Research Hub

African Americans in Louisiana are dying in disproportionate numbers from COVID-19, a novel
coronavirus that attacks the lungs. There is growing concern about the potential for air pollution to
increase COVID-19 susceptibility in Cancer Alley, a heavily industrialized region in southeast Louisiana
with high proportions of African Americans. Recent evidence linked long-term exposure to PM2.5 (a
common pollutant from industrial and other sources) with increased COVID-19 death rates. Yet, PM2.5
exposure has not been evaluated within Cancer Alley parishes (i.e. counties), and there are no recent
studies of pollution in this region, despite an ongoing wave of industrial expansion that began in ~2014.
Here, we explore the relationships among pollution, race, socioeconomic status, and per capita COVID19 death rates (reported through May 12, 2020) in Louisiana, with an emphasis on Cancer Alley. We use
two independent data sources as indicators of pollution burden: 1) long-term (2000 – 2016) average
PM2.5 concentrations from satellite data, and 2) air pollution-related health risk estimates, specifically,
Respiratory Hazard (RH) and Immunological Hazard (IH) from the most recent (2014) U.S. National Air
2
Toxics Assessment. Additionally, we examine changes over time in industrial versus non-industrial PM2.5
emissions since 1990 using the most recent (2017) U.S. National Emissions Inventory, as well as changes
in ground-level PM2.5 concentrations from 2000 – 2018 satellite data. Our goals were to detect potential
disparities in pollution burden or COVID-19 deaths in Louisiana and to identify temporal changes in
PM2.5 pollution across the state.

Published May 14, 2020

Terrell, K., & James, W. (2020). Air Pollution and COVID-19: A Double Whammy for African American and Impoverished Communities in Cancer Alley.

Since late 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected millions of people worldwide and resulted in more than 200,000 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) deaths. Emerging data suggest that elderly people as well as individuals with underlying health conditions are at a higher risk of hospitalization and death.1, 2, 3 Interestingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s list of risk factors for severe COVID-19 (Fig 1) largely overlap with the list of diseases that are known to be worsened by chronic exposure to air pollution, including diabetes, heart diseases, and chronic airway diseases, such as asthma, lung cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.3 In this editorial, we highlight potential links between exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 severity, and we also hypothesize that disparate exposure to air pollution is one of the factors that contribute to the disproportionate impact COVID-19 is having on inner-city racial minorities.

Published May 7, 2020

Brandt, E. B., Beck, A. F., & Mersha, T. B. (2020). Air pollution, racial disparities and COVID-19 mortality. In The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology (Vol. 0, Issue 0). NLM (Medline). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaci.2020.04.035

The COVID-19 virus, also known as the coronavirus, is currently spreading around the world. While a growing literature suggests that exposure to pollution can cause respiratory illness and increase deaths among the elderly, little is known about whether increases in pollution could cause additional or more severe infections from COVID-19, which typically manifests as a respiratory infection. Using variation in pollution induced by a rollback of enforcement of environmental regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and a difference in differences design, we estimate the effects of increased pollution on county-level COVID-19 deaths and cases. Despite popular media coverage to the contrary, we find that counties with more Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) sites saw increases in pollution following the EPA’s rollback of enforcement, while counties with fewer sites saw a smaller increase in pollution. We find that increases in pollution are associated with increases in cases and deaths from COVID-19.

Published May 1, 2020

Persico, C. L., & Johnson, K. R. (2020). Deregulation in a Time of Pandemic: Does Pollution Increase Coronavirus Cases or Deaths? www.iza.org

We investigated the association between outdoor air pollutants exposure in the first trimester of pregnancy, and growth and cardio-metabolic risk at four years of age, and evaluated the mediating role of birth weight. This comprehensive study of many growth and cardio-metabolic risk related outcomes suggests that air pollution exposure during pregnancy may be associated with delays in physical growth in the early years after birth. These findings imply that pregnancy exposure to air pollutants has a lasting effect on growth after birth and require follow-up at later child ages.

Published May 1, 2020

Fossati, S., Valvi, D., Martinez, D., Cirach, M., Estarlich, M., Fernández-Somoano, A., Guxens, M., Iñiguez, C., Irizar, A., Lertxundi, A., Nieuwenhuijsen, M., Tamayo, I., Vioque, J., Tardón, A., Sunyer, J., & Vrijheid, M. (2020). Prenatal air pollution exposure and growth and cardio-metabolic risk in preschoolers. Environment International, 138, 105619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2020.105619

Coal-fired power plants release substantial air pollution, which included over 60% of US sulfur dioxide emissions in 2014. Such air pollution may exacerbate asthma, but direct studies of the health impacts linked to power plant air pollution are rare. Here we take advantage of a natural experiment in Louisville, Kentucky, where one coal-fired power plant was retired and converted to natural gas, and three others installed SO2 emission control systems between 2013 and 2016. Dispersion modelling indicated that exposure to SO2 emissions from these power plants decreased after the energy transitions. We used several analysis strategies, which include difference-in-differences, first-difference and interrupted time-series modelling to show that the emissions control installations and plant retirements are associated with a reduced asthma disease burden related to hospitalizations and emergency room visits at the ZIP-code level, and to individual-level medication use as measured by digital medication sensors.

Published Apr 13, 2020

Casey, J. A., Su, J. G., Henneman, L. R. F., Zigler, C., Neophytou, A. M., Catalano, R., Gondalia, R., Chen, Y. T., Kaye, L., Moyer, S. S., Combs, V., Simrall, G., Smith, T., Sublett, J., & Barrett, M. A. (2020). Improved asthma outcomes observed in the vicinity of coal power plant retirement, retrofit and conversion to natural gas. Nature Energy, 5(5), 398–408. https://doi.org/10.1038/S41560-020-0600-2;SUBJMETA

On December 22, 2008, more than a billion gallons of highly toxic coal ash burst from an impoundment and spilled into the Emory River channel in Kingston, Tennessee, covering approximately 300 acres. A by-product of coal-fired power plants, coal ash contains pollutants such as arsenic, mercury, and lead, and its particles can travel deep into lungs. More than 10 years after the Kingston spill, workers who cleaned up the coal ash at the Kingston site are still suffering the after-effects of exposure, including brain cancer, lung cancer, and leukemia, and are pressing their claims in court. (See Joel K. Borune, Coal’s Other Dark Side: Toxic Ash that Can Poison Water and People, National Geographic (Feb. 29, 2019)) The impacts of this spill, however, stretch far beyond the town and those involved in the cleanup efforts, affecting the lives of hundreds of people across state lines in Uniontown, Alabama, a low-income, predominantly African American community. Ultimately, the fate of this coal ash would demonstrate the failure of environmental and civil rights laws to protect vulnerable communities.

Published Apr 13, 2020

Marianne Engelman-Lado, Camila Bustos, Haley Leslie-Bole, P. L. (2020). Environmental Injustice in Uniontown, Alabama, Decades after the Civil Rights Act of 1964: It’s Time For Action. American Bar Association Human Righst Magazine. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/vol--44--no-2--housing/environmental-injustice-in-uniontown--alabama--decades-after-the/

To investigate potential changes in burdens from coal-fired electricity-generating units (EGUcfs) that emit fine particulate matter (PM2.5, defined as matter with a nominal mean aerodynamic diameter of ≤ 2.5 µm) among racial/ethnic and economic groups after reduction of operations in 92 US EGUcfs.

Published Apr 8, 2020

Jennifer Richmond-Bryant, Ihab Mikati, Adam F. Benson, Thomas J. Luben, and Jason D. Sacks, 2020: Disparities in Distribution of Particulate Matter Emissions from US Coal-Fired Power Plants by Race and Poverty Status After Accounting for Reductions in Operations Between 2015 and 2017. American Journal of Public Health 110, 655_661, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305558

The increasing intensity, duration, and frequency of heat waves due to human-caused climate change puts historically underserved populations in a heightened state of precarity, as studies observe that vulnerable communities—especially those within urban areas in the United States—are disproportionately exposed to extreme heat. Lacking, however, are insights into fundamental questions about the role of historical housing policies in cauterizing current exposure to climate inequities like intra-urban heat. Here, we explore the relationship between “redlining”, or the historical practice of refusing home loans or insurance to whole neighborhoods based on a racially motivated perception of safety for investment, with present-day summertime intra-urban land surface temperature anomalies. Through a spatial analysis of 108 urban areas in the United States, we ask two questions: (1) how do historically redlined neighborhoods relate to current patterns of intra-urban heat? and (2) do these patterns vary by US Census Bureau region? Our results reveal that 94% of studied areas display consistent city-scale patterns of elevated land surface temperatures in formerly redlined areas relative to their non-redlined neighbors by as much as 7 °C. Regionally, Southeast and Western cities display the greatest differences while Midwest cities display the least. Nationally, land surface temperatures in redlined areas are approximately 2.6 °C warmer than in non-redlined areas. While these trends are partly attributable to the relative preponderance of impervious land cover to tree canopy in these areas, which we also examine, other factors may also be driving these differences. This study reveals that historical housing policies may, in fact, be directly responsible for disproportionate exposure to current heat events.

Published Jan 13, 2020

Hoffman JS, Shandas V, Pendleton N. The Effects of Historical Housing Policies on Resident Exposure to Intra-Urban Heat: A Study of 108 US Urban Areas. Climate. 2020; 8(1):12. https://doi.org/10.3390/cli8010012

The recent shift in the United States from coal to natural gas as a primary feedstock for the production of electric power has reduced the intensity of sectoral carbon dioxide emissions, but—due to gaps in monitoring—its downstream pollution-related effects have been less well understood. Here, I analyse old units that have been taken offline and new units that have come online to empirically link technology switches to observed aerosol and ozone changes and subsequent impacts on human health, crop yields and regional climate. Between 2005 and 2016 in the continental United States, decommissioning of a coal-fired unit was associated with reduced nearby pollution concentrations and subsequent reductions in mortality and increases in crop yield. In total during this period, the shutdown of coal-fired units saved an estimated 22,563 (5%–95% confidence intervals (CI), 1,697–43,429) lives and 329 million (169–490 million) bushels of corn in their immediate vicinities; these crop estimates increase when pollution transport-related spillovers are included. Changes in primary and secondary aerosol burdens also altered regional atmospheric reflectivity, raising the average top of atmosphere instantaneous radiative forcing by 0.50 W m−2. Although there are considerable benefits of decommissioning older coal-fired units, the newer natural gas and coal-fired units that have supplanted them are not entirely benign.

Published Jan 6, 2020

Burney, J. A. (2020). The downstream air pollution impacts of the transition from coal to natural gas in the United States. Nature Sustainability, 3(2), 152–160. https://doi.org/10.1038/S41893-019-0453-5;SUBJMETA

Dr. Robert Bullard is credited as the “Father of Environmental Justice” for his work in the late 1970s on the siting of toxic facilities and landfills in the American South. He is the author of Dumping in Dixie and is currently a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University. The Journal of International Affairs
spoke with him about the roots of environmental racism and how governments can address it.

Published Jan 1, 2020

Addressing Environmental Racism. (2020). 73(1), 237–242. https://doi.org/10.2307/26872794