A new study by the Associated Press (AP) of a federal environmental health database has found persistent environmental racism in the United States, African-Americans 79% more likely than white Americans to live in neighborhoods where industrial pollution poses the greatest health danger. After obtaining the database via the Freedom of Information Act, the AP mapped the data to census data collected in 2000 in order to obtain a ranking of the worst states and neighborhoods. While previous studies have documented environmental racism with regard to the location of hazardous waste sites in the 1990s, little has been done to address the issue. Moreover, while parents and residents in the most affected areas have attempted to organize, the government, largely at the behest of the Bush administration, has worked to ease restrictions on air pollution.

Locally, the Muskegon area had four of the state’s five worst neighborhoods for pollution—all of which are neighborhoods that are predominately African-American. Throughout the state, African-Americans are twice as likely as white Americans to live in the most at-risk neighborhoods while latinos are more than three times as likely to live in such neighborhoods. According to the AP study, Michigan had the sixth-largest health risk from industrial air pollution with the health risk from industrial air pollution being at least 100 times greater than the national average in 14 neighborhoods in Michigan (source).