Lackluster or altogether lacking details about pollution disproportionately impacts low-income and communities of color, according to a newly researched layer of environmental injustice from the University of Michigan.

Researchers say unequal exposure to pollution by vulnerable populations has been widely studied, but not how limited or missing data about that pollution compounds harm. A newly published study shows lacking information is an important cause of pollution exposure in low-income households and communities of color.

Catherine Hausman, associate professor of public policy at U-M, said environmental justice issues are a long-standing, unaddressed problem nationally in the United States. She said despite progress on environmental protection made during the last 40 years, there remains a long way to go in making sure support hits the ground in a just way.

“We know that communities of color and low-income communities are hit more by all kinds of pollutants. And we know that a lot of policy to address environmental protection just hasn’t taken that into account. And so, we wanted to ask what are some of the barriers to that? And specifically, what is the role of information,” she said.

Hausman worked on this research with Samuel Stolper, an environmental and energy economist with U-M’s School for Environment and Sustainability. Their goal was to explain how information failures affect pollution exposure and household well-being, particularly how those impacts range across income levels.

The scientists agreed with common findings that low-income homes and communities of color are exposed to more pollution, but they also found those households are exposed to more hidden pollution and suffer greater harm from a lack of information. People in those areas might make different choices to better protect their health if more informed, they hypothesized.

“The existing research says, ‘Well, why don’t people just use money to protect themselves? Why don’t people just move to a cleaner community or why don’t people just install air filters in their house or water filters or whatever it is?’ And all of that assumes that people have the information they need and have a political voice and we wanted to investigate what happens when that’s not true,” Hausman said.

Sparse air-quality monitoring by regulators and heavy reliance on polluters to self-report their emissions create further hidden pollution, the researcher said, which disproportionately affects low-income households and communities of color.

“I think at state and federal levels, there’s a role for better monitoring of pollution and better publication of pollution data,” Hausman said.

One community leader said she can confirm Detroiters have experienced what the recently published U-M research says.

She pointed to communication gaps when environmental hazards happened in past years in industry-heavy southwest Detroit, said Laprisha Berry Daniels, executive director for nonprofit Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice.

“There was a time when there was an incident in industry in southwest Detroit and southwest Detroit residents were not evacuated, and a neighboring community, Melvindale, was evacuated. And folks in southwest Detroit did not get information about what was happening. And folks in a neighboring community did receive information about what was happening,” Daniels said.

An explosion at the Marathon Detroit Refinery in southwest Detroit in 2013 led to evacuations in neighboring Melvindale, but not in Detroit.

“This does happen and there is no system in place for Detroiters, to alert them of these environmental hazards. Or if there is a system in place, it doesn’t work. Because residents in southwest Detroit did not know what was happening. They were not informed of what was happening,” Daniels said.

The nonprofit leader said yet another layer of environmental justice concern is revealed by the U-M research: some solutions may be financially out of reach for those most impacted.

For example, she said both using an air conditioner rather than opening windows and also running an indoor air purifier can often provide better air quality inside homes close to industrial polluters; but both cost money, not only to buy the appliances but also to power them and replace filters.

“We have to think about the economics of that, the cost of that when there’s already undue energy burden on a lot of impacted communities and justice communities there. There’s already that concern. These are lower-income communities,” Daniels said.

“And then you want me to plug up something else, right? I just can’t afford to plug anything else up.”

There is an effort to improve the way information is shared – specifically in southwest Detroit.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy received a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to make a game plan to close communication lag times and promote better community health in Southwest Detroit.

The project was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic as it requires intense community conversations and meetings with various community groups, and lack of internet access for many in the community meant virtual meetings wouldn’t work well, said Hugh McDiarmid Jr., EGLE communication manager.

“Southwest Detroit was chosen because it is such a microcosm of many of the challenges faced by environmental justice and frontline communities across Michigan and elsewhere,” he said.

The goal of the pilot resiliency plan is to develop a method that can serve as a template for other communities to adopt, McDiarmid said.

Meanwhile, the White House recently unveiled the beta version of its new climate justice screening tool that will map areas most in need of federal investment. The effort is expected to help achieve President Joe Biden’s mandate that 40 percent of federal investments in sustainable and green infrastructure – such as clean energy, pollution cleanup, and water improvements – go to communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.

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