‘Trump climate health rollback likely to hit poor, minority areas hardest’

Washington: In a stretch of Louisiana with about 170 fossil fuel and petrochemical plants, premature death is a fact of life for people living nearby. The air is so polluted and the cancer rates so high it is known as Cancer Alley.

“Most adults in the area are attending two to three funerals per month,” said Gary C Watson Jr, who was born and raised in St John the

Baptist Parish, a majority Black community in Cancer Alley about 30 miles outside of New Orleans. His father survived cancer, but in recent years, at least five relatives have died from it.

Cancer Alley is one of many patches of America — mostly minority and poor — that suffer higher levels of air pollution from fossil fuel facilities that emit tiny particles connected to higher death rates.

When the federal government in 2009 targeted carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as a public health danger because of climate change, it led to tighter regulation of pollution and cleaner air in some communities.

But this month, the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overturned that “endangerment finding.”

Public health experts say the change will likely mean more illness and death for Americans, with communities like Watson’s hit hardest. On Wednesday, a coalition of health and environmental groups sued the EPA over the revocation, calling it unlawful and harmful.

“Not having these protections, it’s only going to make things worse,” said Watson, with the environmental justice group Rise St James Louisiana.

He also worries that revoking the endangerment finding will increase emissions that will worsen the state’s hurricanes.

The Trump administration said the finding — a cornerstone for many regulations aimed at fighting climate change — hurts industry and the economy. President Donald Trump has called the idea “a scam” despite repeated studies showing the opposite.

Growing evidence shows that poor and Black, Latino and other racial and ethnic groups are typically more vulnerable than white people to pollution and climate-driven floods, hurricanes, extreme heat and more because they tend to have less resources to protect against and recover from them.

The EPA, in a 2021 report no longer on its website, concluded the same.agencies