Originally published January 17 2006
AP analysis discovers the health of African Americans is endangered by industrial pollution
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Carol Browner, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, discusses a recent Associated Press analysis that revealed black Americans are 79 percent more likely to live in areas where health is endangered by industrial pollution.
An Associated Press analysis of a little-known government research project shows that black Americans are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution is suspected of posing the greatest health danger.
With help from government scientists, AP mapped the risk scores for every neighborhood counted by the Census Bureau in 2000.
The scores were then used to compare risks between neighborhoods and to study the racial and economic status of those who breathe America's most unhealthy air.
President Clinton ordered the government in 1993 to ensure equality in protecting Americans from pollution, but more than a decade later, factory emissions still disproportionately place minorities and the poor at risk, AP found.
In 19 states, blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to live in neighborhoods where air pollution seems to pose the greatest health danger, the analysis showed.
More than half the blacks in Kansas and nearly half of Missouri's black population, for example, live in the 10 percent of their states' neighborhoods with the highest risk scores.
"We're going to get at those folks to make sure that they are going to be breathing clean air, and that's regardless of their race, creed or color," said Deputy EPA Administrator Marcus Peacock.
They're based on air emission reports from industry, ratings of each chemical's potential health dangers, the paths pollution takes as it spreads through neighborhoods, and the number of people of different ages and genders living near plants.
"The environment is a matter of focus and pride for us and we hope to be good operators," he said.
The Murphy family lives just a few blocks from Zeon Chemicals, which released more than 25,000 pounds of a chemical called acrylonitrile into the air during 2000.
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