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Air Quality and Asthma Inequities

Frank Bencomo-Suarez
University of Louisville Resilience Justice Project

Air. We all need it to breathe, but we all do not have access to same air quality where we live. Louisville, Kentucky is a clear example of this issue. According to the EPA, more than 80 percent of all toxic air pollution released in Jefferson County is released in West and South Louisville. These areas contain the majority of Louisville’s chemical, manufacturing, and power plants with fifty-six out of 68 local facilities that release toxic air pollution being located there. Together, these plants annually release about 3.6 million pounds of toxic pollution, including 79 known hazardous air pollutants, 22 of which are directly associated with a variety of adverse health impacts, among them cancer and asthma.

Photo of Ohio River w Smokestack- Photo credit Frank Bencomo

In the western part of Louisville, plants such as the Mill Creek power plant and American Synthetic Rubber Company release substances such as Hydrogen Fluoride, butyl acrylate, methyl methacrylate, and ammonia all of which cause lung damage and can lead to asthma. West and South of Louisville also have a greater number of highways that go thru residential neighborhoods. The prevalence of highways in and around low-income neighborhoods has resulted in heightened exposure to air pollutants and disruptive traffic flows for residents. Air quality “hot spots” often exist in neighborhoods close to freeways, and inner-city children experience disproportionate incidences of asthma.

Asthma in Louisville

Exposure to these toxic substances has greatly harmed the respiratory systems of residents in the community. More than half of child asthma hospitalizations in Louisville Metro were for children living in just 8 of the 39 metro zip codes. All 8 of those zip codes are low-income communities. Child asthma hospitalization rates ranged from no children in some zip codes in eastern Louisville where poverty rates are under 3 percent, to 495 per 100,000 children in zip code 40208 where the poverty rate is 23 percent. Furthermore, Norton Children’s Hospital data indicates that twice as many black children in Louisville metro make emergency room visits due to asthma as white children.

2017 Air Toxics Respiratory HI (National Percentiles)

This concentration of harms is “a feature, not a bug” so to speak. In 1918, Standard Oil of Kentucky opened its Riverside Refinery. When residents began to complain about the smell of the pollution, the first answer was to consider moving the industry to other, less populated areas of town, such as the northeastern part of Louisville. When that was held to be too difficult due to logistical challenges, the answer was to shift residential segregation patterns. Though the usage of redlining, strategic locations of interstate highway, and zoning, marginalized communities where gradually isolated in neighborhoods located next to massive polluters.

However, history need not be destiny. Community activists, scientists, local officials, lawyers, and other citizens have been able to improve the city’s air quality by grassroots efforts. In the early 2000s the University of Louisville and a coalition of residents called the West Jefferson County Community Task Force tested the air quality in neighborhoods around Rubbertown. This two-year study led to the discovery of 17 cancer-causing pollutants the community deemed unacceptably high. This led to newspaper publicity in the form of several front-page stories on air quality for the Courier Journal, which drove Mayor Jerry Abramson to meet with Rubbertown companies. As a result, American Synthetic Rubber Company agreed to install pollution controls that reduced emissions of one cancer-causing pollutants by 80 percent. Another organization that arose in this area was the Rubbertown Emergency ACTion (REACT), a grassroots organization of residents living near or at the fence lines of a cluster of 11 chemical plants in Louisville in the Rubbertown area. The organization was established in April of 2003 as a campaign of the Justice Resource Center and became an independent organization later that year.

To people such as myself who have grown up their whole lives in Louisville and suffer from asthma, such change is essential. The Ohio river valley is deeply interconnected and without change many of us will find themselves struggling to even breathe in the place we call home.

Sources & Resources