Pollution is not evenly distributed in the United States. Communities of color, indigenous communities, and low-income communities are significantly more likely to live and work in areas poisoned with toxins, suffocated by air pollution, and choked with undrinkable water. In 2018, five EPA scientists published a paper showing that African Americans are 54% more likely to live in areas of heavy air pollution, and poor communities are 35% more likely.

On top of this, three out of five Black Americans live in close proximity to toxic waste sites, leading to higher rates of cancer, greater likelihoods of birth defects and autism, and countless other avoidable illnesses. Adding insult to injury, many environmental justice communities lack the basic resources most Americans take for granted: one in eight Native Americans lacks reliable access to water, and Black families are twice as likely as white families to live without modern plumbing.

Senator Cory Booker has just introduced a new bill that would help clean up legacy pollution and limit new sources of pollution disproportionately affecting these communities. The Senator's Environmental Justice Legacy Pollution Cleanup Act of 2020 will help hundreds of environmental justice communities across the United States. We will immediately invest over $65 billion dollars to clean up legacy pollution, and would prohibit granting major source air pollution permits in communities already suffering harm from high levels of pollution.

This story map was produced by Esri's Spatial Stats and Policy Maps teams, along with a Harvard research team and staffers from the Office of Senator Booker.