Combustion byproducts such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, were found at higher levels inside Richmond homes than in Bolinas homes. Fine particulates exceeded California’s annual air quality standard in nearly half of Richmond homes.

Vanadium can irritate the upper respiratory tract lungs, eyes and skin and lead to chronic bronchitis. Sulfates can be inhaled deep into the lungs. Some PAHs are potent carcinogens, and they have been linked to neurological effects, such as reduced IQs, in children exposed in the womb.

"We found that living near an oil refinery adds exposures that may be hazardous to your health,” said Julia Brody, the study’s lead author and executive director of the Silent Spring Institute in Newton, Mass. “Toxic pollution from oil refineries doesn’t stay outside; it seeps into homes, where people spend most of their time.”

Standing in her yard in Atchison Village, a World War II Richmond housing development, Sylvia Hopkins looks out on the pink tanks of the Chevron refinery less than two miles away. She let scientists monitor her home in the indoor-outdoor study just to find out what she was breathing.

“Why do we live here?” she asks rhetorically. “Poor people live here. People don't move here if they have a lot of money. That's the way it is in industrial towns."

Poor and minority families such as Henry Clark’s have been pushed into the path of pollution in Richmond for 100 years, says Clark, who founded the West County Toxics Coalition. So if there is any justice, he said, Richmond shouldn’t bear any new toxic burdens for the next 100.

“We already are disproportionately affected. We’re talking about not adding fuel to the fire.”

This article originally ran at Environmental Health News, a news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

4 Comments

1. 1. sparcboy 03:52 PM 6/4/12

   Along the Houston Ship Channel, laced with refineries and chemical plants, lies the communities of Deer Park and Pasadena on Hwy. 225. Decades ago they were predominately white. In fact, Pasadena once had a very large KKK following.

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2. 2. spocknard 08:54 PM 6/7/12

   And I am a 61 y/o white male. I and my entire extended family grew up/lived in the Lafayette section of Jersey City, NJ- a low income area that was predominately white back then, full of industry, and home now to at least 2 EPA brownfield superfund sites. The conslusion is that housing is cheaper when it's near industries. Color has nothing to do with cause/effect.

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3. 3. trimonde 04:29 AM 6/8/12

   If "color" has ever been an issue, it is basically because we make such a distinction to begin with! We don't want our shades of skin to become subject to our capacity for being belligerently nasty to one another, and create racism and have a segregationist attitude ? Then we should realize that we are start being racist not the moment we talk about someone's different skin color; but the moment we talk of someone being "colored", as different to not being colored. That is the actual moment we create a class separation and thus the leave a group of people "targetable" for other depreciating reasons. We don't hear ourselves, but we are being racist the moment we speak of someone being "black", or "white".

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4. 4. DrRCChhipa 01:48 PM 7/1/12

   Pollutants all around us either at Working Place or at residence effects our life .
   Accordingly,there are number of organic pollutants present all around andprovides adverse effects on Health of Human being.Health hazards are so many in different organs of body because number of chemicals are expose.
   

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