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Here, along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge
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is an 85-mile stretch of land known as Cancer Alley.
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For decades, some communities living in this
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part of Louisiana have reported disproportionately high rates of respiratory diseases and cancer.
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In one part of a parish called St. John the Baptist, a person's lifetime risk of getting
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cancer is 50 times greater than that of the average American.
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And now it also has one of the highest Covid-19 death rates per capita in the country.
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A closer look reveals that the community here is predominantly black
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and that figures into an alarming pattern.
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Across the country, black people are dying at disproportionate rates compared to their populations.
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While there are many historical and structural inequalities at play,
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one part of the problem may be lurking in the air.
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Louisiana has some of the most toxic air in the US.
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For decades oil, gas, chemicals and plastics have been manufactured here.
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Much of it comes from the roughly 200 chemical plants and oil refineries which dot this corridor on the banks of the Mississippi River.
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They call it Cancer Alley. They are afraid that this air, the very air I'm breathing
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right now, is so filled with carcinogens that they have labeled the river area
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a national sacrifice zone.
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The industry emits dozens of different chemicals that are known to cause cancer
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along with something called PM2.5,
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which causes fine particle pollution.
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When exposed to it, these tiny particles,
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just a fraction of the width of a human hair, can lodge deep in our lungs and bloodstream
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and can lead to health problems like heart disease, asthma, and lung cancer.
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The Environmental Protection Agency's estimates of cancer risk from air toxicity are far higher
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in this region than much of the rest of the country,
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and they follow the path of the petrochemical industry.
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But even within these high risk areas, here
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along the Mississippi, and across the country,
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these risks are not distributed equally among communities.
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One EPA analysis found that black people are
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exposed to about 1.5 times more particle pollution than white people.
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For example, even though St. John the Baptist is 58% black,
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the community closest to this chemical plant is 92% black.
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It is not a mystery. It is not, you know, voodoo. This is real.
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That's Robert Bullard who's been researching
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urban planning and environmental policy for decades,
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and has written 18 books on it.
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Because of housing discrimination and because of residential segregation,
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the history of this country is tied to race and place.
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Here along cancer alley, the history of the communities goes back to slavery.
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This map shows that the area used to be mostly sugar plantations.
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After slavery ended, many free black people, stayed in the area and established black communities on or near plantations like these.
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Others continued to be exploited through a system called sharecropping,
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where white plantation owners gave black farmers access to land in exchange for a portion of their crop as rent.
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Land owners often manipulated prices to make a profit,
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while pushing black laborers into debt and poverty.
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The practice continued for nearly a century, until the 1940s when a new industry took off in Louisiana.
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And petrochemical plants started replacing these plantations.
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They were invited into the state and into the corridor, without the permission of the
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people who live closest.
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These many decisions were made when people of color didn't have representatives.
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Companies set up their facilities right next to the historically black communities.
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But most of the jobs at the plants didn't go to them.
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And the community is left with pollution, poverty and sickness,
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and in some cases, death.
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Corporations often bought out entire towns.
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Like here in Reveilletown, where the Georgia Gulf Corporation bought out the town and today
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there's still a historically black cemetery within the grounds of a chemical plant.
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Power and money dictate where things go that other people don't want.
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That's how we end up right now with all of these, what we call sacrifice zones,
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these places that are over-polluted, have more than their fair share of poverty and sicknesses.
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Toxic industries have been established near communities of color across the US.
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Like mining operations and power plants on and near Native American reservations.
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And in more urban areas, racist public policies like redlining have historically marked
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black and brown neighborhoods as less desirable, pushing polluters like highways and factories
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closer to their homes.
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Zip code is still the most potent predictor of health and well-being.
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You tell me your zip code. I can tell you how healthy you are,
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and I can tell you what's in your neighborhood and what's not in your neighborhood.
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One analysis of eight cities shows residents of historically redlined neighborhoods live
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with significantly higher levels of air pollution
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and are more than twice as likely as their peers to visit emergency rooms for asthma today.
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The research draws a strong connection between history, and health.
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And how even now, 80 years after these maps were drawn,
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they still play a role in not just where people live,
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but how healthy they are.
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All these things converge, and then you get
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this pandemic, you get this heat seeking missile
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that is targeting, that is zeroing in on the most vulnerable community.
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And when it targets that community, what we end up with is a death bomb.
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The health problems that air pollution exposure can lead to,
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like heart and respiratory diseases,
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are the same underlying conditions that can make coronavirus much more dangerous.
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One pre-print study made a clear link between air pollution and more severe coronavirus cases.
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By analyzing over 3000 US counties, and controlling for certain factors,
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they found that counties with higher exposures to air pollution,
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also had higher probabilities of deadly coronavirus cases.
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In their analysis, a small increase in long-term exposure to air pollution
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led to a large increase in the Covid-19 death rate.
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And although we should be cautious with this preliminary data,
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the findings underscore a possible reason why the coronavirus has been particularly deadly in black communities.
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In Louisiana, black residents make up 32 percent of the population,
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but they made up 56 percent of Covid-19 deaths.
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And in Michigan, 14 percent of the population,
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but 41 percent of deaths.
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The coronavirus is actually bringing to the surface what many of us have known for many years.
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People already have all these underlying conditions because of where they live,
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because of not having access to health care,
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because not having health insurance,
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not having, you know, the kinds of of things that make people healthy in terms of the built environment.
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And so it is not surprising. It's disappointing
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and it makes you angry.
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In March, the Trump administration suspended clean air protections across the country.
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So in Louisiana's cancer alley, that
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means petrochemical facilities will now have no oversight over how much they pollute.
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And even though we are just starting to learn about the connections between pollution exposure
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and severe coronavirus outcomes,
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it's a move that ignores the history and research that precedes it...
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of how segregation, pollution, and health in black communities
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are inextricably linked.