Black and Hispanic Americans bear toxic burden of air pollution created largely by white people, study finds

Black and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately exposed to air pollution, despite white people being largely responsible for it, new research has revealed.

In the first study of its kind, scientists have revealed the racial gap in the toxic pollution found across US cities, where low air quality is considered the largest environmental health risk

Toxic gases and particles in the air are linked to a variety of health problems, including heart disease, respiratory problems and cancer.

Tiny particulates known as PM.25 are of the greatest concern in the US, where they have been linked to more than 100,000 deaths each year.

In their day-to-day lives, people inhale a certain quantity of these pollutants, depending on the areas they live and work in.

However, they also contribute to the pollution by going about their regular activities including driving, cooking and consuming products that required polluting processes to manufacture.

In their new study, a research team from at the University of Washington considered a broad range of factors to examine how people’s contributions weigh up against their exposure.

Publishing their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they found black and Hispanic people in the US bear a “pollution burden”, with populations on average exposed to 56 and 63 per cent respectively more PM2.5 than they produce.

Non-Hispanic white people, on the other hand, experience around 17 per cent less air pollution exposure than results from their resource consumption.

These disparities appear to be driven by a variety of societal trends ranging from income inequality to the division of neighbourhoods that house different ethnic groups in US cities.

While similar studies both in the UK and the US have revealed the unequal burden of pollution on minority groups, this is the first to contrast that against the volume of pollutants emitted by those groups.

“What is new is that we find that those differences do not occur because minorities on average cause more pollution than whites – in fact, the opposite is true,” said lead author and air pollution researcher Dr Christopher Tessum.

While pollution exposure for everyone has fallen by around half since 2003, due to stricter federal air quality laws, the disparities have remained.

The scientists said their methods could also be used to examine other environmental inequalities between racial groups in the US, and could be used to influence policy.