Detroit’s air quality is among the worst in the world due to the Canadian wildfires, exposing an already-vulnerable population to more health risks.
Detroit’s air quality is among the world’s worst due to the Canadian wildfires, potentially exacerbating many health problems that residents of the predominantly Black city have struggled with for generations.
Detroit resident Sandra Turner-Handy, a retiree of the Michigan Environmental Council, said that before the fires, locals had been breathing high particulate matter and other toxins “on a consistent basis.” She said she is especially concerned about the effects of the fires on those who live near the Detroit River, an area sought for industrial use and which contains high levels of pollution.
She said Detroit’s “asthma rates are three times that of other cities in our state.”
Turner-Handy, who has emphysema — a lung disease that causes breathlessness — calls Detroit’s pollution problem an “environmental injustice” and has concerns about how the smoke could spread to her area, potentially impacting her own health.
“I have a fear of anything that’s going to impact my respiratory health,” she said. “I have a great fear.”
Communities of color and low-income populations are exposed to higher levels of PM2.5, atmospheric fine particulate matter, compared to other groups in the U.S., according to a study last year conducted by Harvard University. A 2020 poll by the Environmental Defense Fund found that 58% of Black adults living in Detroit are twice as likely than white residents to be concerned about air pollution in their communities. Poor air quality conditions are even worse in regions like southwest Detroit, whose residents experience asthma hospitalization rates three times higher than the state average.
Experts like Jessie Singer, author of “There Are No Accidents,” said the recent air pollution only illustrates the ways Black communities are made more vulnerable to environmental disasters and climate change through policy and infrastructure decisions. For example, Black people are more likely to live where there is greater exposure to air pollution as a result of residential segregation, according to the American Lung Association.
“Systemic racism defines whether or not you have the excess cash to have an air filter in your home,” Singer said. “If you have less access to health care, if you grow up in a polluted environment, if you don’t have the economic freedom to take time off work, then when a wildfire happens, you’re more vulnerable.”