{"id":1497,"date":"2021-12-10T16:20:35","date_gmt":"2021-12-10T21:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/markets\/?p=1497"},"modified":"2021-12-13T12:42:13","modified_gmt":"2021-12-13T17:42:13","slug":"people-of-color-hit-hardest-by-air-pollution-epa-needs-to-consider-it-in-benefit-cost-assessments-of-policies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/markets\/2021\/12\/10\/people-of-color-hit-hardest-by-air-pollution-epa-needs-to-consider-it-in-benefit-cost-assessments-of-policies\/","title":{"rendered":"People of color hit hardest by air pollution: EPA needs to consider this in benefit-cost assessments of policies"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog was co-authored by Jeremy Proville<\/a>, Director: Office of the Chief Economist, and Ananya Roy<\/a>, Senior Health Scientist at EDF.<\/em><\/p>\n

New analysis<\/a> finds that prevalent methods of assessing impacts of air pollution underestimate pollution\u2019s health impacts on people of color.<\/p>\n

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Everyone has the right to breathe clean air. Yet communities of color, falsely labeled as \u201chazardous\u201d in the 1930s, experienced decades of depressed property values and higher siting of industrial facilities and highways, resulting in higher exposure to air pollution. Environmental racism like this causes unjust, unequal health harms.<\/p>\n

Yet the issue of Environmental Justice and its impact on health extends beyond disparate exposure alone. Communities of color are exposed to higher levels of air pollution and are more vulnerable to that air pollution.<\/em> Racist policies, institutional practices, and disenfranchisement have caused disinvestment in housing, transportation, economic opportunity, education, food, access to health care, and beyond in these communities. All of these overlapping inequities not only manifest in health disparities for these families, but also result in greater health impacts from pollution exposure.<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0In fact, a recent study of 60 million Medicare beneficiaries found that older Black people are three times<\/em> more likely to die from exposure to pollution than white people when exposed to the same levels of fine particle air pollution or soot.<\/p>\n

The federal government usually assumes that air pollution exposes everyone to the same risk. Yet the risks are not the same. The disparate harm caused by pollution to Black and Hispanic communities cannot be ignored, and should be addressed directly in estimating the benefits and costs of pollution policies in order to ensure that everyone\u2019s health and wellbeing is protected.<\/p>\n

New research uncovers how pollution impacts have been underestimated <\/strong><\/p>\n

In a new journal article in Environmental Health Perspectives<\/em><\/a>, EDF researchers and Carnegie Mellon University professor Nicholas Muller leverage this new understanding of racial\/ethnic disparities in air pollution-caused mortality risks. The work seeks to understand the policy impacts of using race\/ethnic-specific inputs rather than using data inputs that average the effects across all populations.<\/p>\n

We find that using data inputs that average health response across race\/ethnicity (effectively ignoring these real differences across groups) leads to:<\/p>\n