Pollution is a form of racial injustice crippling western Louisville

Deadly pollution is Louisville’s most urgent problem, making many westside neighborhoods unlivable, unsustainable, unhealthy and unprosperous. It is the number one cause of environmental racial injustice. 

The powerful want you to believe that pollution is not a problem. In other words, if  you can’t see it, it must not exist. 

Science, data, facts and truth tell a much different story. Indeed, pollution is largely invisible because the most deadly pollution, particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) is microscopic, about 1/16th of a human hair and gets clogged up in your lungs, heart, brain and liver.  

Why are so many people wheezing? Why is asthma three times greater in western Louisville than in the rest of the city? In our (pre-publication) piece published in The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal, research conducted by our team showed Louisville ranked second-worst for deadly toxic air compared to 146 midsized U.S. cities. Here are Louisville’s numbers compared to nearby Bowling Green, 113 miles south of us, which is ranked among the 10 cleanest cities in the nation:

• PM 2.5 emissions — Louisville ranks No. 9 with a tonnage of 7,672, compared to Bowling Green with a score of 1,524.
• Poxides of nitrogen — Louisville ranks No. 2 with a tonnage of 37,796, compared to 5,735 for Bowling Green.
• Oxides of sulfur — Louisville ranks No. 3 with a measure of 39,231, compared to Bowling Green at 61 (that is not a typo).

Imagine if I came over and dumped my foul-smelling garbage on your front door. You would rightly be outraged, call the police and demand justice. But who do these folks call when western Louisville residents get 84,699 tons of toxic air pasted all over their homes, fireplaces, air ducts, doors and windows? The unfairness is even more stark when you find that Louisville pollution is 12 times greater than Bowling Green's. It has a measly 7,320 of tonnage.

In other words, our best estimate is that a ratio of 2.2 pounds per person is dumped on western Louisville residents compared to a little less than a few ounces exposed to residents in pristine Bowling Green or far eastern Louisville. These numbers should shake up doctors and health officials about what the real problem is, not habits of the poor or lack of trees in the hood.

Despite these reliable and valid numbers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, our local Air Pollution Control District publicly claims Louisville’s pollution is safe for our citizens. Reliable and verifiable numbers from the EPA, U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Jefferson County Public Schools, the property valuation administrator and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development compared the quality of life in heavily polluted western Louisville to eastern Louisville, along with far and near clean-air cities. The research shows the Air Pollution Control District's claims are simply false.

Pollution blocks learning ability with half the elementary students near Rubbertown factories unable to read or do math at “novice levels.” Absenteeism is three times higher and suspensions are 14 times higher near Rubbertown. It’s hard to learn when you have elevated rates of asthma, stomach aches, headaches and bad smells. 

Pollution causes shortened lives: The lifespan of western Louisville residents who live near polluting factories is less than citizens in war-torn Iraq. A peer reviewed academic journal, Local Environment, says shortened lives of 10 to 13 years is due mainly to toxic pollutants in the air, soil and water impacting 60,000 people in western Louisville. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New York Times by Harvard sociologist and economist Raj Chetty found the overall lifespan in Louisville is five years shorter than in green West Coast cities like Santa Barbara and Santa Rosa.

Louisville’s exploding COVID-19 cases and deaths are strongly correlated with western Louisville polluters. All midsized cities with high pollution levels are seeing COVID-19 cases and deaths explode like a wildfire. 

Pollution must be a factor when corporations consider moving to Louisville. Why would a responsible corporation force their employees to move to a place with such toxic air? Environmental quality is a big concern of corporate relocation. For example, Louisville could not even make the final 20 cities for a mid-America location of Amazon. 

Meanwhile, an Amazon operations center went to Nashville, which has much less pollution than Louisville. Louisville could have had 5,000 new jobs created with average salaries estimated at approximately $150,000, but Louisville’s toxic air could have been a key reason in why Louisville could not even make the 20 semifinalists despite wasting thousands of dollars to promote Louisville mendacity. 

Pollution blocks wealth building: Our recent peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Urban Affairs shows that pollution reduces housing values and increases a record amount of abandonment. In western Louisville, a predominantly Black area, housing values average $37,500 with some of these houses being valued and sold for $10,000. Five-thousand housing units in west Louisville are already abandoned and that number could grow higher because of the pandemic and increased pollution caused by former President Donald Trump removing nearly 100 environmental restrictions. This is why Black people have a lot less wealth in Louisville than in other cities. 

Heavily polluted cities also mean more dangerous greenhouse gases being released that make life on Earth more uninhabitable with higher temperatures, fires, hurricanes, droughts and flooding. Louisville ranks high among American cities in the release of greenhouse gases. 

Polluters want to squash scientific research with a Trump mantra of no data, no problem. And like the Trump administration they are trying to stamp out environmental science research. The polluters have used many of the same tactics as the tobacco industry (see the movies "Insider," "Dark Waters" or "Rubbertown"). Citizens cannot fight the polluters without scientific data.

Pollution is a multiplier of greater racial disparities and tensions. Our research shows that bad air is a force of destruction on lives and communities, particularly in predominantly poor and minority communities. The rich dodge this bullet by living far away from air toxins on the east side.  

Why can’t minority communities have all the good things that clean-air places have? Western Louisville can be regenerated into the next Highlands or Norton Commons by adopting tough California-style environmental protections making it healthy, safe, prosperous and sustainable.                                 

John Hans Gilderbloom, LaGlenda Reed, Dwan Turner, Michael Brazley and Gregory D. Squires are former members of the University of Louisville Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods. Gilderbloom is a consultant to numerous Kentucky cities. Brazley is a professor at Southern Illinois University. Turner is a west Louisville activist with a master’s degree in sustainability from UofL; Reed is a Black Lives Matter organizer and JCPS teacher; and Squires is a professor at George Washington University.