Environmental Racism

Analysis:

This Press article ran as a follow up story to a December 14 Associated Press piece, and ran on the front page, trying to put a local angle on how this issue of pollution impacts West Michigan. The Press followed good journalistic practices by running the follow up story and by putting it on the front page, despite the fact that the story exposes an injustice, which often doesn’t make the front page.

The follow up story talks to some local experts in both the environmental and health fields, plus two residents in neighborhoods that are identified as having higher levels of pollutants. Where the story falls short is that it only identifies one factory that has high pollutant levels, a Lacks Enterprise factory. Readers would be better served if more companies were identified, instead the Press included a map that vaguely showed high level pollution areas. If readers wanted to further investigate the issue they would have to do so on their own, since the Press does not provide specific enough information on companies or causes of the pollution. Additionally, the Press did not follow the environmental racism angle enough. They spoke with expert in the area of health and environment, but did not make the links between class and race sufficiently, even though that data is available. Even in the area of health problems no real details are provided to readers about the health risks involved. Neighborhood organizers were not quoted, nor organizations who work on racial justice.

Story:

‘Legacy of problems’ plagues city air
By Ted Roelofs

A lifelong resident of Grand Rapids, Kathy Schmuck always assumed the air around here is good enough to breathe.

The fact that she lives in a census tract ranked as among the worst in Kent County for industrial air pollution did not come as good news. That she works in a nearby Grand Rapids hair salon in a neighborhood ranked as the very worst in the county gave her pause, as she snipped away at a customer’s hair. “If we’re the worst area, then that’s not a good thing,” said Schmuck, 45, owner of the Coit Avenue Hair Salon in Northeast Grand Rapids.
It remains unclear what are the precise health risks to those who live and work in neighborhoods exposed to the most industrial air pollution. But given research findings, environmentalists and clean air advocates say residents have legitimate cause for concern.

“We take it very seriously,” said Tom Leonard, executive director of the West Michigan Environmental Action Council.
“We are not surprised to see significant air pollution in old industrial sections and old inner-city neighborhoods. It’s a legacy of problems that we badly need to address.”

According to an Associated Press analysis of Environmental Protection Agency and 2000 Census data, 26 census tracts in Kent County rank among the top 5 percent of tracts nationally with the highest health-risk scores from industrial air pollution. The scores were compiled using plant emissions combined with models of projected air flow.

The EPA uses a similar index to create a score ranking industries for emissions. The highest scoring plant on that list in Kent County, Plastic-Plate/Monroe, a Lacks Enterprises plastic component plating &assembly facility at 1648 Monroe Ave. NW, is in the census tract with the highest health-risk score in Kent County.

Outside of Kent and Muskegon counties, no other census tracts in the Grand Rapids area were among the worst 5 percent for health-risk scores in the nation.

In Kent County, the neighborhoods that rank highest on the health risk index are clustered predominantly in Grand Rapids and Wyoming — with one in Sparta — and are not far from industrial plants.

Many are near the U.S. 131 freeway, which carries more than 100,000 cars a day through downtown Grand Rapids.
In many cases, they are populated by mostly black or Hispanic residents, which parallels national findings by AP that minorities are more likely than whites to be exposed to industrial pollution. Residents in these neighborhoods also tend to be poorer and less educated, it found.

Karen Meyerson, manager of the Asthma Network of West Michigan, said the location of these tracts simply confirms those findings.

“It makes perfect sense to me. What we see in general is that minorities bear a disproportionate burden” for pollution, she said.

According to Meyerson, numerous studies have found links between industrial air pollution and health, including infant mortality, lung growth and in rates of asthma. Meyerson said there also are other causes of asthma, including smoking in the home, the presence of pets, cockroaches and dust mites.

She noted that a 2005 report by the Michigan Department of Community Health found asthma hospitalization rates for Southeast Side Grand Rapids ZIP code 49507 were at least twice that for a pair of suburban ZIP codes.

The study found that the rate for the Grand Rapids neighborhood was 21.7 hospitalizations per 10,000, compared to 10.8 in East Grand Rapids-Cascade Township ZIP code 49506 and 5 in Kentwood-Cascade Township ZIP code 49546.
Overall, according to the Pediatric &Adult Asthma Network of West Michigan, asthma hospitalization rates are more than twice as high among blacks than whites in Kent and Muskegon counties.

Standing in an apartment doorway in the Campau Commons housing project in Southeast Grand Rapids, Karen Jones said black residents like herself have come to expect housing options that are less than ideal.

Jones, 22, has lived for three years in this neighborhood at Franklin Street and South Division Avenue that also ranks among the worst for industrial air pollution. “They really don’t have a say-so,” Jones said of the neighborhood’s residents.

She noted the heavy traffic on U.S. 131, not to mention the busy streets that intersect at this aging housing complex slated to be torn down next year. She pointed across the street: “That’s a factory right there.”

Leonard of WMEAC acknowledges that West Michigan’s air quality has improved in the past years as factories scaled back or shut down in a faltering manufacturing economy. Air pollution numbers from the EPA found Kent County factories pumped out 2.6 million pounds of toxic air releases in 1999 compared to 540,000 pounds in 2003. In Ottawa County, where coal-fired power plants create the area’s most air pollution, toxic air releases fell from 9 million pounds in 1999 to 5.8 million pounds in 2003, a 36 percent decline.