Air pollution disproportionately affects people of color and low-income DC residents

Death and health rates associated with air pollution are borne unequally and inequitably by people of color and those with lower household income and education, according to a new study in Washington, D.C. DC.

Air Pollution is considered the primary environmental risk factor for health, and recent efforts have been successful in reducing the levels of fine particles, or PM2.5, in the air in the DC region.

The new study found that while the deaths and health burdens associated with PM2.5 halved between 2000 and 2018 in the DC region, the disparities and geographic segregation in health effects persist.

The people most affected by PM2.5 air pollution are people living in wards five, seven and eight of the eastern and southeastern regions of the district. Researchers have found in southeastern neighborhoods, baseline disease rates are five times higher for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and stroke, up to nine times higher for all-cause mortality and coronary heart disease, and more than 30 times higher for emergency department visits for asthma, for example compared to neighborhoods in the north-west.

In these most affected neighborhoods, residents have education and employment rates 10% lower, 10% more residents live in poverty, the median household income is $ 61,000 lower than that of households the rest of the city and residents have about 10 years less expectation life. The 10 most affected neighborhoods have a 54% higher proportion of black residents and a 44% lower proportion of white residents.

This study highlights the importance of detailed data on health and air quality, and the researchers hope it can guide future policy development to address disparities in environmental health and serve as a model for handling air pollution health assessments elsewhere. The research was published in GeoHealth, AGU’s journal that studies the intersection of human and planetary health for a sustainable future.

“We knew the concentrations were higher in the east [of D.C.], and we knew people were getting sicker in the east, but I don’t know if we could tell before they were getting sicker from the pollution, ”said Maria Castillo, lead author of the study, graduate student in town planning. at MIT. “Now that we apply all these calculations, all these concentration response functions, we are able to say to people, ‘Air pollution is the cause of some of the morbidity results that you see in this area.’ . I think making this connection between pollution and health effects is very powerful. “

Uneven health outcomes can be attributed to two main factors, according to study co-author Susan Anenberg, an environmental health expert at George Washington University. First, the concentration of air pollution differs depending on the neighborhood. Infrastructure such as highways or bus depots can release significant pollution in a neighborhood, negatively affecting residents.

The second factor is the state of health of an individual, independent of air pollution. Rates of underlying disease consistently differ by neighborhood, with lower life expectancy and higher rates of asthma, health criteria, and emergency room visits seen in southeastern DC neighborhoods. These underlying health issues can make residents more vulnerable when exposed to pollutants and lead to higher levels of poor health outcomes related to air pollutants.

“You can’t think of air pollution in isolation. When it comes to health risks and environmental justice, we have to think about the full range of people’s experiences,” Anenberg said. “If people do not have adequate access to quality health care, it means that when they are exposed and have health effects as a result of this exposure to air pollution, they can have worse results because they don’t get the treatment they need. “

Focus on high resolution data

Researchers worked with new exposure assessment tools to measure the impacts of air pollution in the nation’s capital. To assess air pollution, Castillo and his coauthors used pollution estimates that combined information from ground air monitors with satellite data to capture some of the spatial differences in pollution levels across the city.

For data on health outcomes, they looked at both data from the Centers for Disease Control as well as administrative data on disease rates obtained from the DC Department of Health, which provided more detailed health data to the local scale.

Researchers aim to leverage DC’s unique position as a city with thought leaders in environmental justice and policy, and with more granular health data than other states, to make scalable solutions applicable in other regions. They hope that this study can serve as a model to not only reduce the whole air pollution but create a targeted policy.

“I think one of the strengths of the study is that it really established a roadmap that could be achieved elsewhere,” said Jonathan Levy, an environmental health expert at Boston University who did did not participate in the study. “The air quality data they’ve used, it’s universally available all over the United States… there are real opportunities to take that kind of approach and do it a lot more widely. “

This study could also be used as a model to ensure that policy-making is informed by health data that accurately reflects racial diversity and health disparity in outcomes across populations, which was not the case historically, according to Kelly Crawford, study co-author and associate director of DC’s Department of Energy and Environment.

“To do other studies that at the very least recognize the disparity or lack of diversity in the data sets… I think that’s the role of government and research in tackling racism,” Crawford said. .