By Willy Blackmore
Word In Black
Over the past four years, the Environmental Protection Agency has tightened restrictions on a host of pollutants and pollution sources, ranging from tougher tailpipe emissions standards for all heavy-duty trucks to cracking down on chloroprene pollution — emissions which come from just one plastic plant in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley.
The new restrictions are continuing even in the waning days of the Biden Administration: in November, the White House announced new standards for all nitrogen oxides, a class of harmful gasses generated from burning fossil fuels, in power plants and other industrial facilities.
It’s a change that — as is often the case when it comes to air pollution — would greatly benefit Black communities. But like all Biden-era environmental protections, the new nitrogen oxide rule is at risk when Donald Trump returns to the presidency next year.
With freeways and power plants often located nearby, studies have found that Black and Brown communities suffer a disproportionate amount of nitrogen dioxide exposure, resulting in NO2-related deaths at a rate 47 percent higher than the national average. (Photo: Unsplash/ Gary Meulemans)
Joseph Goffman, an assistant EPA administrator, said in a statement that the stronger standards will “better protect nearby communities’ health, and the power sector has already shown that the additional pollution controls can affordably and reliably do the job.”
In 2023, researchers from Northeastern University published a study that looked at how nitrogen dioxide pollution varied by Census tract. It found that Black, Latinx and otherwise non-White tracts had disproportionately high rates of exposure.
LIke other nitrogen oxides, nitrogen dioxide is caused not only by power plants but cars and other vehicles with internal-combustion engines. And, as freeways were disproportionately built through Black communities, utilities were more likely to build power plants in close proximity to Black neighborhoods.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters, found that the number of premature deaths related to NO2 exposure in predominantly Black Census tracts was 47 percent higher than the national average.
The EPA believes stricter standards “could also lead to reductions in other types of pollution, like particulate matter and ozone, by lowering the amount available to react with other volatile organic compounds,” according to the New York Times. The agency estimates that cutting nitrogen oxide emissions could produce a “net benefits to society” dividend of $46.4 million.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA must reconsider power-plant pollution standards every 8 years, but the nitrogen oxide limits have not been updated since 2006. The new EPA rule stems from a 2022 lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Club, which set a 2025 deadline for updated standards.
During the last Trump Administration the EPA loosened monitoring standards for nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-fired power plants — plants that are more likely to be located next to Black and Brown communities.
This article was originally published by Word in Black.
