Super Blog 2 - Ben Kiler

 


Finding more visual sources was easily the most difficult. There were probably 15-20 easily accessible maps that have the Wilmington area in a darker shade of red than the rest of LA County, but without a legend or some kind of scholarly report to go along with it they meant nothing in the larger scheme of my project. Eventually I stumbled upon the CalEnviroScreen, a comprehensive and multilayered effort to identify communities that are disproportionately burdened by multiple sources of pollution. I need to read more of it (it's a 126 page comprehensive report, I'm not quite entirely familiar with it yet) but it has the potential to be a very informative source.

Next, I figured some more general research on environmental racism was necessary for providing a framework on Wilmington and establishing a broader context of historical issues. A newspaper excerpt detailing the Threat of Environmental Racism provided a good historical example from the 1990's, detailing how racism is a multilevel threat that isn't fixed by fixing it in one single area. It also outlines how people of color subsequently bear shifting costs of public policies and industry practices while whites are provided benefits from these same actions. The excerpt finishes with the Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry (ATSDR) highlighting how a majority of children affected by lead poisoning are African-Americans and Latinos who live in urban areas. 

I ran into some difficulty finding sources about only Wilmington specifically, so I broadened my search to find studies that found correlations between mortality/health issues and factors of pollution like carbon dioxide, nitrates, sulfates, etc. An abstract of environmental research on Los Angeles County ultimately found a correlation between mortality (unrelated to accidents and violence) and the presence of atmospheric pollutants. The study, performed between 1970 and 1979 --arguably the worst period of pollution in LA County history-- found that higher levels of cardiovascular and respiratory deaths positively correlated with higher levels of pollutants in the air. 

Mortality is always going to be only one aspect of a broader problem of environmental justice; we aren't going to be able to fully understand a problem by only looking at those who have died. If we do, we risk either exacerbating or downplaying an issue, depending on the severity of the statistics. Therefore, I looked towards other adverse health effects related to pollution, and found another study performed in LA County that analyzed asthma hospitalizations and air pollution. Studying weather and air pollution in relation to asthma hospitalizations in the Los Angeles County area, it found that there was an existing significant positive relationship concerning ambient levels of CO, NO2, and PM2.5 with hospitalizations relating to asthmatic issues.

First-hand sources detailing the struggles faced by the residents of Wilmington aren't easy to come by in scholarly articles. However, there are a plethora of news articles or otherwise non-scholarly sources that give fantastic insight into the community at a grassroots level. An article published by the Center for Climate Change & Health details individual accounts of health issues in the community. Coined the "Diesel Death Zone," it describes Wilmington as being an island of people surrounded by a disturbing multitude of sources of pollution. Individual accounts are crucial to understanding how environmental quality effects us all, and more finding more of these is crucial to developing the story behind my project.

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