More US Latinos Live in Most Polluted Areas

When I was a kid I used to ride the public transportation in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico: over crowded and harried where the bus didn’t actually stop at the corner, it just slowed down to give you chance to land upright on the side walk. The floorboards were sporadic so the exhaust seeped up among the passengers. It wasn’t safe or healthy but it was fast and I was young. The memory of bouncing in those bus seats came to mind when I read about the latest EPA report in americanprogress.org.

Two-thirds of Latino families reside in areas that do not meet the federal government’s air quality standards.

That shouldn’t surprise us. Latinos tend to live in urban areas where they are more exposed to pollution; that pretty much has to do with poverty and education levels.

My school bus ride used to take me past a manteca processing and packing factory, the stench of the lard-works was unbearable. It was in the poorer part of the city. The fact that the disadvantaged live among the highest levels of pollution is a universal problem, I think. But that doesn’t make it right.

Many Republican politicians have hooked on to the idea that in light of federal budget needs the EPA should be defunded. The truth is that they’ve never really liked the idea of an Environmental Protection Agency to begin with. But that agency is the only line of defense against enormous public health and safety assaults on the most vulnerable of populations.

Latino families are disproportionately exposed to some of the most dangerous environmental hazards—and often in their own backyards. Fully 66 percent of U.S. Latinos—25.6 million people—live in areas that do not meet the federal government’s safe air quality standards. This translates into shorter life spans: Latinos are three times as likely as whites to die from asthma. Latino children are also 60 percent more at risk than white children to have asthma attacks.

The Center for American Progress published this chart that breaks-down the top pollution centers and how these affect Latinos:

The thing is that, according to a variety of polls, Latinos in general have strong convictions about the environment and their health:

• The overwhelming majority of Latino voters in Florida (76 percent) and Nevada (74 percent), and about two out of three voters in Colorado (64 percent), consider global warming very or somewhat serious.
• 87 percent of Latino voters believe the government should regulate emissions.
• 75 percent of Latinos said they worry a great deal about air pollution compared with only 31 percent of whites.
• 85 percent of Latinos said they worry a great or a fair amount about soil and water contamination from toxic waste.

You think it may have something to do with where Latinos live? And here’s an interesting fact that we all know intuitively:

Eighty-eight percent of our nation’s farm workers are Latino, and these employees and their families are regularly exposed to harmful pesticides in both the air and water.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda