In the age of robber barons and buccaneer capitalism, the captains of industry and the mill owners lived upwind and upstream from the pollution that poured from their factories, untroubled by bothersome regulations.
Less fortunate were the workers who lived cheek-by-jowl with the factories and mills in a miasma of poisonous pollutants. More than a century later, the CEOs of major industries might not even live in the same time zone of the facilities they run. But despite government-imposed regulations unimaginable 100 years ago, hundreds of thousands are people are still subjected to health risks from the air toxics emitted by industrial facilities. And those populations are disproportionaly minority and poor.
According to a study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Southern California, petroleum refining ranks ninth nationwide among industrial sectors contributing to industrial air pollution, with a "toxic score" of 3.8% (the relative share of the total impact of industrial toxic air pollution in the country). The top ten sectors - with steel works, blast furnaces and rolling and finishing mills heading the list at over 10% - have an overall toxic score of more than 57%.
Based on the Environmental Projection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory and the agency's fate-and-transport model that estimates the exposure level in one-kilometer square "grid-cells" around a facility, the study's authors measured the cumulative impacts on communities from releases at multiple facilities.
The study reported that of the populations subject to toxic air pollution from petroleum refining, 51% are minorities and 19% low income; in both cases exceeding the average for the top ten sectors of 37.3% and 16%, respectively. Among refiners, ExxonMobil refineries topped the list with a toxic score of 7.9%. The population exposed to air toxics from the company's oil refining operations is 65.5% minority (51.9% black), and 24.6% low income. The population exposed to releases from ExxonMobil's Baton Rouge refinery is 78% minority (75.3% black), and 31.1% low income, the highest percentage in each case for a company facility.
Overall, for the 15 refiners in the study, the population at risk from air toxics averaged 51.3% minority (primarily black and Latino), ranging from a high of 73.6% for Pasadena Refining Systems, to 24.5% for Tesoro (Latino, Asian American and black).
Minorities comprise 31.8% of the US population nationwide, and blacks comprise 11.8%.
The study reports that Birmingham, Alabama, metropolitan area has the highest share of minority and low income groups exposed to toxic air pollutants, followed by Baton Rouge.
One implication of a relatively small number of sectors (10), accounting for a large share of the problem (57% of the human health risks nationwide), "is that well-targeted corrective measures, undertaken in a small fraction of the economy, could go a long way toward cleaning up the nation's air," the study said.
It also said there is little effort to verify the accuracy of the information submitted by industrial facilities in the annual TRI reports, and that many releases may be underreported or go unreported. "Environmental officials ought to be given adequate resources to enforce compliance," it said. Also government agencies "must frame regulatory standards to take account of the cumulative impacts" of pollutants.
"Minorities and the poor breathe dirtier air than their neighbors in too many places across the country," said Manuel Pastor, director of USC's program for environmental and regional equity and one of the study's authors.
The study notes that most of the toxic air pollution reported in the TRI is not illegal and that the emissions "are within existing legal limits, if any limits have been established." Which suggests that the existing legal limits need to be strenthened. Or, as good neighbors, the companies operating the facilities should take measures to control emissions beyond what is required by regulation or law.
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