Under the cover of the pandemic, the Trump administration has been hard at work dismantling the rules that protect public health. He has reversed standards for clean cars and mercury emissions from coal plants. He’s suspended rigorous environmental reviews required by the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act to expedite approval of highways and pipelines in 30 days. And just last week, the Environmental Protection Agency altered how it calculates the lives saved from cleaner air—a devastating change that will be used to undermine future clean air regulation.
These rollbacks do not affect everyone equally—they’re particularly devastating for people of color. And the pandemic has intensified the burden that vulnerable neighborhoods already carry. On Tuesday, in a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce committee, environmentalists and racial justice advocates detailed the compounding effects Trump’s rollbacks and pollution has on communities that have been hardest hit by COVID-19.
According to CDC data released in April, Black patients accounted for 33 percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations and 23 percent of deaths—disproportionately high numbers when you consider that 18 percent of the total US population identifies as Black. The disparity has been even more stark in some cities: In Washington, D.C., for example, Black people are 45 percent of the population but 76 percent of total COVID-19 deaths.
The connections between the environment, race, and the COVID-19 crisis are many: Air pollution in poor communities has long caused soaring rates of respiratory and heart disease—underlying conditions that are now worsening outcomes in people who contract COVID-19. The pandemic has also increased people’s exposures to pollution: They’re spending more time indoors, where outside pollution can seep in and mix with asthma triggers like mold. The lack of federal and state enforcement during the crisis has meant communities may face illegal levels of exposure to chemicals and emissions. And while transportation emissions are down overall, some neighborhoods see more emissions from idling trucks.
“When we say, ‘I Can’t Breathe’ we literally can’t breathe,” Mustafa Santiago Ali, vice president of Environmental Justice at the National Wildlife Federation, said in his testimony. Jacqueline Patterson, Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program, pointed out in her testimony that 71 percent of African Americans live in counties in violation of federal air pollution standards. “At every turn the deck is stacked against us.”
Abundant research reinforces this point: A study published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences found that African American populations are typically exposed to 56 percent and 63 percent more PM2.5 pollution than they produce through consumption and daily activities. By contrast, non-Hispanic white people are typically exposed to 17 percent less pollution than they produce.
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