In the city of Seattle, where you live often determines how long you live: Residents of wealthy northern neighborhoods like Laurelhurst live 13 years longer than their southern neighbors in South Park and Georgetown. “Your zip code probably can predict your health much better than I can as a doctor, just doing a draw of blood on you,” said Dr. Julian Perez of SeaMar Community Health Centers.
The invisible culprit floats in the air all around us: Environmental justice organizations have been saying that pollution is a public health crisis for years, attacking the lungs and organs of the city’s poorer communities of color. But the COVID-19 pandemic has made a dire predicament worse.
Fighting back means understanding the scope of the danger. To that end, a group of researchers from the University of Washington EDGE (Exposures, Diseases, Genomics, and Environment) Center are comparing COVID-19 prevalence in the areas of King County most affected by environmental hazards.
In a recent study, those scientists found that in areas where more than 10% of the population tested positive for COVID, 89% of those areas housed more people of color than the county average, and 92% of that population had higher poverty rates than the county average.
The highest rates of COVID-19 were in South King County, in areas surrounding the Sea-Tac airport region like Auburn, Kent and Burien.
“That area is also where we see the highest environmental health disparities,” said BJ Cummings, community engagement manager for the UW EDGE Center and University of Washington Superfund Research Program. “You can clearly see the overlap [...] on the maps,” she said.
Areas suffering from these environmental health impacts experience higher rates of asthma, cardiovascular disease and cancer clusters —which can be risk factors when compounded with COVID-19.
The study also revealed pronounced disparities extended to the city of Seattle proper, where 5-8 percent positive rates of COVID-19 were concentrated in South Seattle neighborhoods, particularly in South Park, Delridge and Rainier Valley. More affluent Northern parts of Seattle saw positive coronavirus cases in 3% of the population tested.
These rates have far-reaching effects, from who recovers from infection to what businesses can reopen. The World Health Organization recommends rates should remain at or lower than 5% in a given population before reopening.
“I think that this has ironically given us an opportunity to really examine the intersectionality of health and race and investments in our community — or lack of investments in our community,” said Cummings.
With or without government help, environmental justice organizations like the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition hope to empower communities to make changes in their own backyards. Executive Director Paulina Lopez collaborates on community science projects involving the Duwamish River Youth Corps. In their recent Moss Study local youth collected moss from trees in South Park and Georgetown to use as a bioindicator for air pollution. They removed debris, weighed the moss and sent it to the lab to be analyzed for heavy metals.
“Your voice is what matters to us,” Lopez told her youth citizen scientists as they gathered near the South Park playground. She had to raise her voice to carry above the constant sound of trucks passing nearby, each spewing carbon and other pollutants.
“Why? Because only us, the community that live here are those who should be deciding what is the future of our community.”
