Pollution and Community Health
It is no secret that pollution impacts community quality of life. Illegal dumping and excessive trash on the street lowers property values and negatively impacts the neighborhood experience.
Less known is the relationship between pollution and community health. Decades of research show that communities of color and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by pollution exposure, which exists in the form of landfills, incinerators, manufacturing facilities, mining areas, freeways, railroads, and other contributors of hazardous wastes. According to a 2018 report published by the New Orleans City Planning Commission, all 33 documented hazardous waste sites within the City of New Orleans exist in low-income neighborhoods. This pattern waste site placement also dovetails with histories of redlining across the city.
Communities of color are statistically low-income and are more likely to be impacted by pollution sites across the city. Pollution does not just harm real estate value and neighborhood morale – it silently steals away life. The New Orleans Health Department’s 2024 Health Disparity Report indicated that Black New Orleanians experience premature death at a rate more than two times their white counterparts, listing the top contributing factors as economic instability, housing insecurity, and environmental hazard exposure. In 2022, the Lancet published that pollution exposure is a leading risk factor for premature death, responsible for 1 out of 6 deaths globally.
In the 1980s, the City sold land to the residents of Gordon Plaza without informing them of its prior land use or history as a landfill. Last year, more than four decades later, the City began relocating the residents of this majority-African American community from atop the Agriculture Street Landfill.
Just outside of New Orleans, numerous fenceline community groups are fighting for the right to breathe due to industrial facilities polluting their homes. Many of these facilities produce plastics and styrofoam that are part of the waste stream that burden other communities later in their life cycle. Some of these community groups include:
Zero Waste is an Environmental Justice Issue
Because of the disproportionate impacts of waste on low-income communities and/or communities of color, it is important to center equitable, zero waste policies, programs, and infrastructures that can reduce our waste whenever possible, and divert waste from going to the landfill. This is better not only for the environment and all of the natural resources that are extracted and mined to create products we consume, but also for community health. Some policies and programs that can reduce the burden of waste include: