level to identify communities vulnerable to severe effects of covid-19.
In an article about his new mapping tool in Grist magazine, Jvion is described as using “machine learning to analyze block-level data from the U.S. Census to identify ‘environmental health hazards’ as one key socioeconomic factor that makes a population more vulnerable to severe covid-19 outcomes, based on the health effects of polluted air, contaminated water and extreme heat. They also factored in how chronic exposure to outdoor respiratory air pollutants such as fine particulate matter can increase the risk of cancer, respiratory illness and cardiovascular disease – preexisting conditions that make exposure to the novel corona virus more severe and fatal.”
This interactive and searchable map differs from others available on the internet in that it identifies the populations that once infected will likely experience severe outcomes ranging from hospitalization to death.
This vulnerability map can be used together with the USEPA’s EJScreen, an Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping tool. The EJScreen uses 11 environmental and health indicators and standard demographic data to identify communities most susceptible to air quality pollution. The EJ screen specifically includes a cancer risk and respiratory hazard index that is provided as a percentile in the state or nationally.
When the vulnerability mapping tool is matched with the EPA’s EJ Screen, the results are astounding. The relationship between a community’s proximity to industrial facilities and the projected risk of severe covid-19 outcomes is very clear and very strong. The areas of high vulnerability identified on the Community Vulnerability map match well with areas with high pollution from industrial facilities identified by the EJScreen, painting an all too familiar picture of communities suffering disproportionately from multiple and cumulative risks.
The preexisting respiratory and other health conditions that African Americans suffer from living in the shadows of industrial facilities in sacrifice zones across the country contribute significantly to their susceptibility to the lethal effects of covid-19. This reality isn’t an accident, but the result of economic and environmental conditions imposed on people of color over the long history of discrimination in this country.
In spite of these obvious disparities and the growing threat that people of color and African Americans in particular face from covid-19, EPA announced this month that it has stopped enforcing regulations that hold corporate polluters accountable for releasing toxic chemicals into the air we breathe. This is another outrage. Sign our petition to demand that the government reverse this disastrous decision.
Categories
COVID-19 vs Past Pandemics
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Blog by: Joy Barua
COVID-19 has caused a major disruption in the entire world and have paused our daily life. It might even go down as the greatest challenge of its kind that we have faced in our lifetime. While the world is on pause and is unpredictable at the moment there is still hope that we will come out of this stronger than before.
As of this writing, there are 1,289,380 cases of COVID-19 in the world and a total of 70,590 deaths according to the John Hopkins Coronavirus resource center. That adds up to about a 5% case fatality rate (CFR). However, that 5% doesn’t paint the entire picture as to when looking at individual countries, the numbers shifts dramatically as for example, the CFR in Italy currently stands at 12%. It changes more for better or worse when dividing things up by regions or states in each country. For example, in our nation, the cases and CFR in New York are significantly higher than the rest of the country.
To provide a bit of background, COVID-19 is a single-stranded RNA virus. It is a zoonotic disease. Over the past 100 years or so, zoonotic diseases have become a major concern for the world of public health. Millions of people die each year due to some form of zoonotic diseases. Some of the deadliest zoonotic diseases includes Ebola, West Nile, Lyme Disease, Nipah Virus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)and now COVID-19 which happens to be a strain of SARS or known as SARS-CoV-2. The first SARS outbreak took place in 2003 and also started in China. There are many more emerging zoonotic infectious diseases that are appearing in some of the lower-income countries. Most of the zoonotic diseases are considered to be RNA viruses. For those not aware, RNA viruses are considered more threatening than DNA viruses cause of their high mutation rate compared to DNA viruses. As a result, creating a vaccine for an RNA virus takes longer than it would for a DNA virus.
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The goal of this writing is not to give you information that you are already aware of but to provide in-context how COVID-19 compares to past pandemics. Going back to the 1918 pandemic of the H1N1 virus, known as the Spanish Flu, infected about 500 million people or at the time 1/3 of the population. It claimed 50 million lives. That works up to a 10% CFR which is much higher than the current CFR of COVID-19. But similar to COVID-19, mortality was higher among the under 5 and over 65 age groups.
There was a second strand of flu pandemic in 1957 known as H2N2 or the Asian flu that claimed 1.1 million lives. Not long after, a third strand of the flu pandemic took place in 1968 known as the H3N2 virus that claimed another million lives. Similarly, the mortality rate was higher among those ages 65 and higher. The latest flu pandemic took place in 2009 known as the swine flu pandemic of the H1N1 virus. While it infected nearly 1.5 billion people, the CFR was much lower compared to past pandemics with deaths of about half a million people. There have also been other pandemics such as the Ebola outbreak, Zika (still active), HIV/AIDS pandemic (still active).
With the emergence of every new pandemic, the mortality rate slowly decreases. While the statistics differentiate between DNA and an RNA viruses, with the advancement of modern technology and modern medicine we are better equipped to deal with these types of pandemics than ever before. As COVID-19 continues to progress and has yet to peak in certain areas, just know that while it is still deadly, there is still hope that we will come out of this stronger than before.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
Blog by Sharon Franklin
DaLyah Jones a staff writer for Texas Observer covering the environment reported on March 25, 2020 that COVID-19 Could Be a Double Whammy for Those in Pollution Hotspots.
Ms. Jones reports that air pollution across the globe has sharply dropped, an unintended silver lining of COVID-19, as the coronavirus continues to spread. However, Texas environmental advocates are bracing for impacts that can’t be reversed by a few weeks of reduced industrial production and air travel. Why is this? Because Texans living in polluted areas who breathe polluted air are more likely to have preexisting health issues, and are also at a higher risk of getting seriously ill from the virus. Currently, there have not been any large-scale studies of how air pollution can complicate COVID-19. However, experts say that lung damage caused by poor air quality or smoking could poses a “double-whammy effect”, to these individuals because it can only be exacerbated by pollution hotspots and COVID-19, as noted by Elena Craft, of the Environmental Defense Fund.
Researchers at Environment Texas utilizing 2016 data found that roughly 20 metropolitan and rural areas in Texas had elevated levels of particulate matter and smog. In the Houston metro area there are many hotspots (Brazoria, Chambers, Galveston, Fort Bend, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, and Waller counties) that currently don’t meet the national air-quality standards. Additionally, Dr. Brett Perkison, MD, Professor of Occupational Medicine, University of Texas School of Public Health says that those much-needed defenses are further taxed “by exposure day after day, year after year, to high levels of ozone and nitric oxide.”
According to a study conducted by the NAACP and the Clean Air Task Force, some of the nation’s largest African American populations are at risk for childhood asthma are in the cities of Dallas and Houston. Researchers also found that Texas was one of three states to have the most African Americans living within a half-mile of an oil or natural gas facility. Dr. Perkison further says “Low-socioeconomic communities that occur near manufacturing or industrial sites are at more risk for acute and chronic disease, and we need to take it seriously to allocate resources adequately.” Dr. Perkison encourages at-risk residents to take even more precautions, especially when concentrations of ground-level ozone are high, which includes limiting their time outdoors, monitoring their breathing, or only going outside in the morning, before ozone forms.
Researchers have already begun looking at neighborhoods that face elevated risks. A team at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston mapped the potential risk of severe COVID-19 in Harris County by identifying residents who are 60 and older that have one or more chronic conditions. The study found that the East Little York, Deer Park, Channelview, and East End neighborhoods saw the highest concentration of people over 60 or with a chronic disease.
Reverend James Caldwell, a founder of Coalition of Community Organizations, says the virus has increased a “myriad of issues” for communities like Houston’s Fifth Ward that are located near Superfund sites and has seen elevated cases of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Reverend Caldwell notes, many residents with preexisting conditions are also uninsured. He asks “Why does it cost out of pocket to just stay alive?”
Photo: Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle Via AP