Pollution: People of Color Breathe More Unhealthy Air from Nearly All Polluting Sources

A trend of disproportionate exposure to deadly air pollution among Asian, Hispanic and Black people persists in most cases regardless of the emission source, a study finds

Air pollution disproportionately affects people of color across the vast majority of emission sources, including industry, gas- and diesel-fueled motor vehicles and construction, according to new findings. Credit: Mark Wilson Getty Images

Communities of color in the U.S. have long reported health problems from heavy exposure to polluted air. In recent decades a growing body of data have bolstered these reports by showing that Asian, Black and Hispanic people are exposed to relatively higher concentrations of potentially deadly air pollution on average, compared with white people. But some policy makers have questioned whether these trends hold across sources of such pollution—which can vary regionally and range from tailpipe exhaust on highways to emissions related to construction or commercial cooking.

A new study erases a great deal of any doubt that might have existed about racial and ethnic disparities in exposure to air pollution emitted from a variety of sources. The paper reveals that the same exposure disadvantages for people of color collectively persist across 12 of 14 groups of emission sources that spew a particularly dangerous type of air pollution: fine particles with a diameter of 2.5 microns or smaller, known as PM2.5. They are small enough to carry hundreds of chemicals deep into the lungs, where they cause respiratory and heart disease. Fine particle air pollution is one of the largest environmental causes of death globally, according to a 2020 analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. And sources cited by the new study show that exposure to such pollution causes between 85,000 and 200,000 premature deaths in the U.S. annually.

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