‘Not by accident.’ Are Black Charlotteans breathing the city’s dirtiest air?
As the nearby uptown skyline grows, there’s a growing interest in monitoring west Charlotte’s air quality, where many of the city’s Black residents live.
West Charlotte homes were initially built near the major railroad line and industrial sites. Now, downwind from a quarry and framed by highways, researchers and environmental justice advocates worry the area might have air quality problems.
In 2018, Clean AIRE NC analyzed air quality monitoring results that showed higher levels of particle pollution in Washington Heights, Oaklawn Park and Northwood Estates than the whiter and more affluent Myers Park neighborhood.
The report concluded that Historic West End residents were more likely to be exposed to toxic diesel pollution and pollution from facilities, illustrating an inequity in air quality in Charlotte’s Blackest community.
But neighborhood-level air quality monitoring equipment lacks performance standards and can be inconsistent depending on placement, leaving limited research to back up a deep disparity in air quality levels across Charlotte. A group of researchers and residents are working to change that.
Although Charlotte’s ozone pollution was recently named the worst in the Southeast by the American Lung Association, its ozone concentrations have decreased over the past three decades. Air quality in general is right at compliance with federal standards.
Nationally, people of color are 61% more likely to live in a county with unhealthy air than white residents, according to the ALA’s annual “State of the Air” report.
Clean AIRE NC’s environmental justice manager Daisha Williams said air quality disparities are especially dangerous during the pandemic.
“Of course these vulnerable communities are going to be hit harder by a respiratory virus,” she said. “They’re getting sick with existing respiratory issues because these industries are choking them out.”
A hotspot for pollution
The Charlotte Observer recently asked its readers about air quality questions and concerns in Charlotte. Seventy-five people participated and most said that they’re concerned about air quality where they live. They said their worries were fueled by exhaust from idling cars and vehicles on highways, while others mentioned living close to the airport and other industrial sites that produce pollution.
The 2018 report from Clean AIRE NC and the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice screening and mapping tool show that neighborhoods northwest of uptown are near many more facilities that are permitted to emit pollution into the air as part of their operations compared with south Charlotte. The area includes Historic West End neighborhoods like Wesley Heights and Enderly Park.
“Industrial facilities happen to find themselves located within communities of color, and we know that’s not by accident,” Williams said. “Redlining practices in the past have really influenced and shaped the experiences of minorities who are living near these industrial facilities because of disinvestment.”
Historically, majority-Black neighborhoods have been identified as “risky” or undesirable areas for investment in a practice called “redlining,” and as a result, have become home to industrial sites, some of which are permitted to emit potentially hazardous particles.
Williams said that made it easier for the West End to become a hotspot for pollution.
“There’s just like a concentration of a lot of activities happening within the West End because of historic practices of redlining that had made them more susceptible to this,” Williams said.
Passersby at the Martin-Marietta quarry, located in north Charlotte, can taste the dusty air.
“That huge quarry, you would never know that it was there,” she said. “It’s centrally located within the West End, and that is a whole other source of pollutants in and of itself because of all the dust that comes from drilling and blowing up the quarry.”
Representatives from the Martin-Marietta quarry didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.
Adding to the pollutants emitted by facilities are the diesel trucks racing down Interstate 85, Interstate 77, and Highway 16, blowing dirty exhaust into the air.
Highways slash through west Charlotte’s historically Black neighborhoods. The expressways built over several decades split Black communities and displaced residents — but they also likely made their air dirtier.
The American Lung Association’s “State of the Air” report, which graded Charlotte’s exposure to soot and smog from 2017 to 2019, gave the city an “F” grade in ozone pollution but an “A” in particle pollution.
Still, Williams said fine particulate matter is one of the biggest pollutants in Charlotte. Because of the size of the particles, people who breathe them in can’t cough them up — the lungs can’t remove them through normal processes, so they build up.
“It’s a really nasty pollutant. It’s often called a toxic cocktail,” she said. “We’re finding that people who are exposed to long-term air pollution are 8% more likely to die from COVID. Once again, this is impact after impact building upon each other, and we definitely see that reflected.”
A new report published in September by ABC-owned television stations called “Our America: Equity Report” found inequities in environmental risks in Charlotte. Based on data from the Environmental Protection Agency, people of color are at higher risk of cancer and respiratory illnesses from air pollution, and nearly half of Black residents live in Charlotte neighborhoods at greatest risk for dangers posed by hazardous facilities, compared to a quarter of white residents.
ABC’s report used environmental justice screening data compiled by the EPA to determine where disparities may exist. The EPA indexing of geographic areas uses environmental and population information but is limited in that some of the underlying environmental data is several years old and much of the analysis relies on modeling or screening data, not from air quality monitoring stations.
A community effort
Ronald Ross was born in Germany and raised on the West Coast, but it wasn’t until moving to Charlotte that he was introduced to blatant inequity.
He had grown up in integrated neighborhoods, where his playmates were from all walks of life. But in Charlotte, all of his classmates looked the same — like him — and it came as a shock. It dawned on him then that inequities existed all around him.
As an adult, retired banker Ross has returned to his childhood neighborhood of Northwood Estates. He attended some environmental studies classes at nearby Johnson C. Smith University a few years ago that opened his eyes to how much the community where he grew up had changed and a new kind of inequity — air quality disparities.
“We are enclosed by trains and industrial facilities,” Ross said. “The freeway wasn’t in existence when I was small, and they moved out all the African-Americans to make way for that. We had no say... and we got exposure to toxic emissions.”
That’s when he and a few other concerned community members got together with Clean AIRE NC.
For the past few years, Clean AIRE NC has tracked air quality in west Charlotte largely through monitors placed at community members’ homes, like Ross.
What they found was enough to convince Mecklenburg County commissioners to install a federal EPA monitor at Friendship Park in 2020.
The county operates five air quality monitors in Mecklenburg, all in areas identified by the EPA’s Environmental Justice Demographic Index as having increased susceptibility to air pollution.
Though all of the monitors show Charlotte’s air is in compliance with federal health-based standards, generally, Mecklenburg is at the borderline for meeting federal ozone concentration standards, and the data can skew, depending on the day and placement of the monitors. That’s why researchers say it’s hard to draw conclusions yet.
“It’s still something we’re trying to get a grasp on,” said Brian Magi, associate professor of atmospheric sciences at UNCC. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say dangerous so much as it’s concerning that there’s a disparity between different geographic parts of our our county.”
Ross used to like to run. Though his bones are “getting stiffer,” not too long ago, he would jog in north Charlotte neighborhoods and wave to other runners passing by.
Now, he’s too aware of the traffic alongside him — and their emissions.
“A lot of people, and the kids, in my immediate neighborhood have asthma. And a lot of the elders have heart disease. This air quality affects our health,” he said. “That’s been my impetus to spread the word and to make the inroads to getting better air quality in my community.
“We want air here to be as clean as it is in south Charlotte.”
More work to do
In Charlotte, ozone concentrations have decreased more than 30% over the past 30 years. Before 2016, Mecklenburg County’s ground-level ozone exceeded federal air quality standards.
But Clean AIRE NC and Mecklenburg County Air Quality agree that meeting the baseline requirement is not enough.
“MCAQ is focused on improving air quality beyond just compliance,” director Leslie Rhodes said, and named reduced traffic during COVID-19 stay-at-home orders and grants to replace aging diesel engines as positive impacts on the air quality in Charlotte.
Clean AIRE NC continues to work with partners in the West End and the city of Charlotte to create a green district in the community through initiatives like strategic tree planting.
“Ozone, particulate matter... we’re doing we’re doing good by that those standards,” Magi said. “But then the concern that a lot of us also have is that those standards don’t always translate down to a community and their lived experiences.
“It’s worrying and it’s something that we we definitely want to keep monitoring... we don’t want it to get worse.”
Gavin Off contributed.
This story was originally published November 29, 2021 at 1:57 PM.
