Street Address and Health: A Relationship That Should Not Exist

By Annsana Biju / Winter 2021

In 2016 one of the largest gas leaks in United States history occurred in a city near Los Angeles named Porter Ranch. This leak resulted in roughly 100,000 tons of methane being released into the atmosphere in the span of four months. Porter Ranch happens to be the place that I have called home since my family moved into the community back in 2007. I remember coming home from school one day and learning about the gas leak. My family as well as many of the Porter Ranch residents had been seeing the air grow thicker and some felt sick with symptoms including dizziness, abnormal coughing, and difficulty breathing. All residents who felt affected were asked to pack up and move out in the subsequent days. Due to the near unlivable environment in my hometown, my family as well as many others were encouraged to reside elsewhere for around half a year while Aliso Canyon Gas Company worked on fixing the leak and restoring the environment to what it once was. What this experience of mine highlights is that when air quality conditions are poor, people are not expected to live in that area as it could lead to short-term as well as long-term threats to an individual’s health. Yet many families and individuals live in similar air quality conditions in other cities such as Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times brought to attention a publication from the European GeoScience Union’s Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics journal which measured different gases released in Los Angeles and found that “more than 430,000 tons of methane are released each year from across the region” (Barboza 2015). This much methane gas being released in one year is similar to the amount of gas that was released in the Porter Ranch gas leak. However, those levels of methane emissions do not warrant the evacuation of residents who live in areas near LA emission sites because that is what is normalized and what makes the property affordable for many of the individuals residing there. This compromise on health for a place to live is already immoral, but the narrative does not stop there because when examined we see a trend in the frequencies of racial segregation within the environmental justice sector that needs to be recognized by the public and stopped.

To properly uncover all the issues I have brought to light, we first need to understand why bad air quality is detrimental to individuals. Poor air quality is produced from elevated concentrations of two main sources – ground-level ozone particles and particulate matter. When exposed to high gas levels from these sources, individuals are prone to serious illnesses such as pneumonia or bronchitis. Less serious consequences include irritation to the nose, throat, eyes, or skin; it can also cause headaches, dizziness, and nausea. These are short-term effects of poor air quality. If an individual lives in an environment in which they are inhaling poor air quality constantly they are prone to many long-term health risks in their future (National Geographic). Air pollution is now the “biggest environmental risk for early death, responsible for more than 6 million premature deaths each year from heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and respiratory diseases” (EDF). Long-term health effects from poor air quality include lung cancer, heart diseases, and respiratory diseases. Air pollution can also cause long-term damage to essential organs such as one’s nerves, kidney, brain, and liver. Low-income neighborhoods are much more likely to be exposed to poor air quality since they are more likely to be positioned near industrial areas as well as other emitters of large amounts of greenhouse gases which increases the levels of air pollution in the area (Pyzyk 2018).

Minorities are more likely to be a part of this low-income margin because of past oppression that has had long-lasting effects that are still experienced today. Research has shown that race and ethnicity in terms of stratification often determine a person’s socioeconomic status (APA 2017). This disparity is not something that happened by chance, history has constantly been trying to oppress minorities and the current situations are just a long-term consequence of blatant past inequalities. When immigrants started coming to the United States, they were not able to assimilate with Americans due to many barriers that they faced such as language and cultural differences. Due to this, the immigrants were seen as aliens and treated as such. The formulation of the rhetoric that immigrants were out to ‘steal our jobs’ led many Americans to reject their presence. When such a large group of people is rejected from society, they still have to find a way to function in society and provide for themselves, so they grouped up with similar people and formed a community for themselves. These communities became common in many cities and they were called ethnic enclaves. Ethnic enclaves are “urban areas, within which culturally distinct minority communities maintain ways of life largely separate from those of the generally larger communities that surround them” (Immigration to the United States). Ethnic enclaves still exist in today’s society even though they are more subtly present, this existence goes against the narrative of the ‘melting pot’ of different ethnicities and cultures that has been construed by the United States. America is marketed as a land of opportunity that is the ideal location for people looking to pursue their dreams, yet years of discrimination place people in situations in which they are susceptible to various forms of racism, including environmental racism that attacks the relationship between an individuals location and race.

When people are geographically separated based on race, it becomes easier to target any policy towards certain regions and subsequently have a specific effect on a niche group of people. Practices such as redlining were developed from these clear divisions in location. Redlining is a “discriminatory practice that puts services (financial and otherwise) out of reach for residents of certain areas based on race or ethnicity” (Kenton 2021). Redlining in the 1960s referred to areas that the federal government would draw a red line on a map around to signify that these neighborhoods were not worth investing in based on demographics alone. This leads to certain areas being seen as undesirable and fewer investments towards its maintenance being done. Then, this leads to the property remaining unwanted and eventually creating lower value being attributed to the land as well as less attention from the government being given to the area for maintenance and upkeep. This cycle is what made it easy for big corporations to buy land for cheap in these areas. These factories often release harmful emissions that will affect the surrounding resident’s health. The residents are mainly minority low-income individuals because of all the historical practices that have pushed them into unsafe locations and made them an easy target for environmental injustice.

The circumstances described that lead to low-income minority individuals being attacked by harmful factory emissions is the foundation of environmental racism. Environmental racism is “a form of systemic racism whereby communities of color are disproportionately burdened with health hazards through policies and practices that force them to live in proximity to sources of toxic waste” (Beech 2020). I have witnessed environmental racism firsthand in the past when I used to take the train to my university every day I had classes. As I would ride the train, I would look outside and as the train got closer to Los Angeles I would see more factories and visible gases being released from them. The air would get darker and thicker the closer we got to central Los Angeles. When getting off the train, most people would cover their mouths and get inside the building as soon as possible in order to avoid breathing any harmful gases in. This conduct is proof that people are completely aware that this air cannot be healthy to breathe and many feel that even breathing it for a few minutes every day seems like an act that may potentially threaten your health in the future. While everyone is busy covering their mouths, no one bothers to look to the other side of the stopped train. The side where there were tiny residential apartments cramped together and where there are families living near the factories because that is the only place they can afford. I would look on the other side of the train tracks and think to myself how those individuals and families manage to live in such poor conditions. Areas with such heavy pollution should not even be inhabitable, yet the government is pushing minorities to these areas so that they can continue to make a profit off of them and simultaneously pretend to care about their wellbeing. The real tragedy lies in the fact that the people living there will not be able to leave those situations for generations to come because it is a systemic inequality that causes environmental racism, it’s rooted in the past as we learned and will continue in the future if more people do not begin fighting for environmental equity.

People of color have constantly struggled to stand on a level playing field among white Americans and many barriers have been placed to keep people silenced and oppressed. It is almost indisputable to argue that all humans deserve to live in an environment that will not cause them harm. Yet this is not the reality for so many individuals around the world. Environmental racism in particular is a form of injustice that passes under the radar since many people do not realize why some are put in such horrible situations. It is easy to pass it off as thinking some individuals are lazy and do not work hard enough to have access to better living areas, if they worked hard enough they could find a way to leave an area with dangerous levels of air pollution. This way of thinking is similar to notions society carries towards low-income individuals, the notion to just work harder and obtain more money. Similar to the case of minority individuals being pushed into areas of low property value by historical practices, there is also a similar situation with low-income individuals being pushed into their situations due to generations of government institutions working against these people. Many of these individuals are born into their situations and will have a hard time moving up the social ladder because they lack the access to resources that would allow them to do so.

One of the most predominant roadblocks that lends itself into forming the thought process that ‘people who live in neglected communities which make them susceptible to health risks are lazy and deserve to be there’ is neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is the ideology that “sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations” (The Guardian). People are brought up to view the world as a market where self-interest is the only interest that will benefit you in the long-run. In this system, low-income minority students are seen as disposable and their main purpose in society is to be the competitors that in reality stand no chance against their peers. No investments to improve the ongoing vicious cycle are placed because people who have the power to change this cycle are often not a part of the low-income minority population and they lack the empathy to change a system that worked in their favor. As a result, poor people will continue to feel that their failures are because of their lack of effort even when they have little control over the situation they are placed in. Opposingly, rich people will feel they acquired their achievements purely through their hard work, ignoring the significant advantages they have such as education, inheritance and class (The Guardian). This is an issue because everybody should have the social provisions necessary to control their own self agency and health (Henry Giroux 2014). The ideology of neoliberalism makes it difficult for people with the power to change the system to want to change the system. Due to this, low-income minority individuals will continue to suffer until people begin to move past the bounds of neoliberalism and form bonds of compassion that can allow society to progress and begin combatting the effects of environmental racism.

Neoliberalism may interfere with motivating people to want to make change, but making the change is no easy task because there is a color line that separates white people and people of color even that are from the same conditions. Any white person that is low-income will be more wealthy than any person of color in the same situation. Although it has greatly diminished over the years it is still present in many of our institutions. This color line needs to be removed because only then can society move towards true equity in the case of environmental racism and overall social justice. The documentary Unnatural Causes discusses the immense effect that an individual’s racial identity will have on their socioeconomic situation, this effect then compromises the health of the individuals that are pushed to lower socioeconomic status. In the documentary, they had a portion named “Place Matters” which discussed why an individual’s street address is a good indicator of their health. They noted how many minorities have been forced to move into neglected urban neighborhoods such as Richmond, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to this, economic and social environmental factors pose an even greater threat to residents' health. In Richmond, petrochemical companies release tons of pollutants each year that are not healthy for the surrounding residents. Richmond has higher than average rates of diabetes, higher rates of asthma hospitalization, and an overall lower life expectancy. All across America, in cities like Richmond, African Americans and other minorities are constantly left behind in increasingly neglected neighborhoods which have negative short-term and long-term consequences. The situation of minorities in Richmond is just a narrow example of the widespread issue of environmental racism and its relation to the color line.

Some ways to combat the color line and fight environmental racism are present in public advocacy efforts. Public interest groups work towards cleaner air and environmental rights for all individuals regardless of race or economic status. All of their goals and projects are aimed for the collective benefit of society. This is important because it will allow for equal gain for middle and high income individuals, as well as lower-income individuals who are usually looked over by government institutions and advocacy efforts. An interest group I am a member of is CALPIRG Students who have branches at all UC institutions, including UCSD. We work to educate the public, run grassroots campaigns, and lobby our elected officials in Sacramento and in Washington DC so we can see the promises made during campaigning be fulfilled. One of the major campaigns CALPIRG is working on in 2021 is the 100% clean and renewable energy campaign. We hope to greatly reduce the emissions produced by fossil fuel companies and shift to completely clean energy sources such as solar and wind power by the year 2025. This lobbying will reduce factory emissions in neglected urban land, which will lead to greater health protection for all and the risk of both short-term and long-term health disorders will reduce for the current and future generations. There are many other interest groups like CALPIRG that may not directly fight environmental racism, but work to create better conditions for air quality and pollution that will ultimately reduce the negative effects that environmental policies have on low-income minority individuals.

Many people may not have the time or passion to commit to being a member of an interest group. This is completely understandable, but there are steps that can be taken on an individual level that do not require excessive effort. Societal transformation is one of the biggest solutions to combating environmental racism and climate change as a whole. Educating people around you on these important topics will allow for the public to begin breaking down the barriers that neoliberalism has created. Once these barriers are down, real problem-solving action can be taken and the government’s efforts to suppress the minority and keep them in this cycle of institutional racism will not be ignored. Environmental racism is not any one indiivduals’ fault, it is a systemic form of racism that has existed for generations that many people do not take notice of. However, now that you have become educated on these severe inequalities being presented to low-income and minority communities, I hope you can look past the lack of empathy that the educational institutions have placed within you and take action in ways that will greatly benefit people who can not fight for the right to clean living conditions without the help of people like yourself to support them.

In conclusion, environmental racism is a serious issue affecting many minority low-income individuals who have been forced into living situations that will compromise their health. This issue is often overlooked because society has been influenced by ideologies of neoliberalism into mistakenly believing that every individual is constantly supposed to be competing with each other and the people who end up in poor living conditions that make them prone to poor health deserve to be there. This narrow-minded view of approaching big issues like environmental racism completely overshadow the efforts that the government has put in throughout history to suppress low-income minorities. Practices such as redlining have pushed minorities into underdeveloped land with low property value and high health risk. In addition, immigration histories of alienation have forced people of the same ethnicity to form ethnic enclaves and group together as a means of survival which made them an easy target for further discrimination. Change is possible through the work of local and national public interest groups that work to further public goods and do not favor certain groups of individuals. Action can also be taken on an individual level to educate and reform existing notions of this racism. This issue may be easy to overlook and consider somebody else’s problem, but real people and families are being affected by environmental racism. The most basic right to a clean environment that will not harm the inhabitants is being violated for so many and it is time that the public stops letting the government and climate policy institutions letting this continue.

Works Cited

Adelman, Larry, director. Unnatural Causes. Kanopy, California Newsreel, 2008

American Psychological Association, Ethnic and Racial Minorities & Socioeconomic Status. July 2017.

Barboza, Tony. L.A. Basin Methane Emissions Found up to 61% Higher than Estimates. Los Angeles Times, 14 Jan. 2015.

Beech, Peter. “What Is Environmental Racism and How Can We Fight It?” World Economic Forum.

EDF. Health Impacts of Air Pollution. Environmental Defense Fund.

Henry Giroux. “Neoliberalism, Youth, and Social Justice” YouTube, uploaded by axisaudio, 27 March. 2014.

Immigration to the United States, “Ethnic Enclaves”

Kenton, Will. “Redlining”. Investopedia, 4 Mar. 2021.

National Geographic. “Air Pollution.” National Geographic Society, 9 Oct. 2012.

“Neoliberalism – the Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Apr. 2016.

Pyzyk, Katie. “Study: Low-Income Neighborhoods Disproportionately Feel Environmental Burdens.” Smart Cities Dive, 4 Dec. 2018.