"Residents in majority-Black north Birmingham, Alabama, have long been subjected to industrial pollution. The new administration has cut funding for a program aimed at measuring the impact." 

"BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—When Jilisa Milton received the grant termination letter, she wasn’t surprised. She suspected this day would come. 

The language the Greater Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution (GASP) had used in its application to the Environmental Protection Agency had been clear. “We’re talking about helping a community,” Milton, GASP’s executive director, said last week, “where Black people have been disproportionately impacted.”

Black residents had breathed heavily polluted air from a nearby coke plant for decades, and their neighborhoods had been declared a federal hazardous waste Superfund site after it was determined that waste soil laced with arsenic, lead and benzo(a)pyrene, a human carcinogen, from several nearby coke plants had been spread around their homes as yard fill. 

In light of this history and continued industrial pollution, GASP had obtained a $75,000 air monitoring grant from the Biden EPA in 2023."

Lee Hedgepeth reports for Inside Climate News June 7, 2025. [2]