A dramatic variation in air pollution’s health effect was found by the new study among the US neighborhoods. The more unclean air you breathe, there are chances of having negative effects on health. Each person breathes different amount of air depending on their capacity. In the US, the communities of color are exposed to vastly unequal air pollution level. An EPA study done in 2018, stated that the Black Americans were exposed to 1.5 times a much proper matter than the general population while the people of color were exposed to 1.28 times more. Health is highly impacted by the disproportionate exposure to environment. A study was done once which takes a closer look at how air-pollution related risk differs by neighborhood in California’s Bay Area. Susan Anenberg, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University said that the air pollution has got much better in the US, since the 1970 Clean Air Act and 1990 Clean Air Act. He also stated the quality of air has not improved for people around the country, or even for specific neighborhoods within the city.
With a partnership between Google Street View, the Environmental Defense Fund, and Aclima, a company that makes air quality sensors, the team took a fine- scale air pollution data gathered in the Bay Area. The disease rate was collected from the local health department by the researcher to study the impact of air pollution on health. After a study, it was estimated that over, 2,500 annual deaths could have been due to nitrogen dioxide emissions, and over 3,000 annual deaths must have been due to particulate matter exposures. Also, the study findings made them found that neighborhoods with higher number of color residents experienced on average double the rate of childhood asthma from traffic-related air pollution compared with white neighborhoods.
In the west and the downtown Oakland, where mostly color people reside, it was found that 1 among the 2 children had the problem of asthma due to nitrogen dioxide, traffic-related air pollution. Brian Beveridge, co-director of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project also said that studies like this would continue to reaffirm what residents of disadvantaged communities have faced for decades. There are not much highly accurate tools to measure out the more exact differences, which can tell us a lot more about potentially unequal exposures. In recent years, researchers are working on to develop a more accurate understanding of community and neighborhood level disparities.
