Environmental Racism Is Real. Ask Chicago.

Environmental health scientists have long known that people living in low-income urban areas experience a disproportionate share of the health impacts of air, water and soil pollution.

Over the past 60 years, their neighborhood, built to serve industrial workers when the city's factories flourished, has become a reservoir for homeless workers and low-paid service workers as companies move jobs to the suburbs. , in the non-union South and abroad. After being demolished, the abandoned factories became cocoa fields and their soils were poisoned by unregulated toxic releases over the course of a century.

Transportation planners have added insult to injury by targeting the same area of ​​an interstate highway that separates the two cities. With the help of the FHA's mortgage policy and the Bank's discriminatory policies, white residents used the new highways to flee to America's growing suburbs, along with many good jobs.

Other industries are often the worst polluters, such as scrap metal recycling. And new businesses that want to take advantage of empty space — warehouses and intermodal vehicles — for the most part often pollute the environment as much, if not more than their former occupants, from the daily movement of 18-wheel diesel trucks.

In recent years, community activists in cities across the country have launched campaigns to combat the health effects of this heritage, often under the slogan of combating environmental racism. The worst neighborhoods are dominated by blacks and Hispanics.

In Chicago, several local groups on the city's predominantly Hispanic southeast side triumphed last week when Mayor Lori Lightfoot signed an executive order with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, vowing to consider the impact of industrial and commercial projects. before granting permits. confirmation.

The dispute began three years ago when the city granted Reserve Management Group/Southside Recycling permission to build a scrap metal recycling plant next door. The Southeast Environmental Working Group, Petcoke Tires of the Southeast Side Coalition, and People for Community Recovery filed suit alleging that the company's offer to build the plant was racially discriminatory because the processing plant was previously located in a wealthy area. Almost the entire northern part of the city is white.

At first, the city did not state anything in the law that would allow them to block their path. But then local activists went on a 30-day hunger strike to protest the project, which attracted nationwide attention.

In 2022, with the help of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Chicago Department of Health published a report concluding that a company with a long history of violating Illinois emissions standards posed an "unacceptable risk" to public health. . "In an already vulnerable community, the results (Health Impact Assessments), combined with the inherent risks of laundry and concerns about the company's past and potential non-compliance, are too important to ignore," said Alison Arwady, city manager. commissioners. health. The city reversed its decision and denied permission.

But public defenders continue to fight. The three-year settlement decree signed this spring, which ends the original lawsuit, does much more than fool polluters. This gives Chicago until September 1 to release a comprehensive report documenting the "environmental burden, health and social stress" in every corner of the city. The goal is to identify "green areas" where the City will need to change its planning, zoning and land use policies to "reduce the environmental impact of existing and new industrial developments."

The agreement is "a huge source of inspiration for communities across the country fighting environmental racism ," Olga Bautista, executive director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force, told the Chicago Tribune. "This can really serve as a model for how cities (can) collaborate with affected communities."

Of course, this will not provide immediate relief for many acute and chronic conditions caused by excessive air pollution, etc. These include advanced heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, many types of cancer and asthma, in which an acute attack can be especially dangerous. for children.

A new JAMA study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University suggests another way to address the needs of those suffering from conditions worsened by excessive air pollution by helping them move to a different environment. In the study, 123 low-income families with asthma in Baltimore were given housing vouchers that allowed them to move to poorer areas. Nearly all (106) ended up doing just that.

They compared this group with 115 children living in disadvantaged areas. Severe asthma attacks among displaced children aged 5 to 17 were halved, with only 8.5 percent of children experiencing an attack requiring medical attention within three months of displacement, compared with 15.1 percent during the three months before displacement . The number of days with severe symptoms was half that of the corresponding group.

They also looked at lifestyle changes that could explain the significant reduction in asthma attacks. The internal particles (often from smoking) are not changed. There was a decrease in rat and cockroach allergen levels, but this did not affect the results. More than a third of advances resulted in research-induced reductions in psychosocial stress; greater security day and night, and greater social cohesion by attending a more integrated school.

"The Baltimore Resident Mobility Program has been effective in combating residential racism and how changes in the physical and social environment can improve asthma outcomes," JAMA co-editor Dr. Nita Thakur and Adali Martinez of UC San Francisco demonstrate. Unfortunately, the study did not assess which specific characteristics of life in the middle-class area resulted in improvement.

So these are two approaches to improve health in low-income areas. one is the use of land use policies to improve the physical environment over time; others help people move out of areas that make them sick. Which one is better?

Robert Weinstock, director of the Pritzker Center for Environmental Advocacy at Northwestern Law School and lead lawyer in Southeast Chicago's environmental lawsuit against the city, believes both approaches are correct. “You can move people or structures. Baltimore is people in motion. In Chicago, we talk about moving structures or creating existing structures. We need a combination of both approaches for different situations.”

He also said that the Chicago Agreement's decision serves as a model for other major cities to address the impact of environmental racism on health. “HUD has never used its civil rights powers to address industrial land use and pollution,” he said. Community advocates have pointed to land use reform as a way to achieve environmental justice. What's new is that HUD is expanding its civil rights mandate by requiring city governments to directly address injustices caused by land use codes."

Environmental racism is a thing, radar 2020 |: Episode 3: