Does dangerous pollution matter in terms of impacting school success? Yes. What is the secret sauce for getting students to learn better? Students perform better when they are in neighborhoods with clean air and perform poorly when the air near their school is highly toxic. But why do some neighborhoods have toxic air and others have relatively clean air? How do high levels of toxic air impact school achievement? Why is this information not provided to the public? My research team recently obtained publicly available data from the Jefferson County Public Schools and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Toxics Release Inventory. Last month, my colleagues and I were honored by the 30,000 scientists who are members of the Association of Energy Engineers with a prestigious award for outstanding research at their annual conference in Nashville.
Dangerous levels of high pollution cause children to fail
After obtaining the data, we connected the dots. It was troubling to see how at such an early age (eight years old), roughly half the students were not proficient at math or reading when their schools were near the chemical factories of Louisville's West End. We put together a map showing the locations of the polluters and schools.
Figure 1: The 10 most and least polluted elementary school attendance zones in JCPS.
. Here is what we found :
- Chemical factories near schools in Louisville's West End emit 76,713 pounds of toxins yearly compared to a clean air neighborhood in far East Louisville where 2,185 pounds of toxins were measured every year.
- In terms of reading proficiency scores, 80% of students in toxic neighborhoods are not proficient in reading compared to only 39% in clean air neighborhoods—that is a 41% difference, or put another way, 61% of students in clean air schools are proficient and only 20% of students in toxic neighborhoods are proficient.
- In terms of mathematics performance, 43% of students in clean air neighborhoods are not proficient and 83% of students in toxic neighborhoods are not proficient. Or put another way, 57% in clean air cities are proficient and 14% in dirty air cities are proficient.
- Only 8% of the students in clean air schools are chronically absent but in toxic schools it rises to 24% of the students.
- 95% of the teachers in clean air schools will be retained but only 82% of the teachers in toxic neighborhoods will be retained.
- Suspensions of students are 14 times higher in toxic air schools.
- Only 18% of students attending clean air neighborhood schools are Black while 66% of students attending schools in toxic neighborhoods are Black and only 16% are white.
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Politicians believe air quality disinformation campaigns
So why are heavy amounts of pollution tolerated in Louisville schools in the West End? Our elected leaders from the city council to the mayor to our congressman to the governor are compromised by the massive number of political contributions they receive to be against strict environmental regulations. These politicians believe the disinformation campaign put out by polluters that claims the air is safe. It isn’t . We need leadership that stands up to the polluters and leads a movement for truly clean air in neighborhoods that equals that of pristine St. Matthews.
Why not dream big? The technology exists to reduce chemical pollution to nearly zero with $120 million dollars for the city’s 40 identified polluters at $3 million dollars a pop. Before the Kentucky Institute for the Environment & Sustainable Development was closed, we showed it was possible to partner with an industry emitting toxins and reduce 90% of one chemical that was linked to cancer.
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That might seem like a lot but how did Louisville spend its $388 million in American Rescue Plan Funds? Even more wasteful was $30 million dollars spent on a state-of-the-art raised track. Why not use the much-hyped $50 million dollars given to the University of Louisville to install California style anti-pollution machinery?
Reducing deadly industrial pollution here and 1,000 other places identified by the EPA around the U.S. will also cut back on greenhouse gasses that raise the surface temperature of the earth resulting in catastrophic floods, fires and droughts. Louisville is one of the top producers of greenhouse gasses because of the lack of effective pollution. It would be a win-win. Way too many people are hurting in Louisville 's West End but also from Helene and increasingly many other places already hit: Maui, Santa Rosa and New Orleans to name a few more places.
But nobody proposed using any of this money to clean up deadly pollution. Why not address the major inequities of neighborhood pollution that determine the failure or success of our children? Too much is at stake. Not being proficient is a ticket to not getting a high school diploma and joblessness. Minimum wage jobs and jail will await too many. Zero pollution would create a renaissance for the West End: improved housing equity, civility and sustainability; a longer lifespan of 10 to 14 years; a reduction in rates of COVID-19, cancer, asthma, dementia and crime; and more importantly a reduction in Louisville’s record high levels of greenhouse gases. The West End could once again look like its sister neighborhood in East Louisville—the Highlands.
Professor John Hans Gilderbloom directed the award-winning UofL Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods for 32 years. This data and more are available on his website . Dr. Gilderbloom’s forthcoming book, Climate Chaos: Killing People, Places, and the Planet, co-authored mostly by UofL students and faculty with a prelude by Pope Francis and an afterword by Albert Gore is coming out in 2025. The book is being turned into a documentary titled Climate of Hope: Cities Saving the World by three-time Emmy Award-winner Chris Nolan.
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This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Opinion: How did Louisville spend its American Rescue Funds? Not on clean air for kids.
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