SYSTEMIC:

Institute is representative of Black communities across the country that bear a disproportionate health burden from industrial pollution. On average, the level of cancer risk from industrial air pollution in majority-Black census tracts is more than double that of majority-white tracts, according to an analysis by ProPublica, which examined five years of emissions data. That finding builds on decades of evidence demonstrating that pollution is segregated, with residents of so-called fence-line communities -- neighborhoods that border industrial plants -- breathing dirtier air than people in more affluent communities farther away from facilities.

The disparity, experts say, stems from a variety of structural imbalances, including racist real estate practices like redlining and decades of land use and zoning decisions made by elected officials, government regulators and corporate executives living outside these communities. That means that these areas, many of which are low-income, also lack the access that wealthier areas have to critical resources, like health care and education, and face poorer economic prospects.

All of the concentrated industrial activity in these so-called "sacrifice zones" doesn't just sicken the residents who happen to live nearby. It can also cause property values to plummet, trapping neighborhoods in a vicious cycle of disinvestment. In Institute, for example, West Virginia State, starved of state funding for years, has struggled to expand and recruit students. The school is now suing Dow Chemical, the plant's owner, and arguing that contaminated groundwater beneath the campus inhibits the school's development plans and harms its national reputation. Dow has sought to dismiss the case, and an appeals court is considering whether the matter belongs in state or federal court.

Many of the 1,000 hot spots of cancer-causing air identified by ProPublica are located in the South, which is home to more than half of America's Black population. "None of this an accident," said Monica Unseld, a public health expert and environmental justice advocate in Louisville, Kentucky. "It is sustained by policymakers. It still goes back to we Black people are not seen as fully human."

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