"Boyle Heights, a heavily Latino area in Los Angeles singled out for its ‘detrimental racial elements,’ has one of the highest pollution scores in California"

"Decades of federal housing discrimination did not only depress home values, lower job opportunities and spur poverty in communities deemed undesirable because of race. It’s why 45 million Americans are breathing dirtier air today, according to a landmark study released Wednesday.

The practice known as redlining was outlawed more than a half-century ago, but it continues to impact people who live in neighborhoods that government mortgage officers shunned for 30 years because people of color and immigrants lived in them.

The analysis, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters, found that, compared with White people, Black and Latino Americans live with more smog and fine particulate matter from cars, trucks, buses, coal plants and other nearby industrial sources in areas that were redlined. Those pollutants inflame human airways, reduce lung function, trigger asthma attacks and can damage the heart and cause strokes."

Darryl Fears reports for the Washington Post March 9, 2022. [2]

SEE ALSO:

"How Air Pollution Across America Reflects Racist Policy From the 1930s" (New York Times) [3]