air pollution disproportionately affects communities across the us. the particulate matter that can enter our lungs and travel all throughout our bodies from our bloodstream, to our brains, to our future children, can come from different sources, but communities that are located directly next to an emission source will oftentimes develop short and long term health problems.

occupational health researcher gaige kerr discusses how air quality relates to environmental injustice, and maryland resident latasha currie talks about her experience developing asthma after a construction plant was built in her community. despite not having any problems with asthma throughout her childhood currie says her lungs are now at 60% capability.

air pollution is a silent killer as so many people in these communities do not know that the air they are breathing is contaminated. however, there is hope for the future. kerr discusses how we can work together to combat air quality injustice through a combination of research, advocacy, education, and community building.

listen to the podcast below!

podcast transcript:

guinevere maclowry: welcome to planet forward’s podcast series. my name is guin maclowry, and here with me today to talk about air pollution and environmental injustice. is gaige kerr. kerr is a current faculty member and assistant research professor with milken institute’s department of environmental and occupational health. thanks for sitting down with me today, gaige.

gaige kerr: thanks for having me.

gm: can you begin by giving us a brief introduction of your work and what you do?

gk: i would say, at essence, i’m an air quality scientist. i spent many years trying to understand air pollution and air quality, and the air pollution i focus on is ambient or outdoor air pollution. i’ve done a number of different studies across different scales that range from local scales all the way to global scales, but most of the work i do is based in the us.

so in my work, i use a lot of satellite data and sophisticated computer models of the atmosphere to try to understand what kind of air pollution we face in the us, where it’s coming from, as well as some of the impacts that it has on health and environmental justice.

gm: to begin i want to talk about fine particulate matter. according to the epa, fine particulate matter, or pm, is the term for microscopic particles of pollutants in our air. pm can be made up of hundreds of different chemicals and come in different shapes and sizes. but pm 2.5, or particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, are the most dangerous to our health. what makes them so harmful?

gk: there are a number of constituents in the atmosphere, and some of them are bigger in size. so many listeners might be familiar with pollen and dust in the air, and you might know that when we breathe it in your nose might get itchy, your eyes water. so those larger particles are thankfully filtered out by some of the natural defense mechanisms that we have in our throat, in our nose, but there’s this whole other class of particles that are very fine that are able to bypass some of those natural defense mechanisms that we have, and they can get into our lungs and into our blood.

and there’s been a number of studies to show that the impacts that pm 2.5 have on our health are quite pervasive and far reaching. so there’s been really interesting and groundbreaking studies that have shown that these really super small particles can make it into the blood brain barrier. they can make it into the fetal part of the placenta. so it’s not just that they’re limited to our lungs or respiratory system. once they’re in our bodies, they can travel really many places and have wide reaching impacts on our health.

in terms of longer term health impacts, we know from epidemiological literature that higher concentrations of no2 over long periods of time is associated with increased odds of stroke of copd, ischemic heart disease, and many other adverse health outcomes that no one wants to have. but we know and listeners probably can guess this, that pm 2.5 can have a really wide range of sources, ranging from natural things like little particles from wildfires and sea salts to things that are human caused or anthropogenic – black carbon from diesel fuel burning.

so one exciting area of environmental epidemiology currently is trying to pick apart whether different types of pm, whether they’re sourced from dust or from wildfires or from fossil fuel burning, might have different health impacts. currently in the us, though, the quantity that’s regulated by the epa is just undifferentiated or total pm 2.5. so our current regulation structure in the us doesn’t really discern between different kinds of pm 2.5 but there is evidence to suggest, and hopefully this evidence continues to be fleshed out in research, that different constituents of pm 2.5 might have different health impacts.

gm: the negative impacts of air pollution can take effect within days or weeks of exposure, and children are particularly vulnerable. i know that you did some work studying nitrogen dioxide air pollution, and i know that nitrogen dioxide can combine with other chemicals and become particulate matter.

gk: yeah, there’s a lot to him back here, as you alluded to, air pollution is complex the atmosphere, and the chemistry that takes place in the atmosphere is really complex. and pollution varies a lot, not just from location to location, but from day to day. different weather patterns like warm fronts and cold fronts can create different pollution levels and similar things go for high and low pressure systems and other meteorological features that we might hear about on the evening or morning news.

so there are really major variations, both in space and time with respect to pollution. when we think about the health impacts that pollution causes, a lot of times, people group them into the long term or chronic impacts, and then the short term or acute impacts. i mainly focus on those chronic or long term impacts in my research. so i’m interested in understanding areas that persistently have higher levels of air pollution.

so in the context of environmental equity and justice, those might be communities that are proximal to a highway or interstate or to, let’s say, a power plant or refinery. so in these communities, residents are faced with high pollution day after day, and while some of those levels might fluctuate again, oweing to the role that meteorology has on air pollution, their levels are persistently higher than levels in other neighborhoods that might not be so proximal to emission sources.

there is a community in south baltimore that is a little bit downwind of a major trash incinerator, and then to its other side, it’s boxed in by a lot of industry related to the port of baltimore. in this community, they are grappling with incredibly high school absenteeism rates due to pediatric asthma. so this is one example of a fairly clear link between industrial processes and fossil fuel combustion and then some adverse health impact that is unfortunately disproportionately born by this community, which happens to be predominantly black and brown with lower wealth.

gm: looking closer at dc, while air pollution has decreased in general over the past 20 years, the improvement has not been equitable across the city. according to a 2023 study by nasa, higher levels of pm 2.5 were found in neighborhoods with the highest percentage of black residents, particularly in the southeast areas of the city.

i had the chance to speak with 36 year old latasha currie, a maryland resident who was born and raised in alexandria, virginia. currie developed asthma later in life as a result of frequent exposure to smoke and pollutants in the air emitted by a nearby factory.

latasha currie: air pollution has impacted me in many ways. i develop asthma. i frequently get bronchitis, and i now have a 60% lung function. where i currently live, there is a- some type of construction factory that lets off either smoke or some type of debris or something into the air, which has definitely caused my asthma to flare up a lot.

gm: and when you went to the doctor, were there any resources available to you at the time when you realized there was a problem?

lc: no, there weren’t many resources available. they just quickly diagnosed me with asthma and put me on steroids. i only knew of the issue because i did a lot of research, because i’m not the type that really just takes medicine, just because the doctor says, ‘take this.’

so i researched and read up on the background of air pollution and everything that’s going on currently in the world with air pollution.

gm: did you get any sort of support from your local government or community. how, like, what was the response that you heard from people?

lc: i didn’t get any support from the local government. i got support from a there’s a asthma group on instagram, and they told they tell you about different ways to decrease asthma attacks, or what to do if your breathing is labored and stuff like that. so that was the resource and the help that i got from the community.

gm: what’s something you wish people knew about air pollution and environmental injustice that they might not know?

lc: i wish people would do more research on it, instead of just allowing doctors or people to tell them, ‘okay, well, you have lung disease or you have asthma.’ there’s reasons why we have these conditions, and i would like for people to advocate more for themselves.

don’t just take the asthma diagnosis, do the research and find out what tests you can get to get your lungs tested and checked and see why you’re having these issues. and i would also like for the local government to put more information out there about the air pollution and air quality in different parts of the states and in different communities.

gm: what work is being done to mitigate air pollution. i know that it’s difficult. there’s not one solution. we can’t just put an air filter through the entire atmosphere, but what work is being done to help these communities?

gk: you are completely right that there’s not just one solution. we can’t pass air through a vacuum. but actually think there’s some excitement and there’s actually a positive way we can spin that, because there is no one size fits all solution or approach. there are many prongs, many different mitigation, adaptation strategies that we have our disposal.

and maybe one of those strategies isn’t going to reduce all of pollution or eliminate all inequities and injustices in pollution, but we at least have different options, and we can approach those different options, or choose those different options based on what pollution is affecting an area or the political situation in an area at the time.

so i am most familiar with traffic related pollution, and even within this one subset of air pollution emission sources, there are many different options that we have to try to reduce traffic related air pollution. so one particular research question that i’m interested in is understanding the role of heavy duty traffic semis and other large, boxy trucks in producing nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter pollution. there’s growing research to highlight how electric trucks or low emission trucks can reduce pollution coming out of their tail pipes.

there’s also ways that we can rethink about how we move goods in the country. so maybe it’s shifting more to rail. and all of these actions, along with others, can have impacts on reducing pollution in overburdened communities.

gm: that’s fantastic. i know that the burden is not on the individual to fix environmental injustice and pollution in general, but i do think that it’s important to look around each other and find ways we can help, especially in the face of a very doom and gloom attitude when it comes to the climate. so do we focus on educating each other, urging our elected officials to make changes a combination of both, or something else

gk: all of the above! i do think education is needed. i’m someone who’s really steeped in the science and in this work, so i know many of the ins and outs of the field of air quality and environmental justice. i will say, though, in people i’ve talked to that are pretty far removed from air quality and even environmental studies and earth science, the air to them feels, it smells all the same. so to tell people that air pollution is two times worse, three times worse in a certain community might come as a surprise. and even politicians. i won’t name any names here, but there have been kind of iconic tweets from certain high level politicians that accuse certain political parties of racializing or politicizing the air. you know, people will say, ‘how can air be racist?’ and of course, air is not a racist object. it’s a, you know, an inanimate object.

but the urban planning, the design of our cities that is so closely linked to the air pollution that we experience has unfortunately placed emission sources in communities of color. so all this is to say, i think educating the general public, teaching them that all people do not breathe the same air, unfortunately, and these differences, these inequities in the air we breathe, can lead to really real health consequences that don’t just impact the health of the residents breathing that air, but they also have larger economic and productivity consequences for our society as a whole.

so yes, education is important, and then advocacy is super important as well. i realize not everyone is a researcher like me, but people that have lived experiences dealing with air pollution and health inequities in overburdened communities should be talking with policy makers as their time and interests allow, because they have really valuable lived experiences that will help shape the way that their elected leaders hopefully respond to this important issue. for those who are able to afford air filtration, hepa filters, that’s one way that we can reduce our exposure when we’re inside. additionally, when there are high pollution episodes outdoors, we can either stay inside or we can sometimes mask too if there are fine particulate matter episodes.

gm: thank you so much for sitting down with me today. gaige,

gk: of course!

gm: this has been a planet forward podcast series. my name is guin maclowry, and thank you so much for listening.